Loose Cabin Seats Forces American Airlines To Cancel Dozens Of Flights

American Airlines has cancelled about 100 flights while they check their aircraft for more loose seats.

Airline officials said late Thursday that they had come up with a fix for the seats, and they began pulling 48 Boeing 757s out of service to make repairs. All the planes should be back in service by Saturday. The seat repairs, however, could inconvenience thousands of passengers. American said the work caused it to cancel 50 flights on Thursday and 44 on Friday. Each 757 that American operates in the U.S. has 188 seats. Since last week, seats have come loose on three American Airlines flights involving 757s that had been recently refurbished. The seats had been removed and reinstalled as part of the work. Federal officials said they are continuing a safety investigation into the events at the nation's third-biggest airline. American originally said the problem was due to a clamp that holds rows of seats to tracks on the aircraft floor. But officials offered a new explanation Thursday, saying that a combination of wear, poor design and even soda spilled into the tracks caused pins to pop out of the grooves.