Pilots Accuse American Airlines of ‘Serving up Crisis After Crisis’ Amid Contract Talks

More than 300 American Airlines pilots picketed at company headquarters in Fort Worth Thursday, joining thousands of pilots from other carriers at airports across the country amid tense contract negotiations at several major airlines as a “rough summer” for travel winds down.

But whether at American in Fort Worth or at airports in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Chicago and elsewhere, pilots say they are fed up with long hours and erratic schedules due to frequent cancellations and delays that are well above historical norms.

After picketing at DFW International Airport in January and across the country in recent months, the 14,000-member Allied Pilots Association representing American Airlines pilots are pushing for a new contract with negotiations that started before the COVID-19 pandemic. Pilots for Delta, Alaska, United, JetBlue and others also picketed as those companies face contract negotiations as well.

“The company is still serving up crisis after crisis whenever there’s any weather disruption,” said union spokesman Andy Gomez. “They simply don’t have the staffing to fulfill the aggressive schedule they made.”

The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association staged a similar protest in June at Dallas Love Field near Southwest Airlines’ headquarters. Southwest flight attendants are planning to picket at Love Field and at other key airports in September.

By law, pilots and other airline workers are prohibited from striking without going through a lengthy approval process with regulators. So contract negotiations often take years and involve lobbying the public to put pressure on airline executives.

But slow negotiations and stagnating wages hurt morale among pilots and other airline workers and can create less incentive to pick up extra shifts needed during critical periods like the upcoming holiday travel season.

The pilots union at American Airlines is trying to pair its frustration in negotiations with the reality that airlines are struggling to put together reliable operations since emerging from the downturn in flying during the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. air carriers canceled 53,000 flights during the first half of 2022 and on-time arrival rates are the lowest since 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Complaints are also up 270% over 2019. American has had the highest rate of cancellations among any of the major network carriers, nixing 2.8% of flights between January and June.

Pilots say delays and cancellations hurt them, too, because they can’t plan their lives outside of work if they are consistently being reassigned because of disruptions.

While American’s pilots are expecting raises upwards of 20% over the life of a two-year contract, union leaders said the major issue is scheduling and reliability. Unlike other workers at American, pilots and flight attendants are paid primarily in flying hours. When flights are canceled or delayed and they are shuffled to new flights, they don’t get full pay rates. Then they often get reassigned to a new route if they have enough hours available to fly under federal hour safety maximums for pilots.

American says the contract proposal it put out in June gives $2 billion in raises and other benefits and has a top rate pay of $425,000 for widebody captains and $340,000 for captains of narrowbody jets.

The Allied Pilots Association wants to reduce the number of pilots the company puts on call, arguing that pilots could voluntarily pick up shifts if they had more flexibility.

“American Airlines sold tickets for a service they realistically cannot provide,” said Ed Sicher, a pilot who was elected the union’s president in July. “They don’t have the airplanes, they don’t have the pilots trained, they don’t have the flight attendants. So they run our pilots flat-out. They’re running us as long as they can. They’re running us as hard as we can.”

Union pilots have also complained about unreliable hotel and transportation bookings, particularly when American is facing a large number of cancellations and delays.

Sicher said those problems haven’t gotten any better since emerging in early 2021.

“We’ve had pilots who have slept in the airport [or] in the lobbies of hotels,” said union vice president Chris Torres. “It’s a complete crapshoot on whether you’re getting a hotel when you get there.”

However, both American and the union said there shouldn’t be any disruption to flying because of the protests.

“American’s pilots participate in informational picketing periodically, which isn’t out of the ordinary and will not have an impact on our operation,” said airline spokeswoman Lindsey Martin in a statement. “We’ve put forward an industry-leading proposal that would provide immediate and significant improvements in pay, benefits and quality of life provisions for our pilots.”

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said in a July earnings call that there is hope of getting a deal done by this fall.

©2022 The Dallas Morning News. Visit dallasnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.