American Airlines flight attendants called for the ouster of its CEO in a new letter on Tuesday. The airline’s operations have been melting down for days, with significant consequences to flight attendants. But the union’s focus is on the poor financial performance of the airline – and what that means for profit sharing. They complain about “a pattern of failure under the leadership of CEO Robert Isom” and call for “new leadership.”
Delta Air Lines flight attendants are getting a month’s worth of extra pay as profit sharing. American Airlines flight attendants are getting a 0.3% bonus, which is often $150 – or less. And they have the same profit sharing formula as Delta’s non-union flight attendants under their 2024 contract. Delta is profitable, American Airlines is not.
The union complains that American is falling behind. Strikingly, the letter comes out as American’s operation has been melting down with around 10,000 flight cancellations around the winter storm even as other carrier operations have recovered. It’s a crumbling system now worse than what Delta experienced after the CrowdStrike incident in July 2024 and is now approaching Southwest’s 2022 holiday breakdown.
Flight attendants are sleeping on the floor of airports, as American has lost track of its crews, doesn’t know who’s eligible to fly based on rest times, and front line staff haven’t been able to get hold of the airline. They’ve been waiting on hold for 12 hours – only to get disconnected.
“AA may have its southwest moment soon, Computers are starting to give up/show error messages and crew schedulers are now hand building sequences in IOC.”
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) January 28, 2026
Yet the union’s focus here is only on last quarter’s financial results, and not what its members are currently going through.
While Competitors Surge Ahead,
American Falls Further BehindTuesday, January 27, 2026
Today, American Airlines released its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 earnings—and once again, the results disappointed employees, investors and Wall Street. While we are pleased American achieved a small profit, our airline continues to lag its competitors by a significant margin. This is no longer an anomaly, but rather a pattern of failure under the leadership of CEO Robert Isom and the American Airlines Board of Directors.
American’s workforce is not the problem. Leadership is.
Employees have a vested interest in seeing American succeed. Our jobs and our futures depend on it. Yet while employees deliver every day, American remains a distant third behind Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, and at or near the bottom of the industry.
While Competitors Finances Surge Upward,
American Continues to LagThe contrast is undeniable.
These results reflect priorities—and American’s priorities are being exposed by comparison.
Wall Street Journal 2025 Rankings Show American Airlines at the Bottom
In October of 2025, we communicated concerns about American ranking dead last in overall customer satisfaction in the J.D. Power North America Airline Satisfaction Study and hoped that we would see improvements in all areas. Sadly, that is not the case.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal released its 2025 Best and Worst Airline Rankings for 2025, and American Airlines was once again left behind our competitors in almost every measured category, with performance worsening in many categories year-over-year. For Overall Best Airline, American slipped from fifth place in 2023 to last place in 2025. American ranked in the bottom three for on-time arrivals, mishandled baggage, and involuntary denied boardings. American ranked dead last in canceled flights. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)
It is easy to see why employees, investors, and Wall Street are deeply concerned, and it is no surprise why CEO Robert Isom has ended all Labor-management meetings, employee town halls, Crew News sessions, and, perhaps most telling, the question-and-answer session at today’s State of the Airline.
They don’t have answers, and the excuses have run out.
Employees see the reality every day. Long-overdue upgrades to onboard products are welcomed, but they cannot make up for poor strategic decisions or an uncompetitive hard product. While we are happy to see leadership upgrade our premium cabins, our coach cabins, where many of our most loyal customers are seated, are outdated, uncomfortable, and far from competitive.
Lack of investment in the product has left American years behind its competitors, forcing employees to absorb the consequences and apologize for management’s inaction as leadership delivers the same lackluster results, quarter after quarter.
To management we ask: What is American’s plan to compete? Why are we not hearing from the Board of Directors as American continues to fall further behind?
The status quo is indefensible. The bottom of the rankings, quarter after quarter, is unacceptable. Accountability at the top is long overdue.
American’s hardworking employees want nothing more than to see this airline lead the industry, and we are ready to make that happen. But leadership has failed to clearly define our brand, articulate who we want to be as an airline, or provide the staffing, tools, and resources necessary. Quarter after quarter, executives leave employees to carry the weight of their mismanagement while American falls further behind.
