American Airlines may have more than 20,000 front-line employees than it needs this fall due to its reduced flight hours, executives said Thursday.
Doug Parker, chief executive officer, and Robert Isom, president, said in a memo to employees that, given the reduced customer traffic, the Fort Worth, Texas, airline anticipated it would have 20 to 30 percent more than pilots, flight attendants and airport agents. , mechanics and baggage handlers of what you need. On Wednesday, the airline decided to abandon 19 international routes from six centers.
“To be clear, this does not mean that 20,000 of our team members will be suspended in October, it simply means that we still have work to do to adjust the size of our team for the airline we will operate,” they said. “We are committed to restoring the airline with a different playbook than in past crises where the expected result was the last result.”
The United States airline industry continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Demand has improved slightly, and American told customers Tuesday to expect fully booked planes.
But passengers and cash are still a fraction of last year’s totals. American averaged $ 4.2 billion in cash receipts per month in the second quarter of 2019. This year, the airline received $ 11 million in April, $ 358 million in May, and $ 1 billion in June.
Of the 20,000 workers, between 7,000 and 8,000 were flight attendants, said Paul Hartshorn, a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents American’s 27,000 flight attendants. The union and management are in talks Thursday to find a way to limit possible licenses by developing attractive vacation and early retirement packages.
“Everyone is quite stunned,” said a flight attendant who asked not to be identified. “We all knew it would come, but we didn’t know what the exact number would be.”
American has around 80,000 front-line workers in its flagship company and approximately 17,000 in management. The company said in May that it would cut administrative lines by approximately 5,000 employees. The entire company, including regional operators, employs 131,500 people.
As expected since April, Parker and Isom said American signed an agreement with the United States Treasury to receive a $ 4.75 billion loan from the second tranche of airline aid contained in the Aircraft Care Act. U.S. The loan and capital increase of $ 4.5 billion last week raised the company’s cash balance to $ 15 billion.
American unions have come up with plans to continue government aid to the airline industry. The Allied Pilots Association, which represents 15,000 American pilots, encouraged the government to buy intermediate seats, to guarantee income and reassure potential passengers who want social distance on board. The flight attendants union wants to see the first tranche of government aid, the payroll support program, which continued until March 31.
“Load the [unemployment] system [on] October 1 with literally more than hundreds of thousands of aviation workers taking to the streets does not appear to be the solution, “Hartshorn said.
