American Airlines COO Claims Tech Worked During Meltdown, Denies Flight Attendants Slept In Airports—His CEO Disagrees

American Airlines Chief Operating Officer David Seymour went on the Airlines Confidential podcast this week to talk up his airline’s response to last week’s major storm. American was hit far harder than other airlines, cancelled far more flights – nearly 10,000 – and took much longer to recover.

Seymour’s message, three times during the interview was that the airline’s “technology worked.” He claimed that they didn’t “lose track of our crew members in our system” and he also claimed that no flight attendants were stuck sleeping in airports – despite what his airline’s CEO says, and what flight attendants themselves say.

Now, in terms of, you know, I’ve seen the media reports about crew members sleeping, but I’ve asked the team on multiple occasions because there’s a mechanism for which they sleep. have to, you know, they can report these issues.

I will tell you that our crew members probably waited for hotel rooms longer than normal under normal irregular ops situation. But over the course of that time, we secured 6,000 additional hotel rooms in our hub locations in advance, knowing that we would have some cancellations that we would have to get them hotel rooms. We went to a manual process and used that 1100 times to get hotel rooms for our crew members.

…So I tell you, I haven’t seen the reports of them sleeping on floors and all that. I will tell you that they waited longer..to get, you know, the hotel rooms to get their new schedule, revised schedule. That’s sheer volume. But the fact that we came up as quick as we did once the storm had passed shows that we have the capability, but our technology worked as it should.

I’m not sure anyone but Seymour would characterize American’s recovery from meltdown as ‘quick’ but I’m genuinely having a hard time reconciling his comments with what employees went through over the course of the storm.

Delta used to go long stretches without cancelling a flight – by simply ‘delaying’ a flight by 18 hours or three days. By the same logic, I suppose, flight attendants aren’t forced to sleep in airports if they eventually get a room 18 hours later?

Flight attendants did report sleeping in airports, because the airline didn’t have rooms for them. Pilots are comfortable coming out of pocket for a room and waiting to get reimbursed. Many flight attendants are not (or aren’t in a position to). And pilots often get priority.

They also reported not being able to get through to scheduling, the airline thinking they were in a different city than the one they were actually in, and being schedled to work flights that they weren’t legal for – pilots and planes with passengers were waiting on flight attendants, and operations didn’t seem to know that the flight attendants had been delayed hours getting into a hotel the night before so hadn’t yet had their legally-required rest.

American’s CEO – Seymour’s boss! – acknowledged flight attendants without a place to sleep in his remarks to employees after last week’s earnings call.

I know throughout the rest of our system, some of our crewmembers didn’t have a place to stay last night.

Here’s how the New York LaGuardia flight attendant base President describes things,

Flight Attendants were left without hotels, stranded for hours, sleeping in unsafe and unacceptable conditions, unable to reach Crew Scheduling, disconnected after hours on hold, and forced to navigate a collapsing operation with little to no support.

…I have served as Base President for five years. During that time, this base has endured approximately eight major irregular operations, each followed by nearly identical assurances that the next one would be different. It never is. At some point, apologies without action stop being apologies. They become deflection.

Management continues to characterize these events as “unforeseen” and “not normal days.” That claim is simply false. Irregular operations are not rare. They are predictable. Winter weather, system strain, hotel shortages, staffing failures, and call center overload are not surprises. They are recurring events that management has repeatedly chosen not to adequately plan for.

Flight attendants were stuck overnight in airports over the summer. In 2021 American flight attendants were stuck sleeping in airports and again in 2022.

This happens during irregular operations – usually bad weather – but the airline is supposed to staff up to ensure rooms are made available to their employees. They promised that their own employees would back up the hotel and limo desk, too, to make sure flight attendants could get help. It’s not the first time this has happened. American has even made promises it wouldn’t happen again but it seems to keep happening with them.

For years, American Airlines focused on the bet that if they got their operation in order everything else would follow and they’d make money. That wasn’t true – the operation is table stakes, and then they have to compete for business. But American never got its operation in order. And that’s not just completing flights on-time. They’ve been the industry laggard in mishandled bags. They’ve been the industry laggard in mishandled wheelchairs. They have involuntarily bumped more passengers than anyone else.

So when Seymour simply says that operational failures are outside of their control and that everything worked, I simply don’t know what airline’s operatoins he thinks he’s been running for the past decade.

I have to wonder about willingness to acknowledge operational failures, and therefore whether meaningful improvements will ever follow repeated apologies.