May 22, 2005
Gretchen Morgenson
Who Says There's No Free Lunch on Planes?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/bu...y/22gret.html?
EVERYONE knows that the airline business is a mess. United Airlines, operating in bankruptcy, just succeeded in punting four employee pension plans, covering 122,000 people, to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation - and, hence, taxpayers. Delta Airlines lost $5.2 billion last year, its worst performance in 70 years of operations. Other airlines, including American, have been allowed by Congress to defer up to 80 percent of their pension obligations.
Pretty dire, all around.
So when an American Airlines flight attendant stood up at the company's annual meeting last Wednesday and suggested how the company could save an estimated $50 million a year, you'd think its executives would have leapt out of their seats with joy. Instead, they hemmed, hawed, said they were looking into the idea and shortly thereafter declared the meeting over.
The flight attendant was Patti Haddon, who had traveled all the way from New York to attend the annual meeting of the AMR Corporation, the airline's parent, in Fort Worth. She is also an AMR shareholder.
Once there, she proposed that the company's executives should revamp the system of travel perks received by thousands of people who don't even work for American. Ms. Haddon said at the meeting that the travel privileges extended to an estimated 70,000 people who are not American employees are, by her calculation, a $50 million-a-year luxury the airline cannot afford.
[copyright content truncated]