AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIES WRONG PLANE FROM LA TO HAWAII: WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

It was recently made public by aviation blogger Brian Sumers that American Airlines mistakenly flew a non-certified plane on a long distance flight from Los Angeles' LAX
airport to Honolulu, violating FAA regulations.

The flight took place on August 31, and was past the halfway mark when an employee of American discovered the accident. The decision was made to complete the flight, and the plane was then returned to LAX without passengers and a skeleton crew.


The aircraft that completed the flight, an Airbus A321S, is not certified to make long flights over water. While the specs for the A321S are identical to the A321H - which is allowed to make a flight of that type - it lacks a special kind of certification required by the FAA for flights without adequate emergency landing points within range during all portions of the flight plan, known as ETOPS certification.

American only put the A321 into service for flights to Hawaii last month.