What a difference a few months makes. At the beginning of the year, American Airlines CEO Robert Isom was under tremendous pressure. The airline had just completed a year where they basically broke even, as Delta and United were earning record profits.
The carrier had melted down operationally in a winter storm, stranding pilots and flight attendants in airports. And he was facing no confidence votes by the airline’s unions. Former American President-turned-United CEO Scott Kirby was even talking with President Trump about having United take over American.
Water cooler talk around American’s headquarters spent entire days distracted by the parlor game of who was going to replace Isom. And while the head of the American Airlines pilots union seemingly tried to keep this narrative going two months ago by saying he was having regular conversations with other airlines about taking over the Dallas-based carrier, the truth is that much of the chatter has seemed to die down.
And now, when the pilots union expresses outrage, it’s over far more mundane things than the existential direction of the airline under Isom’s leadership. Airline watchdog JonNYC passes along the latest missive from the union to its members, following American’s announcement that it would bring back Chicago O’Hare – Tokyo Narita service.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 2, 2026
On its face that’s a win for American Airlines pilots! And yet,
- American dropped Philaldelphia – Doha flying and for Philadelphia-based pilots that stings.
- American may announce a new widebody aircraft order in the coming weeks. For pilots, new widebodies are like Christmas, and it means more exciting flying! But it might also mean “replacing the aginst 777-200 fleet” and providing only “modest international growth” (glass half empty!).
- They don’t like the replacement for the company pilot forum (“more cumbersome to locate, less functional, and more difficult to naviate”).
- They’re mad at removing their access to a tool that let them see which passengers would miss connections (but also what flights they’re likely to get on as a nonrev as a result)
- Their layover hotels could be nicer!
- And American doesn’t want to reimburse Uber Black ground transportation, forcing them to “accept substandard or potentially unsafe transportation” as a result.
American is getting better in so many ways but to the pilots union, the airline “will not reach its full potential” unless they’re given more.
What this is really about is acknowledged at the end – they’re about to start “Section 6 early openers later this year” – begin negotiating their next contract. The American Airlines pilot contract becomes amendable on August 1, 2027.
And that’s against a backdrop where a large faction of union members are looking to merge their independent union with the Air Line Pilots Association. A year and a half ago, a union President who opposed merging with ALPA was recalled.
Water cooler talk around American’s headquarters spend entire days distracted by the parlor game of who was going to replace Isom
Interesting syntax
Most of it is the basic bitching about the job. Nothing different than what people do at Watercoolers. Most of AA’s problems are systemic and come from years of bad decision making. They will take years to fix, not months.
Time to go to single-pilot ops backed up by remote and a giant parachute on the plane.
Bring back Philly to Doha. I dont believe they lost money on one flight a day, back and forth. The Aircraft always seemed like full. A money maker to the stockholders.
Let’s face it if the pilots are complaining about uber black maybe they should ask the business people they are flying that can’t use uber black
It’s so sad how the pilots are not focused on the customer they claim it’s safety – look a bus overturned with RJ crew it was a nice bus – expensive cars crash all the time – just because you can rent or buy an expensive car doesn’t mean you are a better driver.
Maybe provide revenue seats so the airline can be more profitable. Several European airlines fly with just two crew to US where AA pilots want 4.
AA pilots can bump first class passengers and they are still not happy.
The Uber black issue has more behind it than you know. Uber black drivers need to have chauffer licenses, which have more stringent requirements than a regular drivers license. An American crew was recently invilved in a serious wreck on the way to JFK from Manhattan. There were fatalities, though the crew fortunately survived with some of them injured. This is a real issue to airline crewmwmbers, who all have stories about scary rides to the airport.
@CHRIS — Thank you for your attention to this matter…
The sad history of some consolidations will be that HP took over US to become the new US and the remains cohort took over AA to become the new AA.