Tag Archives for pilots.
It isn’t often that a union tries to get people not to join. Usually the incentive is to grow its ranks. However the American Airlines pilots union is warning pilots if they go to work at American Airlines they’ll be stuck at American for their whole career thanks to the senior system which makes jumping carriers not a viable option (since you lose schedule flexibility and pay).
The narrative about Southwest’s troubles could become self-fulfilling at the airline and spread to other carriers. Pilots are watching the operational carnage at Southwest and realizing that they can take down the operation, even if they weren’t doing so already. And employees at other airlines are watching.
Like many pilots, he has a side job. (The most common side business seems to be insurance.) So it’s odd to suggest that a vaccine mandate forces him to make a choice about whether to feed his family.
If the Biden administration doesn’t blink, pilots are going to have to be vaccinated to fly. They don’t currently even have to wear masks in the cockpit.
While many unvaccinated pilots will get jabbed, and union senior rules mean that the more senior the pilot the harder it is for them to just leave and go fly for someone else, the concern is that the most senior pilots will take retirement. That will also have a cascading effect requiring pilots to get retrained on different equipment, also as a result of union rules.
Pilots are already treated differently by government mandates during the pandemic. Pilots aren’t allowed to fly within 48 hours of taking a vaccine shot due to potential side effects. And pilots are not required to wear face masks while in the cockpit.
The Biden administration executive order directing OSHA to introduce a vaccine mandate on companies with 100+ employees includes an expected alternative means of compliance in the form of regular Covid-19 testing. While United Airlines is not permitting this, a fear of losing pilots would seem to be enough reason why American Airlines would embrace this alternative.
The Southwest Airlines pilots union is suing the airline for, it says, making unilateral changes to pilot pay and working conditions without bargaining with the union. That sounds bad, because we know there’s a union contract, but let’s dig a little deeper.
Earlier I covered the American Airlines flight attendants who were stuck sleeping at the airport because they weren’t provided a hotel room for their layover. In it, I mentioned that the grievance filed by the flight attendants union indicated pilots were having similar problems with the airline’s accommodations (and ground transportation) providers.
American’s pilots also filed a grievance. While they don’t note pilots sleeping in airports, they do report a pilot sleeping in a hotel lobby because of lack of a room for the night.
American Airlines has been cancelling hundreds of flights a day for several days. They don’t have enough pilots, especially Boeing 737 pilots, to operate the schedule they published.
However it appears that the system American Airlines uses to try to find pilots to pick up overtime and crew open trips may be standing in the way of getting some of its pilots to cover trips.
On Saturday morning I was first to cover the ongoing issue American Airlines is having mass-cancelling flights. They logged about 125 cancellations on Saturday after a big cancel day on Friday. That’s about five times as many flight cancellations as United Airlines and Delta combined.
Today is worse than yesterday with 176 cancels already. That’s nearly 50% more than Saturday. And there are already about 100 cancels on the books for Monday.
American Airlines has cancelled over 100 flights already today. The most common reason is ‘flight crew unavailable’. Many other flights show cancelled due to ‘operational decision’ which appears to be giving that flight’s pilots to another aircraft (in other words, also ‘flight crew unavailable’). In contrast, as of this writing United has cancelled eight flights today and Delta has cancelled two.
The issue appears to be concentrated on the Boeing 737 fleet. American’s schedule seems too big for the crew they have available, especially since they’re only midway through the process of bringing inactive pilots back online.
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 »
