American says full schedule Sunday

FORT WORTH, Texas, April 11 (UPI) -- American Airlines said Friday it has canceled 200 MD-80 flights scheduled for Saturday but expects to resume a full schedule of flights this weekend.

The airline said it had put 231 of its MD-80s back in service by Friday afternoon, after canceling 2,600 flights this week to get caught up on inspections of the fleet. American said it expected to have most of the fleet back in service Friday night and would operate about75 percent of its MD-80 schedule early Saturday -- with all its MD-80s back in service by late Saturday afternoon.

The Federal Aviation Administration says American has itself to blame for this week's cancellations. FAA spokeswoman Lynn Tierney said Thursday "inadequate" maintenance, "not an instance of heavier or more or different inspections," was the reason the airline's aircraft were grounded.

At a news conference Thursday, Gerard Arpey, the airline's chairman and chief executive, said he took "full, personal responsibility for our being in this situation," The Dallas Morning News reported.

The dueling news conferences were triggered by a Wednesday statement by Dan Garton, American's executive vice president of marketing, that the FAA had raised its level of enforcement.

Arpey said the cancellations would cost the airline "tens of millions of dollars."