There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that American Airlines axed the contracts of their pilots just a few hours past Labor Day last month. Kind of adds insult to injury. I feel for the pilots having been around to watch the ugliness of Midway 1’s disintegration after failed Chapter 11 attempt in 1991. On the other hand, as the owner of a small business, I’ve also been an American Advantage customer for decades. It’s a tough spot actually.
After the past few weeks of maintenance write up, pilots calling in sick and generally bad airline publicity, I was thinking about the point the pilots might be trying to make to the management people at DFW.
Certainly they were fed up with being asked to absorb more cuts. They were also saying there really still is a line in the sand, despite what the management people and customers on the outside might think. I don’t think this is going to be Eastern Airlines all over again where employees shut the company down for good, but I do think management everywhere might just have called the death of organized labor a bit early. There’s life in them yet … and that’s not all bad either. [Read more…] about If I Were an American Airlines Pilot