Delta Air Lines was expected to cancel a total of 275 flights Thursday through early Friday, as it joined American Airlines in reinspecting wiring bundles on older jets.

The cancellations affect about 3 percent of its worldwide schedule, spokeswoman Chris Kelly said. About 70 percent of Delta's MD-88 fleet were to be inspected by Thursday, with normal operations planned by Friday, she said.

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Michael and Sheryl Dea from Carthage N.C. found themselves searching for a hotel room Thursday morning after their 8:25 a.m. flight was canceled until Friday morning.

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Delta's move came after American canceled about 325 flights on Wednesday to inspect MD-80 jets, a related model to Delta's MD-88 jets. The inspections come almost three weeks after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a check of all U.S. airlines' maintenance records.

Delta told customers in a statement on its Web site it was "very sorry for any inconvenience" and was assisting passengers whose flights were canceled. A spokesman at AirTran Airways, Delta's biggest rival at the Atlanta airport, said the carrier had sold tickets to numerous Delta customers who had been stranded by the inspections.

Michael Straub, of Austin, Texas, was a two-time victim of the inspection program. His American flight to Nashville was canceled on Wednesday, and he was put on a Delta flight connecting through Atlanta.

But when he got to Hartsfield-Jackson, the second flight was also canceled. He spent the night in the airport, at one point sleeping on a baggage carousel.

His fiancee was driving down from Nashville on Thursday to pick him up.

"It's been hell," he said. "The whole process was very unplanned both times."

The inspections, required under an "airworthiness directive," involve checking wiring bundles on 117 McDonnell-Douglas MD-88s. The narrow-body jets are a workhorse on many of Delta's domestic routes, comprising about 30 percent of Delta's mainline fleet of 446 jets.

Delta said it completed the inspections earlier this year but is redoing them voluntarily in cooperation with the FAA.

"We take airworthiness directives very seriously," spokesman Kent Landers said.

FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said inspectors had an issue with a material Delta used to encase certain wiring bundles on the jets, but that the incident didn't endanger passengers. However, because the deadline for complying with the airworthiness directive was March 5, the jets are not allowed to carry passengers until the additional inspections are completed, she said.

"We don't regard this as a safety issue. We regard this as a technical compliance issue," she said. "We're very aware of the inconvenience to passengers, [but] we cannot let aircraft fly if they are not in compliance."

The FAA has been auditing airlines' maintenance operations after it came under fire this month for its handling of safety inspections at Southwest. The Dallas-based discount carrier was hit with a $10.2 million civil fine for missing some inspections and continuing to fly some older Boeing 737s.

After that incident, the FAA ordered audits at all carriers, in which their maintenance records were checked to make sure they complied with 10 randomly chosen airworthiness directives for each type of aircraft in their fleets. The FAA teams also physically inspected at least one of each aircraft type.

The need for the new inspections at Delta and other operators of MD-80 jets became known during the audit of American by a joint team of inspectors from the FAA, said the FAA's Bergen.

The inspection involved checking to see that bundles of wires for auxiliary hydraulic pumps were secured at the proper interval. Inspectors discovered that some spacings were too wide.

The FAA then sent an alert Wednesday to its other offices where other airlines operate MD-80 aircraft, including the Atlanta office that monitors Delta, said Bergen. After checking out a few of Delta's MD-80s in Atlanta, the FAA inspectors determined that while the wiring bundles were secured properly, there was an issue with the material covering them, said Bergen.

FAA, Boeing and Delta scrambled overnight to come up with an "alternative method of compliance," she said.

-- Staff writers Russell Grantham and Christian Boone and The Associated Press contributed to this article.