American Airlines has started grading the performance of flight attendants. And flight attendants are worried that this is the start of holding them accountable for service.
In fact, the flight attendants union is arguing that the new scoring system violates California privacy law, at least for flight attendants who are based at LAX.
American’s New ‘Me@Work’ Scores For Cabin Crew
American is drawing on 12 months of passenger survey results and customer experience scores; attendance, predeparture work and door-closing; delays coded as flight attendant-related; timeliness of required incident reports; Microsoft Teams usage; electronic flight bag compliance; plus credit card approvals as a possible score “accelerator.”
For now, the grades are primarily informational: they let flight attendants and management see performance data but do not meaningfully determine pay, schedules or assignments.
Performance measurement is a good idea! American should be able to identify weak performers, coach or retrain them, remove employees who remain unsuitable, and materially reward excellent flight attendants. High performers currently receive essentially the same compensation and treatment as colleagues whose work they must cover. That’s a mistake.
However, the scoring methodology also has serious flaws:
- Passenger ratings reflect delays, catering, Wi-Fi, cleanliness and other factors outside an individual flight attendant’s control.
- Delay codes can create blame games and may punish cabin crews for problems caused by gates, catering, cleaners, wheelchairs, passengers or maintenance.
- Door close targets can encourage crews to ignore customer problems merely to close on time.
- Measuring how quickly or frequently safety and service reports are filed could discourage employees from reporting incidents at all.
The effort is a reasonable first attempt at accountability, but so far it’s more dashboard than management system. And so it makes sense that no one is yet held to account for the results.
Why The Union Says This Effort Is Against The Law
APFA’s argument is that American may be failing to provide the notice, disclosure, access and correction mechanisms required when collecting personal information from California employees.
The California Consumer Privacy Act provides rights to know what information is collected and how it is used, to correct inaccuracies and in some circumstances to request deletion. And so the union says,
- Workers have a “right to know when employers are monitoring them.”
- Employees require “access to their personal data.”
- Scores rely on “data we cannot independently review, verify, or challenge.”
- APFA demands “Transparency, accuracy, and accountability.”
APFA says American has assembled individual employee records without allowing flight attendants to see the specific information, test its accuracy, correct or delete eligible records, or contest misleading inputs.
Does The Union Have A Point?
The claim the union makes that ’employees are unable to see their data’ seems to require triggering with a request that’s then denied. And claims about being unable to correct inaccurate information requires first that there are objective factual errors.
There’s no broad right to delete employment records, however, nor is there a general California Consumer Privacy Act right to appeal a performance score. Private lawsuits appear generally limited to security breaches so unless they interest regulators I’m not sure how far they’ll get with this.
Employment records are covered by the act, American has provided notice to employees about the information being collected and how it will be used. That’s why it’s been so contentious.
The strongest argument the union has, it seems to me, is that California law prohibits using already-collected information for an additional purpose incompatible with the disclosed original purpose without providing new notice. That means American can’t pivot to using these scores for accountability rather than just information without informing flight attendants first.
Where the union may have a better argument, but which they don’t make here, is that 2026 CCPA regulations require a risk assessment for automated processing that infers or extrapolates an employee’s performance at work based on systematic observation.
- For new covered processing that started after January 1, 2026, the assessment generally has to occur before processing begins.
- For processing that began before this year, companies have until December 31, 2027 for this assessment.
It’s unclear whether American was merely collecting raw operational data before 2026 or was actually processing those records into Me@Work scores last year. The union wouldn’t have had a right to see the assessment, but there’s a potential angle of attack here.
Under California law, the airline has to provide a meaningful privacy notice, cannot secretly repurpose data for an undisclosed use, has to disclose covered employee data upon a proper request and must correct demonstrably inaccurate records. It’s not clear that American has run afoul of any of this though, and employees don’t have an unconditional right to delete the records or appeal scores.
But Federal Law May Preempt Much Of This Anyway
Flight attendant performance and employment data is explicitly covered by the union’s contract, and so evaluating American’s conduct likely requires interpreting that contract, which would mean many claims would get preempted by the Railway Labor Act. Much of the union’s complaint tracks rights laid out in the collective bargaining agreement almost word for word.
