1.29.16 – AAL Announces Massive Q4 Profit – Flight Attendants Shut Out of Historic Gains

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FORT WORTH, Texas (January 29, 2016) – In a conference call with investors this morning, American Airlines Management announced another quarter of record profits for the Company. With $6.3 billion in revenues to report, the call had a celebratory tone and featured the excited voices of the airline’s Management team, institutional shareholders, and Wall Street analysts. Absent amidst all the self-congratulations and mutual admiration was the voice of American’s front line employees: the 25,000 Flight Attendants who have made the new American Airlines so successful and have yet to realize the fruits of that labor.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants has been fighting tooth and nail to deliver the benefits of the 2013 merger with US Airways to its 25,000 members. Persistent problems with a new scheduling system have been taking money out of Flight Attendants’ paychecks for months. Certain provisions of the APFA contract, meant to improve Flight Attendants’ work lives, have been delayed indefinitely due to management disinterest, ineptitude, or both. And a modest request for a year end bonus, in part to make up for these problems, was dismissed out of hand by CEO Doug Parker.

“For Management to get on that call this morning and make like everything is sunshine and rainbows is the ultimate display of disrespect,” said APFA National President Marcus Gluth. “In addition to stock buy-backs and dividends, how about showing some appreciation for the employees that are breaking their backs out there? At the very least they could use some of that money to meet their pension obligations. Flight Attendants made this merger a success and make this airline profitable – not Wall Street bankers. Doug needs to truly recognize the people who made his success – and tremendous personal wealth – possible.”

In 2003, well prior to the American – US Airways merger, APFA and other American unions negotiated givebacks totaling 30 percent of total compensation in order to keep the airline afloat. Flight Attendants did not begin to see relief from those cuts until the recent merger. Thus, significant material sacrifices for the sake of the company have been going on for well over a decade.