For years, CEO Robert Isom and his team have solely focused on Accountability, Reliability, and Profitability, ignoring investment in our product and the overall customer experience. During that time, our competitors focused on all aspects of their airlines, while American now stumbles to pick up the pieces.
The employees at American Airlines, our passengers and the investors can no longer wait for Robert Isom and the American Airlines Board of Directors to deliver on their empty promises.
As the entire industry leaves American Airlines in the dust, it is time for new leadership and a new vision for American Airlines.
American is a financial laggard in the industry, and seniority rules enforced by union contracts lock flight attendants into the employer they select at the start of their careers. They can’t just go work for another airline, because they’d start at the bottom with lower pay and much worse schedules.
The strategic missteps of management have surrendered positions in markets like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – which has meant their cobrand credit card has fallen behind Delta and United in spending (and it’s that credit card that’s the driver of profits).
They retired too many planes and walked away from most international flying of their own, preferring to outsource to joint venture partners. And they chased ultra-low cost carriers just as consumer preferences were pivoting away from that model to something more premium – they even took out business class seats to add coach seats, and took out seat back screens.
At the same time, management abdicated its responsibility to lead, offer a vision to employees and demand accountability. I’m told there are ghostriders on Delta over the next 3 weeks auditing flight attendant service standards, and that cabin crew are expected to deliver predeparture beverages from trays rather than hand carrying them from the galley. American Airlines flight attendants aren’t expected to offer predeparture beverages in first class at all. I’ve had jackets proactively hung in Delta first class, and haven’t had that on American in years.
There’s a role that flight attendants play in the service standards at the airline, but management hasn’t insisted on it. An airline that delivered a premium experience, and delivered a product customer want to pay for – driving the profits that would pay flight attendants more – would mean higher service standards for APFA union members. They should be honest about this, including with themselves.
One minor item about the union’s letter. They conclude the airline has ‘no answers’ because Robert Isom didn’t take questions at the quarterly employee meeting that follows the airline’s earnings call, and that senior executives no longer do regular monthly ‘crew news’ employee sessions, recordings of which used to be leaked to me and I’d report on regularly. These were artifacts of former Executive Vice President Elise Eberwein, under CEO Doug Parker. After Eberwein’s departure the line relayed to me was that ‘Gary gets more value of these than employees do.’
Isom would spend a lot of time preparing and practicing his answers. He’s not off the cuff or unrehearsed. As the airline pivots to a premium strategy, we haven’t had senior executives on the front line explaining a new vision to employees and building momentum for everyone to push in the same direction for a vision bigger than themselves – a vision that would make the airline more profitable, and lead to better pay for employees.
It is very sad to see how poorly AA has recovered from this winter weather event even though AA had more hubs in the path of the storm than other airlines.
AA has already cxld 15% of its mainline flights today with PSA at 20% cxls. They are leaking revenue to other airlines esp. DL which overlaps the most with AA’s southern and eastern US network.
It is also hard to believe that AA has recovered so poorly and performed so badly in operational metrics given that Isom is supposedly an operations person.
The FAs need to be joined by other labor groups in calling for a regime change but it is most notable that AA, with far more assets and potential if it worked than WN and yet Elliott chose WN which is seeing a substantial turnaround.
with UA willing to beat AA senseless at the cost of UA’s own earnings, you have to seriously ask what the endgame is for AA. years more of just flailing above the surface doesn’t seem a viable strategy
Gary, as usual, getting in an anti-union jab on an otherwise unrelated story. Give it a rest, dude. We know your feelings on unions. We don’t need to hear it in everything you write.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the average CEO today is a total moron. They hear AI and think that they can rid themselves of the pesky non revenue creating employees in favor of AI. With AA it means in the event of irregular operations there isn’t sufficient staff to recover the airline.
AA has made strategic blunders that will take years not to mention lots of dollars to fix. Management assumed passengers only cared about a price and maybe the schedule. But even AA struggles with the basics. What good is fancy champagne in business if you miss your connection while waiting 45 minutes for a gate?
@mutiny32 – it’s pro-worker to point out when employees are being poorly served by their current union, and there’s nothing ‘anti-union’ about pointing out deficiencies in an argument made by a union – i certainly do it with the *company* and here i place the blame squarely with management even when it manifests to customers are poor service by employees.
