American Airlines is making Karen O'Laughlin a little nervous.

O'Laughlin, a longtime fan of the airline, already bought her American plane ticket to fly from St. Louis to New York to visit her grandsons next month.

"I choose American because it's a straight flight, no stops, and it's the right time, (but) I do have some angst about my flight being canceled," she said.

Who wants to fly American?

The troubled airline has been beset by labor troubles, delays and flight cancellation and, most recently, two aircraft that couldn't keep several seats in place.

American, which filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late last year, persuaded a judge to throw out its contract with the pilots union last month. Since then, the pilots have been engaging in what the airline calls a slowdown that has caused the number of flights that are delayed and canceled to skyrocket.

Broken coffee pots and reading lights, torn seat pockets and precautionary maintenance checks that lead to nothing wrong: Those are some of the complaints by pilots that are slowing American flights, according to spokesman Bruce Hicks.

"Clearly, our operation is nowhere near where we want it to be, where it has historically been and the kind of quality operation American Airlines runs day in and day out," Hicks told CNN in an interview two weeks ago. "We are working as hard as we can to try and mitigate this and do all we can to resolve it. We certainly understand; we very much do apologize for any delay or cancellation that we have seen."

The solution, Hicks said, is for the pilots to stop their slowdown. The airline threatened last week to seek an injunction in court if the pilots union doesn't "take steps to end the disruption of American's operations by some pilots," according to a letter to the union from Denise Lynn, American's senior vice president/people.

Customers are piling on