Computer Glitch Leaves American Airlines Flights Without Pilots

I am so old I can remember when American was the best airline in the country. Back in the last millennium.

Some would call it a computer glitch; others would same it's a programmer's f**k up. The computer does only what it's instructed to do.

35 years retired pilot at AA. There is a system that allows you to drop or trade a work assignment for another. Trips are color coded green or red depending on manning levels and is fluid with sick calls and reserve manning.
It appears like 2017, everything turned green. If you had a trip that flew all night or nothing but weekends then a pilot would drop that in a heartbeat, knowing that with the pilot shortage crew schedule would call with a better trip. Everyone operates as a individual contractor, not knowing what is red or green in any other pilots schedule

The airlines have us all by the short hairs. Fares go up and service goes down. SMH

As long as the pilots don't drop their assignments after the flight has taken off...

That’s bad, I fly with American Airlines on July 13 and July 17. I hope my flight still has pilots.

ATC: Cactus 1549, say intentions.

1549: Ain't nobody here but us chickens.

Are these the same computer people and management that couldn't find the 500,000 frequent flyer miles I earned on US Airways when they merged with American so that 500,000 miles could be combined with the 900,000 miles I have flown on American? They could find the locator numbers for the miles I had redeemed for free trips but they couldn't locate the miles to combined putting me in the million mile club. Neither Doug Parker or any of his minions ever responded to the two letters I sent him. Not surprised issues like this still happen.

“Glitch?” It’s really more likely they let too many go into early retirement in 2020 and then when people came back to fly, they were not prepared for such a bounce back. Airlines all over cannot hire and train pilots fast enough. The cherry on top is the forced jab in order to stay employed. This was the perfect pilot shortage storm.

Let me get this straight, the airlines are blaming everything from weather, schedule changes, missing aircraft, missing crews, and passengers who have had their trips interrupted or canceled arbitrarily with little to no notification. Do any of these gutless wonders running these companies have a clue? Show me the logic for American in this case: to fly from Charlotte/Douglas to Salisbury, MD a 456-mile trip first stop in Dallas then back to Atlanta then THE NEXT DAY ( clearly stated on their website, maybe get a flight back to MD. 21- 28 hours to fly 456 miles? Please don't take any responsibility for incompetence or lack of any strategic plan to recover. Just keep the ticket prices as high as you can !

A lot of people are saying operator error. Who said it was an error? Hackers are more sophisticated than ever nowadays.

Hey don't worry.....this bunch of crazies just offered to give the pilots 300% pay if they will take the trip. Throw the money at them and they will work. Contract talks are still on going but hey, we just do it the USAirways way.
The fake bankruptcy and the takeover by the Pheonix group has ruined a once wonderful company. Glad I got out with 40 years of service to the Legacy American Airlines.

Every program has at least one bug.

Every program can be reduced in size by at least one line.

Therefore, every program can be reduced to a single line - which is a bug.

--Anonymous Retired Programmer

There is an old say of computers=GIGO=GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT

They rely on a computer to assign pilots?
What happened to staff members rostering pilots manually so a human can see exactly who's rostered on each flight and make sure it's done right?

Sure it was just a computer glitch. We all know why there is a shortage of pilots and it has nothing to do with computer glitches