American Airlines pilots union calls for firing of ‘middle management’ responsible for flight delays

The American Airlines pilots union is calling on the company to fire the “members of the management team who oversee the operations of American Airlines” after another summer of delays and cancellations.

The union’s board of directors, which represents 14,000 American Airlines pilots, pinned some of the periods of heavy cancellations and flight delays this summer to the operations team that helps run the company’s daily flight schedule. The board voted 17-2 with one abstention.

“… During the summer of 2021, middle management decided to cancel hundreds of flights early, disrupting thousands of travel plans and damaging the American Airlines brand at the same time,” said the resolution calling for the layoffs.

The union made it clear it did not want to replace CEO Doug Parker or President Robert Isom, despite the union’s 2017 saying the pilots had “lost confidence in Doug Parker and the ability of his management team to run American Airlines successfully.”

The union did not specify who exactly should be replaced, but said it was under the management.

“Your job is to ensure that American Airlines’ operations are reliable not just for our pilots but, more importantly, for our passengers,” said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association. “Doug Parker and Robert Isom say the right things, but the work is not done under them.”

The Allied Pilots Association has been at odds with American Airlines for months, having been an ally for most of last year when it asked the federal government for more than $ 52 billion in aid to help airlines run payroll cover up. Over the past few months, pilots have said the airline is ill-equipped to add so many flights to its schedule this summer, despite high passenger demand.

The union pointed to Father’s Day weekend in June when hundreds of flights were canceled and more than 60,000 passengers were affected by operational problems that arose after weather problems. The airline said at the time that the weather created a ripple effect with pilots and flight attendants hitting state working hours and it took days to overcome the crew shortage.

The union said there were several more weekends in July and August when problems continued.

The pilots union and flight attendants union have complained that problems with the airline this summer have made it difficult to get hotels, food and transportation for crew members while traveling. The union has also complained that the company’s planning strategy is putting too many pilots on standby, almost double the industry average.

Pilots and flight attendants for Dallas-based Southwest Airlines have complained of similar issues. In fact, Southwest also had a number of weather and technical delays in June that resulted in thousands of delays and cancellations.

The Allied Pilots Association, which represents American pilots, is already planning to launch information campaigns for picket lines at Miami International Airport next month, with more to follow later at DFW International Airport and Charlotte. American Airlines is also in negotiations with pilots about a new contract.

Parker said this week that American’s operational problems were rough early in the summer, but the company has made improvements.

“For the past month and a half at American, we’ve certainly flown as well from an airline and completed on-time performance as never before,” said Parker during a video interview with the Washington Post. “So we took aggressive action and canceled flights in advance to make sure that we could actually do what we had planned and it was fixed pretty quickly.”

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