More trouble on AA: seats come unbolted mid-flight
Two incidents of seats on American Airlines flights becoming loose in-flight have resulted in emergency landings: one over the weekend and one on Monday.
In the first incident seats become unbolted on American Airlines Flight 685 from Boston to Miami. The flight made an emergency landing midway at JFK.
On Monday, Flight 443 from JFK to Miami found that a similar row of seats loosened out of their bolts. The flight returned to the airport.
No passengers were injured in either incident.
The jets in question, Boeing 757 jetliners, were taken out of service. On FAA inspection, other rows of similarly unbolted seats were found.
American Airlines says that the mechanical failure had nothing to do with recent labor disputes, sick-outs and possible intentional disruption of flights by disgruntled staff.
American spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan said the passengers in the ‘wobbly’ row were relocated to safer seats.
The FAA said that six other similar aircraft with seats like the ones in question had been removed from service until they could be thoroughly inspected.
The rows of seats that became unbolted had been removed and reinstalled during scheduled maintenance. American Airlines told ABC News that the problem might lie in the model of seats and the particular tracking used to hold them in place. They said other similar aircraft were being taken out of service "out of an abundance of caution" until the cause of the mid-air unbolting could be determined and fixed.
Gretchen Kelly
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