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NATCHEZ — American Queen Voyages suspended its cruises on the lower Mississippi River for the month of February.

American Queen Voyages routinely stop in Natchez during cruises up and down the Mississippi River.

However, Angela Composto, vice president in charge of marketing, said Monday morning the February cruises were suspended primarily due to maintenance that needs to be performed that had been delayed.

“The river cruises have a wonderful, built-in maintenance period at the end of the year. This year, some of our maintenance has been delayed, and because of that, our boats were not ready for the cruises beginning in February,” she said.

Recently, some of the travel agencies that book cruises have suspended sales of American Queen Voyages cruises over service issues, according to a story online at Travel Weekly.

Among those are Signature Travel Network, Pleasant Holidays and AAA Travel, the website reports. Virtuoso also removed American Queen Voyages from its preferred supplier list.

An American Queen spokesperson issued an apology, according to the website’s story.

“We acknowledge and apologize for the issues. American Queen Voyages deeply values all of our travel agent partners and are taking all matters very seriously. We are working to address the situation as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.

Composto said the issues were financial in nature, but are being resolved.

“The accounting team has gotten a bit behind. I couldn’t say specifically what the issues are, but they are trying to figure those are and fix them as quickly as possible,” she said.

Composto said she expects American Queen cruises to return to Natchez and the lower Mississippi River in March.