Allegiant Travel, an affordable carrier offering flights to leisure destinations, has announced that it is grounding 30 of its flights, which is about half of its fleet, in order to carry out inspections on the emergency exit slides for complying with the safety guidelines.

The company had to cancel 18 of 121 scheduled flights affecting around 2,700 passengers on Friday. Brian Davis, a spokesman of the company said that 16 of the flights that were planned for Friday would now take off on Saturday. The carrier expects to complete a full schedule of 33 flights on Saturday. The company indicated that more disruptions were likely on Sunday and Monday as it continues to inspections of its flights.

The Las Vegas-based carrier said that it has secured seven aircraft from other carriers to help avoid disruptions and fly passengers. The airline operates services to destinations such as Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in Florida and cities in Hawaii. For the complete inspections, the slides must be taken off planes and sent to a third party for overhaul and this takes time for the aircraft to eb ready for operations again.

The shares of the company fell about 5 per cent on Friday.