Flight attendants at American Airlines remain less than impressed with the changes the carrier has made to its catering operation at London Heathrow Airport, following its sudden departure from its longtime catering partner at the start of March.
In the eyes of American Airlines, the carrier has done well to massively overhaul its catering proposition at London Heathrow, after it managed to sign a temporary contract with upscale partner Do&Co.
Since April 22, Do&Co has been catering all meals across all cabins on American Airlines flights departing Heathrow, ending the need for the carrier to ‘double provision’ its flights from the British capital.
From the point of view of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), however, the progress that American Airlines has made in restoring local catering operations at Heathrow doesn’t tell the whole story.
The union, which represents more than 20,000 crew members at American Airlines, says its members are still facing significant “onboard strain” from the catering meltdown, which has “significantly increased our members’ workload.”
The problems first arose in early March when American Airlines suddenly cancelled its contract with longtime catering partner Dnata, the ground operations company of the Emirates Group, which is owned by the government of Dubai.
The change was made so suddenly that American Airlines didn’t even have time to start looking for another supplier. With no local kitchen to cater its flights in London, American had to resort to ‘double provisioning’ with all the food, drinks, and equipment required for a return flight to London loaded onboard in the US.
This is highly unusual as galley space, even on a large widebody aircraft, is tight and isn’t designed to accommodate everything required for two long-haul transatlantic flights.
Flight attendants found themselves managing a completely different setup from what they are used to, with very little training to deal with this situation.
As the situation dragged on, APFA demanded that flight attendants be paid a significant premium when assigned flights to London.
American Airlines is yet to settle this demand, but the carrier has now found a temporary solution to end double provisioning by bringing on board Do&Co to cater all meals from London.
Unfortunately, it appears that the contract with Do&Co still requires flight attendants to do more work than they normally would on a long-haul flight to any other international premium destination.
For example, flight attendants were being asked to remove trash from catering carts so that it could be removed by cleaning teams in London – the union believes this was in violation of the flight attendant contract, and this has now been stopped.
“While management continues to frame this as progress, and while these adjustments may reduce some onboard strain, sadly they remain temporary fixes to a prolonged operational failure that has significantly increased our members workload,” the union told its members earlier this week.
“We will continue to monitor implementation closely and push for a permanent, reliable solution—along with accountability for the sustained impact to our crews,” the memo added.
Why American Airlines dropped its contract so suddenly remains a mystery, although there have been reports of significant health and safety issues that prompted the change.
Thankfully, the new catering from Do&Co has reportedly been a hit with passengers, although it remains to be seen whether the Austrian catering company will keep its contract with American Airlines.
The carrier is still officially looking for a new long-term catering provider in London, and Do&Co is up against other kitchens that operate out of the airport.
