American Airlines has drastically reduced its flight attendant workforce – will the FAA step in where the union failed?
It is interesting to see what the flight attendants of American Airlines not get in their negotiations. They will get on-board pay – they will get paid for the time they spend boarding a plane – but that will not start until six months after the agreement is ratified. They will get higher 401(k) contributions, but that will not start until 2025. They are not They will have to hire more staff. They will not even reach pre-pandemic staffing levels.
During the Covid pandemic, airlines have limited their offerings.
- They tried to save money and spent less on catering
- There were fewer premium passengers (basically no managed business trips), so little reason to invest
- And since there was less work, they didn’t need as many flight attendants on board.
American Airlines generally staffs its narrow-body aircraft at the FAA minimum—the legal minimum, which is usually one per 50 seats. On wide-body aircraft, the minimum crew was above the legal minimum, and that number has been reduced. But they never brought flight attendants back to operate those planes, even when the pandemic was over and travel (and premium travel) resumed..
The airline had already begun reducing onboard staff before the pandemic. In 2020, American Airlines further reduced the number of flight attendants,
- One above the legal FAA minimum on international wide-body and transcontinental flights
- Legal minimum for Boeing 787-8
Here is the current staffing level:
The union regretted the changes but did not tell members which parts of their old contract were violated. An arbitration panel’s decision is pending, but it seems unlikely the union will win.
They had an opportunity to restore staffing levels: contract negotiations. They didn’t want more staff. But the FAA could still force them to increase staffing levels on some long-range widebody aircraft?
- American Airlines has applied to the FAA for a supplemental type certificate allowing the use of doors in business class suites on the Boeing 777-300ER. They plan to retrofit this aircraft.
- The rules say that there can be no doors in an aircraft cabin because it slows down the evacuation. But originally this referred to doors between the cabins (hence curtains). However, the doors of the business class seats must be approved.
- The FAA is concerned that the seat doors are left open during takeoff and landing. Flight attendants are supposed to check this. And the FAA says that this requires more staff than before.
- The FAA normally requires one flight attendant per zone of business class seats between emergency exits, but it believes this applies to a maximum of 32 business class suites, and American suggests 22 in one zone and 48 in a second zone. Therefore, it requires two cabin doors to monitor the crew in the second zone instead of just one.
In previous approvals of mini-suites with doors, the FAA required an additional flight attendant when carrying passengers, whose primary responsibility was to ensure that the mini-suite doors were properly positioned during taxiing, takeoff, and landing. The total number of mini-suites increases both the likelihood that a door is closed in an emergency and the amount of work the crew must do to ensure otherwise. As a general guideline, the FAA assumed that when carrying passengers, one additional flight attendant would be required per passenger zone of mini-suites installed. A zone is defined as the section of the cabin between the pairs of emergency exits. For example, in a similar waiver (No. 17186) for the Airbus A350, the FAA determined that the upper limit of mini-suites that a single flight attendant could reasonably handle in a zone is 32.
However, given the potential for innovative seating configurations, it may be possible to even accommodate more than 32 mini-suites in a zone, in which case more than one additional flight attendant will be required. The applicant has proposed up to a total of 70 mini-suites: 22 mini-suites in Zone 1 and 48 mini-suites in Zone 2. With this large number of suites, the FAA will require two additional flight attendants if the maximum number of mini-suites in a zone exceeds 32. Therefore, to grant this exception, the FAA will require one additional flight attendant in each zone where mini-suites are accommodated when carrying passengers, or two additional flight attendants in each zone where mini-suites are accommodated and the number of mini-suites exceeds 32.
The FAA required more flight attendants on JetBlue planes with doors on business class seats, prompting the airline to disable those doors as a cost-cutting measure.
I asked American if they could meet the FAA requirements with current staffing levels and without reducing business class seats, but they did not respond to my inquiry.
