Every week as I sit down and begin to gather my mental notes for the next issue of PlaneBusiness Banter, I begin a process of routine news searches — looking for articles dealing with some aspect of the industry.

Sometimes I do this looking for more information on a story that most people already know something about. But oftentimes the payoff comes when a story that I was not aware of pops up on the computer screen.

And so it was last week when I came upon a story that talked about how American Airlines had been forced to cancel hundreds of flights flown by MD-80s as the FAA issued new inspections be done on the aircraft.

The headline on the story, “FAA Crackdown Could Lead to More Delays.”

I hadn’t heard a word about this.

No one had sent me a note about it.

I looked at the date on the top of the story. September 3, 2008.

The article began:

“FAA Crackdown Could Lead to More Delays

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 September 2008, 21:00 CDT

By Michael Sean Comerford Daily Herald Business Writer

mcomerford@dailyherald.com

Three airline fleet related actions in three weeks by the Federal Aviation Administration may indicate more inspection- related flight delays ahead, airline analysts said Wednesday.

The latest U.S. airline to ground its own planes Wednesday was American Airlines, the world’s largest carrier.

The airline canceled 300 flights to re-inspect wiring in Boeing Co. MD-80s after federal regulators raised questions during a maintenance audit.

Southwest Airlines and United Airlines have also recently been subject to FAA actions.

American Airline’s cancellations represented about 13 percent of its Wednesday flights. American Airlines is checking whether a sleeve covering a bundle of wires was installed according to a FAA directive, spokesman Tim Wagner said.

About 80 flights were canceled at the carrier’s Dallas-Fort Worth hub, and about 68 more at O’Hare International Airport. The rest were scattered across the U.S.

Most passengers had been booked on other flights, according to spokesman Tim Wagner, but some may have been delayed until this morning.

As of Wednesday evening, no further flight delays at O’Hare had been announced for today, Wagner said.

I then re-read the article one more time — this time looking to see if I could determine if, in fact, this story had been written in April — not last week — when American was forced to cancel thousands of flights because of an FAA crackdown.

And sure enough, with that second reading it was clear that the story that while the story had been tagged as current, it was, in fact, six months old.

How does this happen?

I’m not sure how it happened in the case of the United Airlines bankruptcy news story that went public Monday that was 6 years old.

Nor am I sure how it happened that this particular story about “FAA Crackdown causing more delays” was posted with a current date and then picked up by the usual news aggregators — when it was, in fact, 6 months old.

But what I do know is that every once in a while, when I post a new post to Movable Type, which is the blog software program that powers this blog — the software will, for some unexplained reason — arbitrarily pull a post from 2006 and post it, along with the right one — with both dated with the current date.

Actually, It happened yesterday. When it happens I have to go in, unpublish the older post, and then republish it — using my best guess as to its original date.

So while I, along with a lot of other people, wait for more details concerning the alleged “reposting” of the six-year old bankruptcy news story — I’m here to vouch that yes, content management systems can be flaky. It can happen. And it does.

Now whether this was an intentional posting is another matter. And I’m sure we’ll find out if it was or not in the coming weeks as the SEC tracks down who posted what and when — and why.