Originally Posted by
stageworks
On a recent trip from JFK-LAX in J - I was chatting with a very friendly purser about all the "new and exciting" changes ahead for transcon service including the new A321 roll-out. The purser told me that the A321 roll out may(rumored) be delayed/changed as Doug does not want single aise / less capacity on the profitable transcon route. I asked about the possibility of additional flights to increase capacity, he said it was a possibility but all water cooler talk is post merger delay or change.
I assume that in any organization, there are front-line personnel who really want to believe that they've been given some info about their company's plans that is not widely known. My guess is that your purser is one of those.
Originally Posted by
stageworks
As discussed here on FT - there was chat about the feared US/AA FA merged seniority. The purser suggested that the seniority lists may be maintained completely separate as US FA would fly US metal and AA FA would fly AA metal. Also there would no longer be AA International and AA Domestic FA ...all FA would be able to fly all routes. Interestingly there might also be another push (golden parachute) for senior flight attendants at least on AA.
Not. A. Chance.
The seniority lists will be merged as the unique situation present with US/HP is not present here. If APA (AA pilots) and USAPA (the pretend union formed by the disgruntled US pilots who didn't want to abide by their seniority list arbitration) cannot agree on an integration scheme, then McCaskill-Bond provides that arbitration will be used to merge the pilots. The USAPA (US East pilots) don't have the numbers to form another USAPA if they don't like the result, so the lists will finally be merged.
As to the AA international and AA domestic FAs, that change happened in the contract last year to which the AA FAs agreed.
There have been rumours of another "early out" push to further thin the herd of very old-timers in the flight attendant ranks.
Originally Posted by
dayone
I thought AA only ordered the 787-9 and that it will not have F.
You're right - in 2008, AA ordered 42 787-9s and passed on the 787-8s. But in the restructured agreement with Boeing approved by the bankruptcy court a few weeks ago, AA converted up to 20 of the -9s into -8s and they begin arriving in late 2014.