Tag Archives for american airlines.
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.
Standing by for a flight on American Airlines has become an absolute mess. There are new rules that very few customers know about, and failing to follow these secret changes is costing customers hours of their time.
There’s no more running to the gate to catch an earlier flight. American now turns away nearly all customers who try to do this, even when there’s plenty of seats available.
After comments by American Airlines CEO Robert Isom at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference this week, where he explained changes that he planned to make after the ouster of Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja, many customers and readers of this blog have speculated that the airline would right the ship. After all, Raja was famous for his belief that network is the product.
Would the high cost airline, which desperately needs to convince customers to pay more in order to earn a profit, finally focus on delivering a higher quality product?
American Airlines and its flight attendants were at the negotiating table with federal mediators in Washington, D.C. for the last six business days. The union reports back that no agreement was reached. They expect the National Mediation Board to insist on one ‘last ditch effort’ to reach an agreement early in June before declaring an impasse, which would start a 30 day ‘cooling off period’ before releasing the parties to ‘self-help’ (a strike).
American Airlines is back flying to Port-au-Prince, Haiti after service was halted in March following planes being hit by bullets at the airport as violent gangs under the direction of Jimmy Chérizier (“Barbecue”) attacked.
The airline’s pilots seem comfortable going back.
An American Airlines Airbus A319 had a near miss at Washington’s Reagan National airport on Wednesday. Flight 2134 to Boston was cleared for takeoff on runway 1, while a King Air was cleared to land. Air traffic control realized their mistake, cancelling takeoff clearance for the American Airlines flight – and telling the King Air to abort and go around. They couldn’t because they were already on the ground.
Vasu Raja is out at American Airlines. He had a bold view of the world of aviation, and wasn’t afraid to break things. But at large public companies, you can only do that if you succeed.
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 »
