11.03.17 – (LAA/LUS) – 60 Years Flying/FA Lori Costello Passes/LAX Catering/VA & N

Friday, November 3, 2017

• AA’s Longest Serving FA Celebrates 60 Years of Flying
• LAA’s Most Senior Flight Attendant Passes
• Contingency Catering Plan at LAX
• Virginia and New Jersey Voters GET OUT the VOTE
• STL Pilot Base Closure Announcement 
• Daylight Saving Time Ends this Weekend
• Uniform Reaction Report Update 

AA’s Longest Serving Flight Attendant Celebrates 60 Years of Flying

APFA pays tribute to AA’s longest serving Flight Attendant, Bette Nash who celebrates her 60th anniversary as a Flight Attendant. Bette began her career at Eastern Airlines on November 4, 1957 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and continues to fly full time out of her base at DCA-US. 

At 81, she fondly remembers flying during aviation’s ‘golden age’ when airline tickets were hand written and sold for as little as $12.

Having flown for Eastern Airlines’ first Shuttle (eventually purchased by Trump Shuttle and ultimately merged into US Airways), Bette became an American Airlines Flight Attendant in 2015 with the AA/US merger.

Her extensive airline career was featured in a CNN article last year where Bette recounts six decades of airline history including the 70’s when the look started getting “a little radical with pantsuits, bold colors, short dresses and really big hair.”

She marvels at the technological advances made in aviation through the years, but has kept pace with all the changes and has no immediate plans to retire from the career that she loves so much.

Congratulations Bette! The industry may have changed dramatically through the decades, but your spirit, professionalism and smile haven’t changed a bit.

LAA’s Most Senior Flight Attendant Passes

We are sad to report the passing of Legacy AA’s most senior Flight Attendant, Lori Costello. Lori had 55 years with American and was based at LGA.

Services were held earlier today in Manhasset, New York. She will be deeply missed by her family, friends, and colleagues. Sympathy cards for her family can be left at the JFK Crew Service Center.

Contingency Catering Plan at LAX

While AA continues its contingency catering plan at LAX by utilizing alternate catering companies and down-line catering from other stations, passengers and crews will continue to see Gate Gourmet trucks servicing our aircraft with provisioning from other facilities.

The Company has assured APFA that all service carts are sanitized by a third-party vendor. Also, it is important to note that any wet ice catered by Gate Gourmet is pre-sealed from the original vendor and does not enter the Gate Gourmet kitchen, but is loaded directly into sanitized carts and trucks.

The catering situation at LAX is fluid, therefore Flight Attendants are advised to check their Company email and HI6/CBS messages frequently for the most recent information.

More Information on Listeria Symptoms >>

Virginia and New Jersey Voters GET OUT the VOTE

One last reminder that your states will each elect their next Governor on Tuesday, November 7th. These are critical elections, particularly as the labor movement continues to endure one assault after another.

It is up to working families to send a message! We must put a stop to the coordinated effort to undermine and unravel the labor unions which have fought long and hard for the rights we enjoy today.

These elections will be seen as indicators of national trends. Every vote counts so make sure you cast your ballot on (or before*) Tuesday November 7th.

*Early voting ends at 5pm on Saturday in Virginia and at 3pm on Monday in New Jersey.

On the issue of organized labor:

Virginia

– Republican Ed Gillespie supports the right to work laws in Virginia that gut the collective bargaining power of unions. In some right to work states, basic injury-on-duty claims are being denied because of the business-friendly laws that govern the state.

– Democrat Ralph Northam has committed to protecting workers’ rights in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

New Jersey

– Some New Jersey Republicans have a strong pro-union record; gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno is not one of them. She is focused on supporting business at the expense of working people. For example, she is against requiring private employers to provide paid sick leave, believing it would result in lost jobs.

– Phil Murphy has committed to supporting working people. He believes that “the union door is a primary door through which so many of us – and our parents and brothers and sisters – walked into the middle class. We will build a stronger, more inclusive New Jersey economy because of our support for organized labor, not the other way around.”

A key buzzword in both races, and in campaigns nationwide over the past several cycles, is “right to work.” Union households need to understand the issue and vote accordingly. “Right to work” laws are bad public policy wrapped in a clever slogan. They should really be called “right to exploit” laws because they make it far easier for corporations to abuse their workers.

Supporters of right to work laws claim that they protect workers from being forced to join a union, but the real purpose of these laws is to make it more difficult for working men and women to engage in collective bargaining, secure better wages and benefits, and protect themselves against unfair management practices.

Allie Malis
APFA Interim National Government Affairs Representative

STL Pilot Base Closure Announcement 

The Company announced this week that it will be closing the pilot base at STL in the third quarter of 2018 due to the gradual reduction of the MD80 fleet. Since pilot flying out of STL consists solely of MD80 trips and pilots are only qualified on one fleet type at a time, management claims there will no longer be a need for a pilot base at STL.

The Allied Pilots Association STL domicile representatives released the following as part of a statement to its members:

“We’ve argued (and will continue to do so) that if the level of flying into/out of STL will remain the same, we should be able to crew those flights with STL based pilots and avoid the family turmoil and expense of relocating 150 long-tenured and dedicated professionals.” 

The Company has stated that this will not affect the STL Base for Flight Attendants nor will it impact the level of flying in or out of STL.

Daylight Saving Time Ends this Weekend 

Don’t forget to turn your clocks back one hour this Sunday, November 5th at 0200 LBT. You may also want to check the batteries on those smoke detectors as well.

Remember, Arizona, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa do not observe Daylight Saving Time; therefore, these areas will not “fall back” this weekend.

Uniform Reaction Report Count