American Airlines, the largest carrier in the world in terms of passenger-miles travelled, has communicated that it will hold-up an addition in the number of its flights between London Stansted and New York JFK Airport.

The US based carrier had earlier made an announcement that it would be increasing the frequency of its flights on the route to two daily flights from the 8th of April.

But an undisclosed source from the company communicated to Business Travel World that the move would be hanged up until the 1st of August. Accounting for the decision, the unnamed representative said that their proposals had been disturbed by the impact of pilot staffing concerns on the whole network of the carrier.

"We recognise the importance of being able to offer a second daily frequency on our new Stansted-JFK route and indeed we took the unusual step of announcing our plans to serve this route twice daily even before the first daily service began", said the unknown source.

The representative further added, "However, with the need to address pilot shortages and having assessed the potential impact of schedule reductions across our international network, we have concluded that a short delay in commencing the second daily Stansted-JFK flight provided the better solution for our business".

In the previous week, the carrier said that by 13th April, all its flights presently taking off from London Gatwick would be shifted to London Heathrow airport.