Approximately sixty of the more than 400 Airbus A300 pilots employed by American Airlines have submitted a letter requesting that the airline ground the jumbo jet until an investigation of the plane's tail section is completed. The request comes after an American Airbus crashed into the Rockaway Beach section of New York City on November 12, 2001. All 260 passengers and crew aboard the flight were killed.

In the letter, American Airlines pilots asked the company to ground the Airbus model until "a definitive cause for the crash of Flight 587 can be determined, along with ways to prevent a similar occurrence." An American Airlines spokesperson rejected the grounding request saying that there "was no need to take the fleet out of service."

Last week, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators discovered evidence that suggested glued materials in the plane's tail fin separated during the crash. Investigators, though, are not certain if the tail defect existed before the accident.