In early June, American Airlines put its new Boeing 787-9 deliveries with the new Flagship Suite interiors into service. As of today, these aircraft fly between Chicago and Los Angeles and between Chicago and London.
One of its new deliveries, N846AN, faced maintenance issues shortly after its delivery flight, which forced a string of diversions and cancellations. The issue seemed to have been related to a door seal, which got fixed up. The aircraft has been flying for over a month now without any other issues.
Meanwhile, one of its other deliveries, N842AA, has now faced mechanical troubles. This aircraft has been in revenue service since June 9th, and has not had any notable issues in its schedule until earlier this month.
The past few weeks for N842AA has been like this:
Yeah… that’s pretty rough.
The aircraft began to experience a string of cancellations on July 8. Since then, it had hobbled along with delays and cancellations here and there, until it spent a week on the ground in Chicago starting on July 16.
Fortunately for the airline, there was no need to operate a ferry flight for this aircraft, as it was already in its Chicago hub where they could work on it. N846AN from last month, for comparison, had to be ferried from Philadelphia to DFW to complete the required maintenance. These ferry flights can be a challenge to operate amid existing mechanical issues on an aircraft.
This isn’t the same door seal problem as the other delivery last month though; both of these issues appear unrelated.
Aviation watchdog JonNYC mentioned that the issue here appears to have been related to the cabin lights, with a bad wire harness. The airline appears to have gotten assistance from Boeing.
Interestingly, the aircraft completed a test flight yesterday, July 22:
N842AA flew in circles around west of Chicago for a couple of hours at 32,000 feet. The aircraft then returned to the airport.
Following this successful test flight yesterday, N842AA is operating American Airlines flight AA2012 from Chicago to Los Angeles as of today, 12:00 EST, its first passenger flight in over a week. The aircraft will then return to Chicago as flight AA2321 and then operate flight AA98 to London later tonight. It has a few more flights filed for tomorrow, as well. This is all good news, as the lighting issue seems to have been fixed and the airline is confident to have it resume operations.
Either way though, it’s an operational headache for American Airlines to have its new deliveries spend time on the ground. The airline is already short on widebodies compared to Delta and (especially) United, and every single aircraft is important for its network, especially during this busy summer season. These also include its newest Flagship Suite interiors, and the airline wants them in the air as much as possible.
Featured image by the author.
