Lest one believe that the APFA was going to meekly accept its contract and go forward quietly . . .

Surprise.  They aren’t.  APFA President Laura Glading has communicated that: “Now we need to work together to get rid of American Airlines management.”  Glading says that the goal of the contract was to provide a mechanism to support a merger between US Airways and American Airlines with US Airways management taking over.

There is no doubt that APFA leadership does want that merger to happen.  They’re angry and they want to show it to the current AA management, who, in fairness, has earned the enmity.  But I’m not sure that rank and file saw it as quite the same purpose.  The APFA membership are tired, beat up and fairly miserable.  Yes, they’re angry too but the chatter I saw out there prior to the vote seem to indicate a certain inevitableness to the process.

The APA is now demanding information from AA to back up its filing for Section 1113 terms.  This amuses me since their contention is that the contract was worth less savings than the Section 1113 terms are.  So . . . why the hell didn’t you vote for the contract?

Because your membership is angry as hell and likely wouldn’t vote for any deal ever proposed by AA management.

I think that the APA is now officially irrelevant in most of the bankruptcy process.  It denied itself a seat at the table by voting their contract down and trying to get that leverage back by challenging AA in court is a somewhat desperate move.  The bankruptcy judge essentially agreed with American’s terms except in two relatively minor areas and where he did disagree, he provided a roadmap to AA to refile its motion and win.

This is going to be painful to watch the APA relegated to the sidelines and with a terrible contract to boot.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax