As reported by @xJonNYC, American Airlines is accusing some of its flight attendants of attempting to income off of rolling delays, and is calling it theft. I’m absolutely sure this will ruffle some feathers amid flight attendants, especially offered the tense deal negotiations heading on.
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How American flight attendants are profiting off of delayed flights
Flight attendants have a intricate system via which they can bid on visits, centered on a variety of components, and that determines their schedules. In addition to their common every month bidding, flight attendants can decide on up visits at the past moment for added pay, assuming it doesn’t interfere with any trips they now have on their routine. They usually want a minimum amount total of rest between sequences, commonly at the very least 10 hours.
American is accusing flight attendants of intentionally finding up visits that they have no intention of traveling, in buy to get additional shell out, and the corporation is calling it theft. According to American:
- Flight attendants are bidding at the very last moment to work flights that have rolling delays, whereby the flight attendants already know that a flight is delayed it is prevalent for there to be very last moment excursions offered, considering the fact that it could be that a crew timed out when there’s a key delay
- Flight attendants are deliberately bidding on these flights when they have an additional excursion in their agenda in the in the vicinity of foreseeable future, so that they’d barely have plenty of relaxation (but based on the scheduled departure time as of the time they bid on the journey, they do have ample rest)
- In circumstances where by the delay continues to be prolonged, flight attendants then can’t function their up coming excursion, but they nonetheless get compensated for it, given that the contract is made up of a pay out safety for that
Just to give an illustration (I’m completely creating this up), let us say that a flight attendant is scheduled to do the job a journey setting up at 6AM tomorrow, from Miami to Los Angeles. Flight attendants need at the very least 10 hrs of rest concerning flights. So let’s say a flight attendant picks up a brief Miami to Tampa to Miami flip at the previous minute for this night, but it’s distinct that the flight will be delayed (given that the inbound plane is hours late, or there’s a routine maintenance problem, or there’s a thunderstorm).
If they picked up that excursion and flew it but returned right after 8PM (10 hrs prior to 6AM), they would not be capable to fly the excursion the pursuing day, but they’d still get paid for both equally trips.
American threatens flight attendants for this behavior
American states that crew scheduling seniors are now inspecting each individual and every last minute journey decide up that has resulted in pay out security, to ascertain irrespective of whether flight attendants intentionally manufactured an “illegal” sequence in order to get shell out for the vacation.
The business will look at when the trip was picked up by the flight attendant, when the hold off commenced, and what the crew understood and when. The company’s position is that just mainly because the hold off has not been up-to-date, doesn’t signify the crew was unaware of the inescapable. The business considers this to be theft, and is threatening to get absent pay, call flight attendants into their manager’s place of work, and potentially just take other disciplinary motion.
The business is encouraging flight attendants to only select up outings that they are self-confident that they can legally fly, and flight attendants will have to justify their selection with “factual data” if they get fork out security.
This is fairly a risk towards flight attendants…
Many of us passengers can attest to how discouraging American’s rolling flight delays are, and what a undesirable work the airline usually does with keeping people today up-to-date with delays. So in some way, I have to respect the hustle of some flight attendants for getting gain of American’s poor conversation during delays.
Now, I simply cannot support but assume that this is additional of an vacant menace than nearly anything else, while I surely could be incorrect:
- Is this actually such a widespread dilemma that it’s well worth addressing in this way? Is this happening amid tens of persons, or hundreds of people, or…?
- It appears to be sort of hard for American to establish intent in this article
- If this is such a big difficulty, why doesn’t American update its application to not enable flight attendants bid on these sorts of outings? It appears to be like American should really be determining how sensible it is for a flight attendant to bid on a excursion without lacking their following vacation, fairly than leaving it to the specific flight attendant
- Flight attendant morale at American is at an all-time small, as flight attendants are nonetheless waiting on a new contract (which they have earned) is the airline attempting to make labor relations even worse?
I suspect this is mostly about striving to make flight attendants frightened about this behavior heading ahead, but I guess we’ll see. If the business does choose disciplinary action in opposition to flight attendants, I imagine the union will have a large amount to say.
Bottom line
American is accusing some flight attendants of theft, following bidding on final minute outings with rolling delays. The airline claims that some flight attendants have deliberately picked up past moment visits shortly ahead of other visits, in predicaments exactly where they understood the flight would be delayed. This activated fork out security, which means flight attendants would be compensated for each journeys.
What do you make of American’s danger to flight attendants?