Under Hawaiian Airlines v. Norris and the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Alaska Airlines v. Schurke, a state law claim is preempted by mandatory arbitration under the Railway Labor Act when the claimed right is created by the collective bargaining agreement or it’s independently created by state law but resolving the claim requires an interpretation of disputed contract language.
Section 37.O of the American–APFA agreement provides that:
- Documents regarding flight-attendant job performance must generally be kept in a single department file.
- Potentially disciplinary derogatory documents must be provided to the flight attendant.
- Passenger complaints may be included only where the conduct was within the flight attendant’s control and the employee is identified.
- Flight attendants may submit written responses and challenge derogatory documents.
- Employees and authorized APFA representatives may inspect and duplicate the department file, expressly including “electronic records used to track job performance or attendance.”
A decisionmaker would potentially have to determine whether a Me@Work score is a “document regarding job performance,” whether the underlying data belongs in the “single department file,” whether the score and its inputs are “electronic records used to track job performance or attendance,” whether passenger survey data are “passenger complaints,” what constitutes a sufficient contractual opportunity to “challenge” a document, and whether the contractual removal and retention rules cover raw data, calculated scores or only derogatory letters and notations.
A claim that American is violating flight attendant rights by withholding the score inputs, denying challenges or maintaining the information outside the designated personnel file looks like a classic Railway Labor Act minor dispute. APFA can’t turn contractual disputes into California privacy law violations.
However, pure privacy act claims can surive that American failed to provide an adequate Notice at Collection, disclosed one purpose for collecting the information and processed it for a materially incompatible purpose, that their collection or use was not reasonably necessary and proportionate, or that a flight attendant submitted a formal request for specific personal information or to correct information and American failed to respond.
American has a strong Railway Labor Act defense to what the union is actually complaining about – that flight attendants cannot inspect, verify, correct or challenge Me@Work performance records – but that doesn’t mean they’re free of all California legal risk.
Because “rank and yank” worked so well in other industries.
If American wants to grade flight attendants perhaps they should spend a buck and have actual supervisors checking on service and monitoring cabins now and then.
This is a difficult area. Pay based on passenger or customer reviews are often unfair. Just look at restaurant reviews. However, the difference between Singapore Airlines and EVA Air versus American Airlines is often because of the soft product, i.e. flight attendants.
Flight attendant pay should be based on hours worked, not seniority. After one has 3 years of experience, the flight attendant pay should be the same. Medicare doesn’t pay a 55 year old doctor more than a 35 year old doctor. Maybe seniority should come into play only for the scheduling.
Ignore CA law. Can’t let a socialist state stop business practices. SCOTUS would likely rule for AA so just ignore them
Yes I very much would like to see AA (and really for any airline) reward those that go the extra mile, particularly when working up front. The danger I see is flight attendants can be blamed for factors not in their control. Flight attendants do not have control over delays, catering issues or get you rebooked when your connection is going to be missed.
However, flight attendants have ways to mitigate some of the issues. Doing a water service if the plane is stuck at the gate rather than sit on their duff. If catering missed the nuts at least offer pretzels with drinks upfront. Helping passengers understand hub airport layout.
Monetize flight attendants for going the full mile.
Great minds duking it out! I love a great debate. Keep it up.
Everyone wants ‘great’ service. However, American is attempting to use a flawed, automated scoring system to shift failures by management onto front-line workers.
@Maryland gets it. Good management requires actual human oversight, coaching, and support, not algorithmic surveillance. Staff properly, fix operational meltdowns, pay FAs for all ground time, etc. Hire the cleaning crews that ensure planes are refreshed, each cycle, so Gary never has to use his “Clean. Your. Planes.” ever again.
@Retired Gambler is a joke, like usual. Just because the mere words ‘California’ or ‘worker’ are used does not mean that your worst caricature of ‘socialism’ or ‘Communism’ is afoot. Workers and consumers alike should have at least a right to request and review the data these massive unaccountable for-profit corporations collect on them, and at a minimum be able to orderly appeal for corrections to factual errors. If their system can’t handle basic transparency or audits, it shouldn’t be used to control peoples’ lives and livelihoods.
