American Airlines flight attendants are planning descend upon the Texas-based carrier’s luxe corporate headquarters campus in Dallas Fort Worth for a protest where they will reiterate their call for the ousting of embattled chief executive Robert Isom.
The protest is scheduled to take place on Thursday, February 12, outside the corporate head office, which goes by the name Skyview – a $350 million facility where key executives were tucked away during severe winter weather last month that left flight attendants sleeping on airport floors.
On Monday, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), the official union of more than 28,000 crew members at American Airlines, announced that its board had issued a unanimous vote of no confidence in Isom due to his handling of the airline’s failing business strategy.
The protest outside Skyview is designed to further increase pressure on Isom and the airline’s board, which has, so far at least, backed the beleaguered chief executive.
Along with frustrated flight attendants, APFA is also calling on American Airlines employees from every workgroup to join them in their protest.
“This airline is headed down a path that puts our careers at risk,” the union slammed on Tuesday. “Now is the time for Flight Attendants to stand together and show up in protest,” the statement added.
“American Airlines needs real accountability, decisive action, and leadership that will put this airline back on a competitive path.”
The flight attendant union is currently the only workgroup to have formally announced that it has no confidence in Isom, after pilots represented by the Allied Pilots Association (APA) instead deferred a no-confidence vote in order to request a direct meeting with the airline’s board of directors.
Rather than granting that request, the board offered up Isom to speak with the pilots’ union. That decision has been seen as the board signalling its renewed support for Isom despite calls for his ousting growing louder by the day.
Unions are increasingly frustrated by American’s poor financial performance, especially compared to its two main rivals, Delta and United Airlines.
Isom is blamed for pushing a business strategy that has seen the profit gap between American and its peers grow larger year on year. While Isom has admitted that change is now required, unions remain unconvinced that he is capable of turning the airline around.
This isn’t the first time that flight attendants have rallied outside (and even inside Skyview) to protest the competence of senior leaders at the airline. In October 2023, the union attempted to doorstep Isom inside the building to deliver a letter of no confidence in AA’s head of in-flight services.
After causing a minor security alert, APFA president Julie Hedrick and several other union officials, who were all wearing bright red t-shirts, busted through the corridors of Skyview and accosted Brady Byrnes, AA’s Senior Vice President of Inflight and Premium Guest Service.
The union’s frustrations with Byrnes had been mounting for some time, but the situation came to a head when a 66-year-old veteran flight attendant was found dead inside her room at a hotel used by the airline for short layovers at Philadelphia Airport.
Byrnes refused to reassign flight attendants to a different hotel, despite the fact that police were treating the crew member’s death as suspicious.
Brynes remains in his position to this day.
