Summary
- Concerns about serving crucial markets
- Clash with pilot contract scope
- Also the airline’s flight attendants seek higher pay and are preparing to strike
The Allied Pilots Association President, Captain Ed Sicher, recently blogged his observations concerning the business model of American Airlines. Captain Sicher alleges that American Airlines isn’t serving its crucial markets and is reducing long-haul operations.
Concerned about scheduling and scope
One would think that after the Allied Pilots Association won a major latest post-pandemic contract last 12 months, the American Airlines pilots could be glad. But as Captain Sicher shared,
“Unfortunately, the news isn’t good from our pilots’ perspective. Chief Executive Officer Robert Isom sees future profitability as depending on growth opportunities in underserved domestic markets, with the crux of his marketing strategy revolving around these marginal locations. In other words, the airline management team answerable for producing profit margins that badly lag those of Delta and United believes that chance beckons by taking up Southwest Airlines and the ultra low-cost carriers.”
It’s well-known that American Airlines is a premium airline with multi-class seating, and Southwest Airlines is a single-class airline with a novel boarding process.
Moreover, Captain Sicher is anxious concerning the pilot’s contract scope clause versus the brand new marketing strategy. Mainline airline union members are paid more for flying the larger jets than the regional unionized aircrew with fewer souls and freight aboard just like the 76-passenger Embraer E175 pictured below – and frequently shorter distances. Hence, mainline airline unions negotiate a scope clause to stop lesser-paid regional aircrews from taking up their work.
Photo: Joe Kunzler | Easy Flying
As Captain Sicher explains,
“Section 1 of our contract is the inspiration of our flying agreement, capping management’s ability to fly regional jets [RJs] while also limiting their ability to fly from non-hub cities to other non-hub cities with RJs (spoke-to-spoke). … The one ways out of this “square corner” the brand new marketing strategy creates are absorbing a number of of the wholly owned operations, putting RJs on our seniority list, or attempting to renegotiate our Scope clause, and the latter will most actually be met with virulent opposition.”
You possibly can take heed to Captain Sicher speak on this at 2:25 of the below YouTube clip.
Management lofty goals
Alternatively, listening to American Airlines’ CEO Robert Isom’s presentation, Isom stressed airlines are a “supply and demand business.” Isom also said American Airlines is “a modified airline” that has revived itself from post-COVID pandemic losses to an airline with improved customer experience, making “culture a competitive advantage” and a “thrive eternally” mentality.
Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Easy Flying
The Chief Business Officer Vasu Raja also spoke about American Airlines being a “global hub-and-spoke network carrier.” American Airlines’ differences come from the various links, and it seems to wish to give attention to the US Sun Belt that stretches from Southern California to Florida, like legacy airline America West Airlines.
Raja’s presentation from the chosen slides shows that American Airlines may likely pivot to service that area. Moreover, Raja praised the reduced costs of regional jet operations.
America West History
The history of America West is that of an airline that began life on August 1, 1983, flying Flight 105 from Kansas City – Colorado Springs – Phoenix. In keeping with awa-history.org, the airline would operate as “a full-service airline” with assigned multi-class seating, overhead bins, complimentary cocktails, and more.
But when the pay scale starts at $27,000 per 12 months, morale problems are created. In keeping with RentCafe, the common rent in Dallas, Philadelphia, and Recent York City – three of America’s nine US flight attendant bases – exceeds $1,500 monthly. It is difficult to make ends meet on a $2,250 monthly base salary that does improve.
Please let me know what your thoughts are. Please share within the comments.