Flight attendants at American Airlines were forced to sleep on the floor in airport concourses or on broken furniture in dilapidated crew rooms last weekend after American Airlines forgot to book hotel rooms after the carrier faced mass disruption from severe summer weather events that swept the country.
Unsurprisingly, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents tens of thousands of crew members at the Fort Worth-based carrier, has slammed the airline over the serious oversight.
“Over the last few days, American Airlines has experienced significant irregular operations that have left many Flight Attendants stranded with no contact from the company,” the union told its members in an internal memo.
“Some were stranded overnight without hotel accommodations, unable to reach Crew Tracking or the Hotel/Limo desk for assistance, and left completely in the dark with no communication from the company.”
The memo added: “The lack of support and basic resources during this IROPs [Irregular Operations] is not only inexcusable—it’s a serious breakdown in the company’s responsibility to its Flight Attendants.”
What appears to have happened is that American Airlines made the decision to cancel flights due to the bad weather far too late in the day, meaning that the crew scheduling and hotel booking departments were overwhelmed with requests to reaccommodate flight attendants at very short notice.
Stranded flight attendants attempted to get in contact with the company to arrange hotel rooms but found themselves stuck on hold as hundreds of other crew competed to get hold of someone who could arrange them accommodation in whichever city they found themselves stuck in for the night.
And while there were widely documented issues in New York and especially Newark, which left passengers stranded on planes for hours on Saturday night, the disruption quickly spread across the US, with multiple airports hit with mass cancellations.
Not that this is the first time that summer weather had left American Airlines flight attendants abandoned by their employer with nowhere to sleep for the night.
In 2021, the crew union threatened to take legal action if the airline didn’t sort out its subcontracted hotel booking desk, which was failing to book rooms for flight attendants stranded due to late-night cancellations or delays.
The same issues were also impacting pilots and resulted in some flight crews refusing to take off until American Airlines had confirmed that hotel accommodation had been booked for them in their destination.
The Allied Pilots Association (APA), which represents pilots at American Airlines, has once again urged its members to delay a flight departure if necessary until accommodation is confirmed.
Matt’s Take
The flight attendant union is pinning the blame on the current hotel booking fiasco on a problem that is all too common for passengers – AA’s insistence on showing flights as departing on time, even when it must be well known to the airline that there is no chance at all that the flight will take off on schedule.
American Airlines seems to rely on rolling delays, living in the hope that they’ll reassign a plane from another trip or some other miracle will occur that will get their schedule back on track.
On paper, it seems like a sensible tactic to keep the airline’s operation running, but the reality, felt by both passengers and crew alike, is very different.
Wow! Sounds like a “concentration camp””, contact your nearest Democratic congressperson!
As I understood from another blog’s commentary; FA’s had the option to find their own hotel and be reimbursed by the company. Although not preferred & more inconvenient, at least there is another option fo being ‘forced’ to sleep on the floor. It’s a shame AA can’t seem to get it together for crew & pax.
As an AA FA, I can confirm that we are given the option to pay and get reimbursed. The problem is AA fights us on reimbursement and if you do get reimbursed, they add it to your paycheck as income and tax the amount reimbursed. Which means, you are not getting full reimbursement and it looks like you earned more money, leading to more taxes being taken out of your paycheck. That is why flight attendants don’t like paying for things the company is required to provide.
It isn’t fair to ask you to go out-of-pocket for something that should be provided by the airline. However, as a CFO, I did want to point out that just because expense reimbursements are added to your paychecks, it doesn’t mean that you are taxed on them. If you examine your paystubs, you’ll probably see some sort of footnote associated with the reimbursement line item.
It isn’t in the airline’s to include it your income, either, because it would then be on the hook for payroll taxes on the amount of the reimbursement.
You are correct, however, most of the FA’s flying those late trips are new and truly can’t afford to pay for a room and wait for reimbursement which can sometimes take upwards of 3 months or more. While their pay is better under the new contract no way would I put in the hours they do for that pay, but that’s just me.
The problem is that AA doesn’t pay their bills. We don’t have that option anymore, as far as booking our own hotels. It’s very hard to get AA to reimburse us. Much like AA is with the passengers, AA is very stingy with their money. Unfortunately without rest , we can’t work flights, which leads to cancellations.
Oh I feel so bad for them….NOT. Now you know what your moronic airlines puts the flying public through.
That is your voice to buy tickets on AA because they are cheap! AA is supposed to house us their flight attendants or they won’t be legal to work the flights that you are on. No flight attendants = cancelled flight! Get it!
So they do this to passengers routinely. Welcome to the state of airline travel. Sleeping on the floor. Embarrassing when it happens to passengers.