APFA is right to push back on this overreach. Faulty and oppressive surveillance doesn’t lead to Qatar/JAL/Singapore-level First Class service in the USA; it leads to burnout, turnover, and frustrated passengers.
No system, no structure will ever be enough to avoid these same criticisms. The actual goal is no evaluation not fair evaluation.
@Thing 1 — Nice anti-worker trope dressed-up as ‘nihilism’ you got there. Every CBA includes clear, negotiated plans for discipline, safety, compliance, expectations, etc. The issue here is that AA’s evaluation system is weaponizing others’ failures against FAs. Instead, a better system would judge crews on service aspects they actually control, not on whether a broken seat was repaired timely, or WiFi was reliable throughout the whole flight, or the caterers missed specific preordered meals, etc.
Some of the comments on this are so expected I didn’t even need to read them to know what they were going to say (spoiler alert: I was not wrong).
The union’s attempt to have the state squash providing FAs with scored performance evaluations will fail…and it should. Businesses have a right to evaluate their employees so long as it is fair and unbiased. As for the suggestions of rewarding FAs for doing their job…yes, let’s continue to bonus people for simply showing up and slinging a bottle of water and some pretzels during a delay. Yes, it’s service recovery and yes, it’s nice, but does it deserve a reward? No.
I’m done with participation trophies and trying to keep delicate snowflakes from melting.
So many people. So little pride in their work or themselves.
@Parker — That was a whole lotta words (and emotions) to ignore the actual issues here, and basically say you simply don’t ‘like’ flight attendants. Also, by adding ‘snowflakes’ and ‘participation trophies’ were you just signaling to the right-wingers that you’re gonna start ‘siding’ with them against workers on here? Why not add ‘woke’ and ‘DEI’ if you’re copying their tired old meaningless playbook. Sheesh.
If FA’s should not be evaluated for service then we should not evaluate any employee at AA including Isom – hard to have it both ways. Recent flight went like this / due to length of flight we will not be able to bring carts out for service. Flight time was 55 minutes and regularly had service – flight was about 1/3,full. fA’s where not wanting to work
That is not managements fault
@PITFlyer — No one is saying FAs shouldn’t be evaluated; the evaluations just need to be accurate, transparent, and based on factors actually within the crew’s control.
Separate issue, but, since you brought it up, on those shorter regional flights, I’m with you, it is disappointing if crews (usually 2 pilots, 2 FAs on a CRJ/ERJ) pre-emptively decide they can blame turbulence (when there isn’t any) to avoid their duties.
I actually think a better solution would be to have at least mini-bottles of water and snacks pre-distributed during turnovers, or during boarding (like, optional, pick up one, each, from a cart on jet-bridge). @Peter has shared that idea before, and I think it’d go a long way for crew and passenger satisfaction. (Of course, watch as someone now whines about plastic, recycling, etc.)
I only speak from personal experience, AA FA’s for the most part have been the worst of every major carrier I fly. I avoid AA as much as humanly possible and they are my last choice for domestic flights. Rude, inattentive, confrontational, and generally nasty attitudes has been my experience.
As I sit on a AA flight as we speak, I am reminded that termination ought to be a grading option for a fair number of flight attendants. Will wait now for the obligatory oh-so-cringe 1990 to comment how AA flight attendants are the hardest workers and greatest human beings to walk on planet earth! All of them, without exception. A+ always, every day, every flight. Today, tomorrow and forever. Right, 1990??
A great deal of ignorance on here, as usual. The large majority of Boston flight attendants care very much about their customers despite the corporate insults, demoralizing attitude and CEO grifting. When weather delays are blamed on the flight crew despite accurate information from the flight deck, something is seriously wrong with the system. AA would prefer to take the word of a single foul passenger than go the extra mile to find out what the rest of the passengers have to say about a flight or crew experience. There are a few foul individuals on virtually every flight while most passengers are lovely. I was actually called a nigger by a foul-mannered young black man as he exited a plane recently in Boston (I happen to be white, which is rather irrelevant). I have no idea what his problem was, even he may not know. 95 percent of the passengers on that flight were wonderful. AA would listen only to a letter written by the one who said nigger (if indeed he could coherently put a sentence together). And they want to grade people on that basis. That tells you all you need to know.