One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Today, many of you are reading this message from an airport, layover hotel, crew room, or while deadheading around the system. The last four days have been difficult on you, your fellow crew members, and all American “team members” — not to mention our passengers.

This operational disruption was not sudden or unanticipated, yet management’s response has been woefully lacking. But then, why should Winter Storm Fern be any different? Failing to exit the global pandemic with an aggressive strategy to compete, a misguided and costly new distribution scheme, a myopic focus on domestic markets like Knoxville and El Paso, and failing to capitalize on the premium travel boom are just some of the ways American has missed the mark during the last five years.

While this weekend’s disruption has had a profound impact on our pilots and passengers, the sickness runs deeper than this most recent symptom. For most pilots, relative to their peers at Delta or United, it has represented a six-figure difference in compensation during the past three years alone. That is a significant disparity in our take-home pay, and a significant cost savings for the company. Just this year, Delta will pay more than $500 million in profit sharing to their pilots alone, which is more than American’s full-year earnings for the entire company.

Yet management just paid the same lip service on this morning’s earnings call for the reasons behind American’s continued industry-trailing financial and operational performance. Along with optimism over more premium seats, we heard whining about weather-related disruptions and having to pay “richer” contracts than their peers, all while conveniently omitting American’s $1 billion-plus cost advantage in profit-sharing alone. Lest we forget, we heard those very same excuses last year. 

And in the meantime, management changed their bonus structure to protect their own compensation.

Yes, you read that correctly. For 2025, management’s bonuses were no longer tied to pre-tax margin or income. Management bonuses are now based on relative EBITDAR margin improvement, which is business school-speak for “we don’t have a plan to catch our competitors, but we still want the stock options.”

But the disparity does not end with the financial performance or your profit-sharing check. Management’s recent decision not to implement the agreed-to Line Check Pilot provisions — a long-established program at Delta and United — is one more indication of how the company will step over a dollar to pick up a dime.

Later today, I will file five different grievances: two for the absolute degradation in our hotels in direct contravention of our negotiated language from the 2023 Collective Bargaining Agreement, and two others protesting the subjective implementation of check pilot schedules. The final is the expedited grievance over Line Check Pilot implementation.

Your APA leadership will continue holding management accountable and defending the contract our pilots ratified, and our pilots will continue operating safely, professionally, and with pride in what we do. But no one should confuse our professionalism for acceptance of American’s continued underperformance.