This month, British Airways banned flight crews from drinking coffee or soda in front of customers – and even water – but they were quickly forced to roll it back amidst employee backlash. American Airlines, though, appears to have looked at the BA policy and said hold my Danasi.
Multiple American flight attendants are reporting in crew forums that they’re being threatened with writeups for drinking watter in the galley while passengers are boarding. This is referred to as a “new policy” by managers, and that flight attendants “cannot drink during boarding.”
This applies to both drinks from aircraft catering and to personal drinks in a personal cup, to Starbucks, or anything else. So far I’ve only seen reports of threats of a writeup, rather than actual cabin crew punishment. For instance, here’s a report that was later confirmed to have come out of New York LaGuardia.
I cannot drink water, if I want to drink the water I have to turn my back don’t let the passenger see it… She said if I drink water I cannot greet passenger. But I cannot say Good Morning to 100 pax, doing PA without feeling thirsty. She said she she not gonna write me up about drinking water today but just wanna give me the heads up that she attend to the meeting they mention about FAs cannot drink during boarding…
This isn’t something that is in the flight attendant contract, or appearance standards, and the reports I’ve seen seem to be coming out of New York LaGuardia.
There is a manager at LGA who has confronted me about drinking in the galley while boarding.
British Airways was forced to quickly backtrack on its appearance standards banning eating and drinking in view of customers, and even using hotel-branded pens, but even they allowed cabin crew to drink water if done ‘discretely’ so in some sense their policy wasn’t as extreme as this one. However, BA’s applied throughout the journey and this American Airlines enforcement appears centered around passenger boarding – and may just be a local rule that some managers in New York are trying to impose (or one that hasn’t fully rolled out across the company yet).
Okay then. They will just go back to playing Candy Crush and watching Instagram, Tik Tok, etc.
Hey Gary,
Dasani just called and they want their $100.00 “mention fee” returned.
Cheers
Hmmm an employer denying basic human physiological needs..that needs to be investigated.
hazardous to the health of employees and a definite HOSTILE work environment. treating labor like 3rd class citizens, they can only have a drink after everyone else is served?
bad image for the airline.
@ coffee, you probably haven’t figured out that they are using their Company provided tablets for work related purposes. but assuming they are not working. typical of self entitled people to think like that
THis is inhumane and petty. I would not want to patronize an airline that operates this way. FA’s are human beings as is the rest of the crew. It’s not that someone might get thirsty, but also that one’s mouth and throat may be dry from much speaking, or that one is dehydrated, or has run through a terminal to get to a gate. Airlines can find much more to concern themselves about if a professional image is what concerns them. These are people you train and entrust to look after the well-being of thousands of passengers and you can’t grant them a basic human need to have a drink of water? I am a teeny shareholder at AAL and small or not they will be hearing from me on this!
Why are American companies obsessed with treating workers like crap? This and making cashiers stand or making it difficult for call center employees to go to the bathroom etc. What is not good customer service if people aren’t suffering?
Set aside the ridiculous comment by Robin R, it’s just plain rude for a public contact employees to “eat/drink” in front of the customers. They should have adequate breaks to take care of these needs. But, as is par for the clu.es executives trying to run the airline now, AA has dug their own rathole on this one since more often than not the ticket and gate agents are allowed to sip and much at will at their positions.
I have no issue with them drinking water during boarding. I have an issue while they’re drinking water, I’m in business/first and be offering no beverage. They can do both.
Wait, wasn’t this post about British Airways the other day? …oneworld
And I suppose that if they “pre-hydrated” before their shift using the lav during pre-boarding is also forbidden??
@Doug
You would be surprised how I know what goes on during boarding and deplaning.
Another case of disconnected idiot managers making stupid decisions.
Thin the management ranks of useless meeting attending powerpoint presenting resource draining idiots.
Wow, why does AA’s Management keep shooting themselves in the foot over and over again ? For sure I can understand that ideally the FA’s will be focused on boarding passengers, but turning this into a cause for disciplinary action is the worst possible thing they could do. Instead of a collaborative adult conversation with the FA’s (seeking some middle ground on this), they have given the FA’s yet another reason to despise them. Clearly, AA’s Management has no concept of the direct linkage between how they treat the FA’s and how the FA’s in turn take care of their customers. This is all going to end very badly.
@Coffee Please — Are you a member of a flight crew who hates other members of the flight crew?! That’s a whole lotta hateraide, thirst-quencher…
Optics are everything in business. Regardless of what people ARE doing it’s that your customers THINK you are doing that matters. Premium brands like Ritz-Carlton, Disney and Qatar Airways get this.
No one is saying DON’T drink. They are saying don’t do it where the passengers can see you. Take it off-stage. When you do things like this on-stage you risk giving the impression that your needs are more important than those of your customers.
And, for all of you saying how inhumane this is, come to Florida. Our legislature repealed laws requiring employees who work outside be given access to shade and drinking water. Seems more inhumane than asking a flight attendant to wait a few minutes before they have a drink.
@Parker — Ah, yes… the ‘free’ state of Florida… (glad to have gotten out.)
By the way, uh, super quiet hurricane season thus far… like, what’s going on?! (I mean, so far so good, but, like, woah.)
Go all the way then
No water, no rest rooms, no oxygen no heating no a/c
@ American we are going for great lol
@David PDX — Pee on the company time! (What happened to occasional commenter @Yoni PDX?) Actually routing through Portland soon; been a while. Hope the door plugs stay on.
In other news All AA employees will receive a chip from Elon Musk in their brain so AA can turn them all into robots for 24/7 monitoring and corp policy enforcement
Now that they’re “getting paid” (they really always were) they can pay attention and do what their employer asks of them for the 25 minutes while they’re boarding. Don’t worry, they’ll still screw around and be worthless the remaining 2 hours of the flight.
Just as with the BA issue, there is a lack of professionalism and decorum among alot of western airline employees compared to Asian and Middle East carriers; people on this forum and others say it all the time.
Problem is these moves are countercultural and so airlines are trying to implement random policies that backfire because the cultural norms that support them aren’t discussed.
Parker is right that western employees need to be willing to accept that they are “on stage” for their customers more than they do. There is and should be a difference between how you interact w/ people in your neighborhood and how you interact w/ customers.
I commend AA (and BA) for trying but they have got to get to the deeper underlying issues in order to move the needle.
Yeah, grabbing a sip of water while I’m walking by to my seat would in no way bother me.
I wonder if the idea is to avoid situations where passengers will see FAs drinking and ask for water themselves — resulting in either a slow down with boarding, or FAs alienating passengers by saying “No”.
@Tim Dunn It is a very different experience with non-US carriers, isn’t it. After flying QR regularly for a couple of years I became both completely spoiled and acutely aware of how much service has degraded in the US. As @1990 so elegantly pointed out, living in a place like Florida, it’s even worse.
I will say, domestically, DL really is tops in how they approach service. Some people will argue it’s because DL’s FA’s aren’t unionized. I would assert it’s because DL actually focuses on service excellence as a differentiator and regularly trains their staff and provides feedback. It 100% makes up for any short-comings DL may or may not have in their hard product (I’m looking at you, 763s).
It’s about presence and professionalism. Murikans wouldn’t understand. Maybe they can lick an ice cream cone or eat a hot dog too while they are boarding. That would look great.
Fine day for mill-idiots to start conforming to company standards. If they don’t like it, they can get another job.