@ Gary — Isom seriously needs to go. I do not understand why it hasn’t happened long ago.
Isn’t the elephant in the room the huge amount of debt that they have that appears to be handicapping them? They’re trying to accelerate paying down more debt – that seems to be the focus for management and the board, no? Pay down more debt and cut costs. Put a “friendly” new face towards customers (Heather), show some pictures of new airplanes (that may not deliver an amazing experience for economy customers anyway as compared to competitors) and try to spin as much as you can.
The problem as this blog coined is that operational reliability is table stakes. If you cut costs / underinvested in IT so much that you can’t recover from storm impacts, folks will look elsewhere. It’s not like the weather in Dallas is going to get better in the next 5-10 years.
@Gene
Absolutely agree with this. I never liked the pick when it was announced by Parker. Has no leadership skills. No longer has meetings with front line workers like Parker did. With regards to the F/A’s, I’m not sure what they expect in this situation. It was a disaster for everyone from employees to the traveling public. Stuff like this happens from time to time.
@Coffee Please. I don’t know, maybe the employees expect that if they get stranded in the course of doing their jobs their employer will take care of them.
There is a lot AA could do in this situation. The simplest solution is to empower the stranded crews to find their own hotel with the promise of reimbursement.
IT “enhancements” at AA and DL have made recovery more difficult. Last major storm in NYC is was DL that tools days to recover while UA had EWR back up quickly.
American Airlines flight attendants, frustrated by repeatedly waking up on cold airport floors after being stranded by cancelled flights and the mysterious disappearance of their overnight hotel accommodations, are eager to say “Buh bye” to their Chief Executive Officer, Robert Isom, and some of his other C-suite executives.
This is usually the time of year where Robert Isom directs someone on his Comms team to create a couple of slides for the Investor Deck that defend his ridiculous pay package (relative to the competition). He somehow made $0.1M more than Ed at Delta; probably included in his non-performance based contract by a clueless compensation committee on AA’s BOD.
He is a crook and he should be fired!!!! These greedy CEO’s only care about themselves and there bounuses. They treat the flight attendants like crap. They are the backbone to the airlines.
Clearly the “strategy” articulated by Doug Parker and all of his acolytes has failed. Isom is “Parker-Light”, without the presence. There appears to be no vision and no plan to execute. More importantly, there’s no leadership. I agree with their so-called “pivot” to premium, but they clearly have no clue how to do it. AA, in my opinion, needs a complete regime change in all areas customer-facing. And it starts at the top. Moreover, the company needs a board with vision and the balls to hold management accountable, who are not afraid to make decisions and take some risks. Want an example? Look at Air France. They put Ben Smith, a Canadian, in charge of a French airline, and turned AF around in less than 2 years. They’re apparently working on KL next. My suggestion: go get this guy, or someone like him.
@Tim Dunn — Eh, I’d say AA is still doing better than DL following Crowdstrike, so why’s Ed still CEO? Share price! Profits! Amex! Got it.
@Parker
There is a lot AA could do in this situation. The simplest solution is to empower the stranded crews to find their own hotel with the promise of reimbursement.
They do but there are those people out there that say “it’s not my job” types. They sit there with arms folded and the rooms disappear. Not very bright.
Here’s the issue there are likely hotel rooms away from the airport but that would require 1. Someone in AA to find a van service for transportation 2. Book hotels in which AA would not be given a crew rate 3. Since the system depends on AI slop which can’t handle this unusual situation it would be down to people 4. AA doesn’t have the people to do so and doesn’t have the system to get these services lined up and paid for. So crews sit in the airport.
“They can’t just go work for another airline, because they’d start at the bottom with lower pay and much worse schedules.”
This perfectly illustrates and validates those who argue FAs are overpaid for the work they do. Their compensation is not based on experience or a particular skill set but rather, union-negoiated pay scales. So yes, almost every one of them could be replaced rather quickly by random individuals off the street.
@George
Crews certainly could take the initiative here. Some do and some just wait and bitch. It’s not my job types. The company does provide and activate an app that one can use for Transport and hotels.
Parker and 1990,
and yet actual data shows that DL outperformed AA and UA in lower rates of cancellations and better on time for 2025 (months of comparison are not entirely the same at this point).
