Tag Archives for american airlines.
If passengers are getting delayed, cancelled, and diverted – and if their bags are lost, or they’re turned away from flying completely despite having a ticket – Department of Transportation data shows that it’s probably happening on American Airlines. And American expects 72 million passengers this summer.
The smart thing would have been to take the money since nothing was required in exchange – it was literally just allowing the airline to increase paychecks without a new contract or accepting any company terms whatsoever. You don’t leave free money on the table especially when you… need the money. This would have set a new baseline to negotiate upwards from.
Seven years ago the NAACP issued a ‘travel advisory’ against American Airlines, lifted in July 2018. The civil rights organization says a “troubling pattern of a failure to address harmful behaviors” at the airline has it considering reinstating the warning.
American Airlines is offering a 17% raise and increased profit sharing to its flight attendants immediately, without waiting for a new contract. The union just has to allow them to pay cabin crew more, and doesn’t have to give anything up in return. That’s the message that airline CEO Robert Isom sent in the form of a video directly to flight attendants today.
The union has opened what they’re calling a “Strike Command Center.” To prepare for a strike, the union is telling flight attendants… you’re on your own and expect not to be able to pay credit card bills.
You get this card for the bonus and that’s worth it, you get an Admirals Club membership, and you get loyalty point bonuses if you earn enough loyalty points in the AAdvantage program (you do not have to spend on this card to earn these). It’s probably worth charging an Avis rental to the card. And then you may keep it if you want to retain Admirals Club and the loyalty point bonuses.
American Airlines and flight attendants go back to mediation in Washington, D.C. next week for what the union characterizes as a “last ditch” effort to avoid a strike. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants is telling crewmembers to “prepare for” a strike, and there’s certainly a looming threat and with negotiations dragging on that threat becomes more real. But for now it appears mostly posturing, and a deal seems likely.
American Airlines had several terrible days operationally last week as they battled storms around Dallas and ran low on reserve crew.
On Sunday night an American Airlines passenger, stuck on the ground on a plane in Dallas for three hours, reports being forced “to dial 911 for someone to help us get off [the] plane.”
According to American Airlines, appealing the JetBlue partnership anti-trust verdict, “We do want to go forward with similar arrangements, obviously JetBlue is not here and cannot speak, we do.”
Pressed further about whether they really are considering this, the lawyer responds “We would seriously consider that, yes, and the injunction prevents us from doing that.”
American Airlines is still appealing the government’s win in its anti-trust suit against the Northeast Alliance between it and JetBlue – even though JetBlue abandoned the effort and moved on.
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 »
