Tag Archives for american airlines.
United and Delta are both allowing flight attendants to wear masks. Now American has reversed its policy. Flight attendants now have the option of wearing masks, and will not be disciplined for doing so.
American Airlines won’t allow flight attendants to wear masks. They also still give ‘points’ which count towards discipline and termination for a flight attendant who calls out sick unless they’ve actually tested positive for coronavirus.
Flight attendants with mild symptoms who haven’t flown internationally still report being ineligible for testing. And calling out sick when you aren’t is a firing offense.
A voicemail is making the rounds from this past Tuesday when a flight service manager called out a flight attendant for wearing a mask on a trip, and suggested they just ‘use sick time’.
The usually very reliable JonNYC, who has a lot of inside sources at major airlines but especially at American Airlines, relays a rumor that American may announce a complete shutdown for a period of 2-3 weeks.
American Airlines can’t really front-run their bailout requests with layoffs now. And since it’s in American’s interest not to shut down completely pending a government bailout, I’ve assumed the rumors are false.
Gerard Arpey led American Airlines for 9 years up until the carrier’s bankruptcy. However he lost the trust of employees half way through his tenure. That’s odd, in a way, because by insisting on pulling every lever possible to forestall bankruptcy the airline underperformed the industry financially for years, while delaying changes to employee contracts that would eventually come through Chapter 11.
The biggest area of controversy with employees was Arpey’s (and management) pay. Another piece of irony is that his pay was mostly in stock, the bulk of which he held to the end losing much of its value when the airline finally did enter bankruptcy.
Thursday morning I laid out the realistic pessimistic view that we aren’t going to see ‘normal’ again for quite some time, and that what we even think of as normal may shift.
One indication of this is that American Airlines has extended change fee waivers for passengers traveling through May 31.
Minutiae may seem trivial at this time but thinking back on them, I realize how much I’ve appreciated the effort. Mostly though I’ve appreciated the people. The ladies in the Austin club (they’ev all been ladies) have been amazing, taking care of me during the worst of American’s operational challenges.
I haven’t been in during recent days to offer support, and I feel badly about that too. After 9/11 I brought treats to my local United Airlines City Ticket Office to support the employees that I’d gotten to know and had been so helpful to me over the years.
With Americans being told not to travel abroad, and non-residents who have been in Europe over the past 14 days not permitted to travel to the U.S., American Airlines has reduced its transatlantic and transpacific flying to three routes total.
However supply chains matter as much – probably more – than ever before, as anyone who has tried to get toilet paper in the last week can probably attest.
In London just in advance of travel restrictions going into effect, American Airlines President Robert Isom traveled across the Pond to speak to employees there. American employees nearly 1000 people in the U.K.
He spoke at the British Airways headquarters at Waterside, and said that while they aren’t going to spend “even a dollar” that they do not have to, they owe it to customers not to degrade the inflight experience and that the company is “prepared to weather any type of storms that come up and says there’s “enough cash on hand to weather downturns in the business.” And that was before they picked up another billion dollars just today. Still they want to ensure that if the government is handing out money, they’re well-positioned to get some.
American Airlines interlines a lot of passengers from Philippine Airlines at Los Angeles. They’re picking up a lot of passengers each day from Manila and sending many of them onward to Manila. Now American and Philippine Airlines have filed for permission to codeshare.
American Airlines still expires miles in your account if you don’t have activity for 18 months. They have not paused this even though travel has slowed down for so many. There are simple ways to make sure your miles don’t expire.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
