American Airlines (AA) is not waiting to find out whether an agreement will be forthcoming from their current round of negotiations with their flight attendants (FAs). They are training replacement flight attendants and recruiting more.
Terry Maxon is keeping close track of the action in Dallas on the Morning News’ Airline Biz blog. His reporting seems to indicate that AA executives are getting ready for the worst. They have put out a call to airline management for volunteers to take FA training and man the planes in case of a strike.
To assist with necessary flying, the company is seeking volunteer American Airlines management employees who are willing to complete flight attendant training to temporarily staff flight operations. Though we hope and expect that we will not have to implement our contingency operation, this sort of planning is the responsible and unfortunately necessary thing to do to protect our customers and the company.
Other blog posts provide some of the internal communications that AA has sent to their management personnel. This plea is followed by a long list of
In anticipation of any potential job action which may be taken by the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) (i.e., if flight attendants were to obtain a lawful right to strike at some point in the future), we have created a contingency plan for staffing flights if a job action should occur. To assist with necessary flying, we are looking for management volunteers in the DFW area who are willing to go through flight attendant training to temporarily staff flight operations during any future flight attendant job action.
Evidently, negotiations are not going so well. Ninety percent of the Flight Attendants have already voted to strike and their negotiating team has refused binding arbitration. Meanwhile, AA is sounding their plaintive notes and appearing to be more than willing to negotiate after years of delay.
Their missive to managers notes:
… it is important to keep in mind that no job action is imminent. In fact, in order for the APFA to lawfully conduct a future job action, two things would first have to happen. First, the NMB would need to release the parties into a 30-day cooling-off (status quo) period; and second, that 30-day period would have to be completed and run out — and the “self-help” period would need to begin — without the parties first having reached agreement on a new contract. Only at that point could there be a lawful job action. But just in case that might happen in the future, we’re starting to prepare for it now.
With their buddies at British Airways in the midst of a massive series of strikes, the AA flight attendants are playing hardball just like their compatriots on the other side of the Atlantic.
Let’s hope we are not faced with similar disruptions.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
