If you happened to be traveling through Chicago’s O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth International or New York’s La Guardia airports in recent days and you experienced hideous flight bottlenecks, we are sorry to report that this is probably just a foretaste of the feast to come. With jets weirdly failing FAA inspections left and right (just Monday, nine MD-80s operated by American didn’t pass muster, resulting in hundreds of groundings and more than one thousand flight cancelations) here’s what to expect in the coming weeks, as scrutiny of passenger planes only picks up.

Air travelers, whose plans have already been disrupted by thousands of canceled flights recently, may face continued chaos in coming weeks as the Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines expand their scrutiny of passenger planes.

The groundings at airlines like American, Alaska, Delta and Southwest resulted from a broader round of inspections, ordered by the F.A.A., to determine whether the airlines have complied with past directives to check airplane structures, wires, electronics and other components.

A second wave of audits began on March 30 and will continue through June 30. Laura J. Brown, a spokeswoman for the F.A.A., said it could not rule out further groundings. “We don’t know,” she said. “We find what we find.”

That will do little to reassure travelers, who face difficulties switching to other flights because planes are generally flying full on popular routes.

The agency turned up new problems Monday, when nine MD-80 jets operated by American failed an F.A.A. check, prompting American to ground 300 planes. American canceled more than 1,000 flights on Wednesday, on top of 430 cancellations on Tuesday, while its fleet of MD-80s was inspected. American Airlines canceled more than 900 flights Thursday to fix faulty wiring in hundreds of jets, The Associated Press reported, and the problem could spill over to Friday.

Airports hit hardest by the canceled flights were Dallas-Fort Worth International, O’Hare in Chicago and La Guardia.

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