And even if on-time and cancellation rates become similar for UA, AA and UA significantly underperform on baggage handling with AA also underperforming UA significantly on involuntary oversales and DL being the gold standard in that metric
WN is leading in least cancellations among the big 4.
You can pick any statistic and drive to it but no airline including DL is beating everyone else in all operational metrics.
AA is basically USAir, the latter folks are just too woke to run an international business. LUV would have done a better job!
AA has been a laggard at best, a disaster at worst since the America West team took control. And the board must be asleep at the wheel. Sad.
Sadly, I think AA will go through another bankruptcy reorganization within the next 5-10 years. If they have some visionary leaders to take them through that process, they could emerge a vastly better airline. Is Richard Anderson available?
@Gene — Richard is 70; let him enjoy his retirement! Besides, he couldn’t turn Amtrak around.
@Tim Dunn — Here we go again with the cherry-picked ‘data.’
@Mike P — What is it with you and hating workers? Pay them less? In this economy?? Insane.
Never said anything of the kind, you’re offering a strawman. Address the point I made or STFU!
@Mike P — What do you mean by ‘overpaid’ then? You’re not being intellectually honest. I’m not surprised, just calling it out when I see it. $40K/year on-average ain’t enough for most to live in the cities they need to be based out of. It’s a logistical nightmare to shuttle crews around. A lot of this needs to be done better. But, simply punching-down on the FAs isn’t helping anyone.
You rightly raise the issue of the FAs role in the carrier’s decline. I’d say the pilots have the same issue (or, more rightly, SOME of the FAs and SOME of the pilots). There are sometimes exceptionally good experiences, and there are sometimes (too often on American), terrible, “how is this person employed as part of a ‘first-class’ experience?” situations.
My own experience…I would rank the senior FAs on Spirit (there is always one obvious leader on every Spirit flight) head-and-shoulders above the industry average. On a scale of 1-5 (5 being the best), Spirit probably gets a 4.5. They have been great over the 100+ Spirit flights I have taken. Breeze is similar – almost all have been great. Often the JetBlue folks are either right up there, or on par with my experiences with Delta and United. Not everyone, but on the average, I do not get on the plane thinking, “Is this person going to be a jerk?” Average of JB, United, and Delta for me has been a 4. Happy with the service, but not so amazing as to revolutionize the flying experience. I would keep them.
American (I’m a roughly 30-year Ex Plat)…some are 4-5, and too often it’s a 2-3. Too many in the “don’t give a hoot” category. All of this has been a gradual change that far predates this week’s meltdown. I’d say it tracks closely with the broader decline of the carrier. I used to think these people were awesome. That has long since fallen apart. I think it’s the people, not just the airline. In many cases, they simply hired the wrong humans who are not interested in service. I complained one time, and the manager told me to complain in writing because that would be that employee’s THIRD written complaint. At that point, he was empowered to do something. Wow – that’s very protective of the employee, in my opinion. And, it protects bad behaviour.
Some pilots show the same attitude. AA uses the same pier as JetBlue at my home airport…whether I’m on JetBlue or American, it’s very common for AA pilots to walk right in front of their own customers in the security line. I almost never have a pilot say, “Excuse me.” If there were 10 people in line, I would understand their desire to not wait. When there are 3 people? For heaven’s sake, wait for your customer to go first!
Why would I want to spend my money on these people? (Recall: it’s the taxpayers (i.e., me) who paid tens of billions to help these clowns KEEP their jobs during the pandemic). They should THANK every single person who buys a ticket every single flight. Do it over and over. Unfortunately, too many have become an entitled group. Their attitude is, too often, “if you don’t like it, then you are not welcome on the plane.” Maybe American…should cull the staff.
@ 1990 — Amen, especially at AA where the problems are undoubtedly coming from the top.
@Gene — Side note. Had you said in a different comment that you flew SAA recently? Like South African Airways? If so, sounds like a fun trip! Travel travels!
Please explain the calculations of “$40K/year on-average”. The average reported total salaries on Glassdoor for American Airlines Flight Attendants exceed that number by quite a bit.
