Flight Attendants Furious as American Airlines Bungles Holiday Schedules
Jennifer Billock November 30, 2015
Due to a computer program glitch, 200 US Airways flight attendants received botched holiday schedules.
At least two hundred US Airways legacy flight attendants are being forced to fly holiday schedules they don’t want due to an American Airlines program glitch. Normally, flight attendants are allowed to bid for the routes they’d like to fly over the holidays, but this year the system broke down — awarding newer employees with better routes, long-time employees with undesirable routes, and scheduling little time off for some. Understandably, flight attendants are outraged.
“It’s horrific,” a legacy US Airways flight attendant told Forbes. “We are up in arms. The new system awarded people from all seniorities crazy schedules. Some from 1989 and junior are scheduled from December 15 to December 31 with no days off or one day off in between. They are also assigning trips to senior people that should have been assigned to junior people and they are making people work days off they would have held.”
American Airlines won’t redo the bidding system for this year because they can’t guarantee the glitch won’t happen again. But, the company is trying to fix the problem in their own way. Legacy flight attendants who have to fly between December 15 and 31 are receiving 150 percent pay, flight attendants working the mistake shifts are receiving 300 percent pay, and flight attendants who refuse to fly are being offered pay protection.
[Photo: American Airlines]
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One time, I was working in an ER on evening shift as the weathermen predicted the ice storm of the century for that night. I stayed in an empty patient room to make sure there was proper coverage as the night and day shifts called off. I got two bucks an hour standby pay for staying, and had to offset the extra hours I actually worked later in the week (when the storm, of course, failed to materialize) so as not to incur overtime. I like AA's system better.
Are these people for real? Do they see how out of touch they seem because of a schedule mess up for a couple of weeks? It was mistake. It was a glitch. These things happen during merger, ladies and gents: deal with it or go open soda cans somewhere else for a lot less per hour and no health and pension. Geez. It's not like you can earn a 300% premium on your wages due to a scheduling glitch in the real world for other blue collar workers.
It sucks to have to work over the holidays, but not many other industries would be able to receive 300% pay in the case of errors. That's strong union power.
No sympathy here.
So they can just refuse to fly and they would get paid anyways? That's not bad at all...