According to past studies, airline pilots and flight attendants on average travel more days a year than any other profession. Every pilot at American at some point has missed Christmas with their kids, Thanksgiving with their family, birthdays, anniversaries, children’s sporting events and a never-ending list of other special occasions.
Unlike management employees, who get holidays off so they can be with their families, pilots are out flying American’s customers around the world so they to can spend the holidays with their loved ones. Meanwhile, pilots often end up sitting in some hotel on a holiday that typically has no services, sometimes not even a restaurant, because even the hotel lets most of their employees off for the day.
Management gets weekends off whereas pilots miss most of their children's’ weekend activities because they generally have to work some or, for junior pilots, all weekends. The airline never rests, even though management does.
The stress and strains of missing important events places an undue and often misunderstood hardship on pilots as spouses and particularly young children cannot understand why their spouse or parent does not attend these special occasions while most other spouses and parents do. Very few pilots have the seniority to receive all weekends off and the ability to simultaneously receive another special occasion off. Simply put, pilots are often left with making the choice on which event they will miss and which person they will disappoint.
When pilots reach their layover destination they will often look for ways to unwind to take their mind off what they are missing at home and the lingering effects of the disappointment they have left behind with their loved ones. There isn’t a pilot out there with children that hasn’t walked out the door with a crying child asking him or her not to go. But that is their job and they make huge personal sacrifices for it. Sacrifices that most others, and obviously management, does not understand.
Today when a pilot arrives at a city for between 16 and 33 hours, the crews will be placed in a downtown hotel location. Airport locations are typically noisy due to airport noise, have very few if any outside restaurant choices, limited areas to shop and they seldom have acceptable areas to exercise due to the traffic around an airport. Downtown hotels on the other hand offer the pilot the ability to go for a run in a park, go shopping, choose between multiple restaurants and, more often than not, quieter rest accommodations than at an airport location.
For an infrequent traveler, this difference between a downtown hotel and an airport hotel may not seem like much. For pilots who spend their lives on the road, this simple change has a tremendous impact on their lifestyle and in many cases the temporary ability to leave the thoughts of disappointed loved ones they left at home.
Now under management’s 1113 proposal, they're insisting on making most if not all layovers at airport locations. They also propose that they will unilaterally decide which hotels will be selected with no input from the pilots and flight attendants like is done today and like is still done at most other carriers. Those who will have to live in these hotels will have no say. Instead, those who will be going home every night after work will determine what is appropriate.
The proposal's language...
“Eliminate the requirement to select from mutually acceptable facilities. Modify to give preference to airport hotels.”
In addition to proposing pilots spend several more days a month working away from home, management is simultaneously pushing for pilots--regardless of the length of the layover--to spend their time at an airport location that typically has little or no services. Pilots could be spending 33 hours at an airport hotel with nothing to do other than remain in their room waiting for the return flight. International pilots who fly around the world to destinations such as London, Frankfurt, Beijing, etc., could find themselves spending 25 hours staring out of a hotel window looking at airport runways.
Under management’s hotel accommodation proposal, they myopically attempt to save four million dollars annually on 8,000 pilots who will collectively spend more than 500,000 nights each year in hotels away from their families.
In contrast, management provides accommodations for one, yes one, executive in a $30 million London home. This home is not located near the airport where American’s largest European operation operates. No, the house is located--yes you guessed it--in a downtown location near all the sites and activities.
It is a 10-minute walk from the former home of Princess Diana and has gentry and diplomats as neighbors.”
If American were to sell this $30 million home and buy the executive a more reasonably priced accommodation of $1 million, the other $29 million dollars and interest earned could pay for pilots’ downtown locations for another decade. Instead, management proposes to negatively impact 8,000 pilots’ quality of life while the executives live like middle eastern sheiks.
AMR executives write about "fair and equitable." They are asking their employees to trust them. After 2003, former AMR CEO Gerard Arpey and his executives were telling their employees that it would be shared sacrifice, that it would be "pull together, win together." How's that working out?
Does current AMR CEO Tom Horton and his executives really think for a minute that the employees of this airline will begin to trust him when he proposes to slash the quality of life for 8,000 pilots in order for a $25 billion company to save $4 million annually while at the same time one employee enjoys a $30 million mansion?
If this is Mr. Horton’s fair and equitable proposal on trust he might as well be telling the employees don’t worry, we will "pull together win together...again." Either way, his words are falling on deaf ears because as always, actions speak so loud we can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