@1990…You’re so dense that you can’t understand the most basic logic. My comment was simply pointing out that their value/compensation isn’t related to their experience or skill set, but rather due to the strength of their union contract. You’re the one who extrapolated that to your normal, boring rant about workers and how every one of them are underpaid.
AA-Take care of your customers that you put out during this situation. Customers need to come first.
We had multiple delays staying in hotels for three days because of AA performance!
No other airline was having any issues at all. Customer service and the managers had no idea what to say.
Take care of your customers with a credit!
Much as I love to rant about the incompetence of Mgmt at AA, there is more than a little irony in the FA’s, who provide the worst service among the majors, calling for mgmt change.
I fly regularly and I just flew AA last week. It was the first time I flew AA in quite a while and it truly felt like a glorified Spirit Airlines flight. I say that because they gave out a salty bag of pretzels VS nothing at Spirit. Other than that it feels like Spirit Airlines with a Legacy Name. No TV’s/Inflight Entertainment in the Seat backs ,cheap snacks, over played Biscoffs cookies etc… . And yes the Flight Attendants that now get PAID for boarding could rather be bothered with assisting passengers in the isles and adding that extra touch. Flight attendants not wearing the uniform correctly on their cell phones in the Galley during boarding I can go on and on. The Flight Attendant Union should not be surprised about their $150 Profit Sharing. My advice to the union is to do ghost rides like Delta because the only people you can blame is yourselves and your Members(Flight Attendants)
I’ve been choosing Delta over AA because of the seatback entertainment, and Delta hubs are slightly closer to me than AA hubs.
However — with Delta flights already charging a premium, and now adding ANOTHER premium if you want to earn miles — I’m gonna give AA another look. I’m not a fan of flying on airline with whom I have a loyalty account but who refuses to give miles for my tickets…
I worked for US Air before, during and after all the mergers with America West and American. To see it become this is so maddening. I was a flight attendant as well. I was proud to say I worked at US Airways. One of the top 3 back then. Sad to see what it has become but hopefully it will pivot and become great again.
I have said this before and I will say it again. The fact that Isom gets paid what he does for the product that his company provides is a stain on the capitalist system. Any current BOD member or anyone that has been on the board from the America West days should be fired and NEVER be allowed to serve on the BOD of a publicly traded company again..
Unfortunately for me I fly in and out of PHL a lot so unless I am flying to or from a United or Delta Hub I am stuck with American.
@Steve — Preach. Bob got $34.1 million compensation in 2023, basically, thanks to AA (and the others) receiving billions in taxpayer bailout, then using it to do stock buybacks and still force early retirements anyway (which violated the entire intent of that money, keeping people around). Yet, even so, just a few years later, the crony capitalism today makes 2023 look like a joke.
The huge stock buybacks by Parker has crippled American. They could have invested in new more efficient planes instead of he loaded the company up with debt. But let’s blame the unions.
In April 1998 we list the LAST LEADER at our company Loved him or not ppl who had.been around 30+ years can tell, Robert L Crandall was our last great leader, everything on this company has gone south since Donald J Dorky(Carter) took the reins, Gerard Arpey was a solid D- and Tom Horton the biggest fiasco of this airline till Robert Isom got the reins. We were the proudest people of this industry and now is shameful that I belong to this organization started in 1986 and leaving soon. The hiring of our ppl is ohh Lord 80% of them wouldn’t pass a group session but that is what the company wants
The past few years things have just been getting worse at AA, everyone has been blamed and sacrificed, yet things continue to get worse. There’s one common thread, and that’s Isom. He’s long overdue to be removed.
Flight attendants should find their own hotel rather than sleep on the floor. Refuse any trip except the one back to their home base until they get reimbursed. When I was with Pan Am our union booked us on another carrier when we refused to cross picket lines of our mechanics. Another time …during a strike I was at our nice layover in NY
After 4 days the front desk told us we are sorry you have to leave… iwent to my moms house in Staten Island for 3 or. 4 days.. when I was finally ready to go back to Miami…..I callled crew scheduling and they said oh there you are. We lost you. I. Dead headed home with pay.
There is nothing left of legacy American airlines.
Failed us air policy’s run American into the ground. Employees are demoralized by the failure of leadership.
It’s the capitalistic way, for those who do ALL the heavy lifting to make the least amount of money and receive the least benefit