Large organizations have a tendency become bloated and sclerotic. It’s striking that American Airlines cut 30% of its management workforce, $500 million per year in payroll, and has returned to operating most of its flights.
That naturally raises an interesting question, what were they carrying all that staff for in the first place? Shouldn’t they have eliminated these same positions years ago?
Except that never would have worked. No one would have believed it was possible to run an airline that way. It would have looked irresponsible, and staff would have mutinied. It took a crisis to change that dynamic.
- Everyone was pitching in to save the airline during a pandemic
- With so much bloodletting those who still had jobs were grateful
- The operation was much scaled down when it happened
American has been touting this structural savings to investors, but it was done in a fit of chaos. Many of the really talented people at the airline left. Who was staying and going kept shifting over the course of hours and days. When you cut 30%, all at once and quickly, you’re not doing a careful review of who you want for the future of the business.
So when the airline finds itself in the midst of operational meltdowns, and moving from one crisis to another, it shouldn’t be surprising. There should have been someone proactively looking ahead for each crisis but there’s not. Someone should be in charge of modeling pilot training and return to service in a way that interfaces with network planning and scheduling. Managers should be in place who will see problems before they impact customers (with management who will listen). Someone needs to be on the phone with vendors and know their staffing and bottlenecks before catering trucks start not showing up at planes.
This past week a flight attendant asked American Airlines CEO Doug Parker about persistent operational issues. Parker said he thinks things are getting better because the rate of growth of the airline is slowing (there’s fewer flights to restore to get back to pre-pandemic levels) and,
As these situations have popped up, and they really have been differing issues, and the issue you described not having enough employees on the ramp is now addressed. We don’t have that issue anymore.
Where if I’d been here a month ago or two months ago the big issue was catering because we didn’t have enough drivers for catering trucks. That again it’s still tight, I’m not at least hearing complaints unless someone here wants to tell me I’m totally oblivious… those types of issues, as they come up, it’s a number of issues. I want to be very careful not to sound like excuses. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve been having conversations on things I’ve never had conversations on before like the crew limo things, the wheelchairs. But they’re isolated issues that we are able to address. And we go like crazy and address them.
I am comforted by both that we have addressed the ones that are there at least to the point that we believe in the coming weeks you’ll see all the things that I mentioned are not issues.
American Airlines is playing whack-a-mole with all of the things they hadn’t considered, and that haven’t been problems in the past when they had people in charge of making sure they weren’t issues. It’s one thing to cut 30% from management. It’s much harder, it seems, to cut the right 30%.
This from management who couldn’t integrate America West and US Airways workforces prior to AA takeover. Although Parker et al have been around forever, it’s only because they take actions that the financial services/investor board understands, not through stellar operational planning/execution or leadership, God knows.
Iit is quite clear.
Parker doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.
And, he doesn’t give a s!!t about employees, and worse, customers.
In personal life (outside of DUIs), Parker comes across as a decent human being but he’s stunningly inept at running a massive airline.
They’re always too ‘busy doing important stuff’ to actually fix the airline structurally. ‘Build Back Better’ just meant ‘cheaper’. ‘So cheap’, as Gordon Bethune said about pizza, ‘no one will eat it.’ That’s American, today.
@ All — Don’t be fooled. Parker knows what he is doing. Just look at the total compensation he has pocketed over the last 20 years.
@Gene – Just because he’s gotten gobs of money doesn’t mean that he hasn’t risen far above his level of competence. If anything, that proves how incompetent the board of directors is.
So what’s new? Playing problem whack a mole seems to be par for the course with AA regardless of the number of management employees.
I was part of the 30%. I agree they needed to cut the right 30%. AA did not retain the best 70%. Family members related to management or if you’re married or dating managers saved your job. Your performance didn’t matter. Pathetic company
It’s been a good number of years since I have moved as much of my travel away from AA as practically made sense for me. If it weren’t for the AA loyalty program/award travel, even that little business of mine would have seen even more of it migrated over to Delta and United.
It seems like AA hasn’t known what it wants to be for quite some time and it’s just shuffling from the same or a diminished deck of cards while expecting the game to change for the better for no good reason.
Waiting for the inevitable “Gary you always attack AA” comments…AA seems hard to defend these days, they are clearly 2nd tier now below DL/UA in the Big 3.
I would be more concerned if this blog ignored the questionable aspects of AA. AA deserves the focused criticism it gets.
Would the blog ease off on AA criticism if AA threw a Concierge Key status bone its way? I would hope not.
Parker is doing a great Job . It’s the board of directors that suck at their job. I would fire all of them. Every decision is based on votes and clearly they are clueless when it comes to airline decisions
Parker should look across the state see how a airline is run in southwest. Instead of pocketing millions in stock, southwest invests in there people and it shows in productivity and their proud of the company they work for!
Gary Leff it appears you are very concerned about the deterioration of service at American Airlines since the majority of your articles and reviews reflect that. Perhaps you should make sure the board, VIPs and Doug Parker receive your posts as well as your recommendations on effectively solving the problems. Maybe you will be offered a position and you can bring AA back to the airline it use to be!
AA has been playing “whack a mole” for 10 years. It isn’t anything new. Before Covid, AA was really top heavy. Way too many managers. It probably still is top heavy , just now with way more incompetent managers. AA has been on a downward trend that will lead to another bankruptcy. More clickbait!
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All I can say is that even though I much prefer to fly AA, I recently had to fly United and Delta. There was absolutely nothing on either of those six flights that would make me switch from AA. I don’t know what happened to make you constantly criticize AA, but after hundreds of AA flights, I continue to think it is the best airline of the three.