The Dallas Morning News Aviation Biz Blog has THIS STORY on how American Airlines has notified the FAA that they may train management employees to serve as flight attendant crew in the event of a strike.  This move is likely a response to the APFA statement recently stating that they’ll move to ask the NMB (National Mediation Board) to declare an impasse, the first real step towards a strike.  I also consider it a move by AA to rattle its sabers just a little as well.

The airline did this once before in 1993 in anticipation of a strike by flight crew and while that strike ended somewhat disastrously for both parties and only with the intercession of the President, something did occur to me.  It worked poorly last time for two reasons.

First, AA was unable to fly a full schedule resulting in lots of cancellations as well as congestion on other airlines.   AA made preparations but it really didn’t put its heart into that attempt at strike breaking.  Second, the service component was abysmal.  Employees had been trained to serve in the more important safety roles but not the service roles.

It occurs to me that this time, it could work a lot better.  There is very little service component compared to 1993 for one.  Second, if they managed to keep their planes in the air, this could dramatically dampen labor unrest among the rest of the airline. 

In addition, American’s operations are more diversified now and I  kind of wonder if their operations aren’t modeling just how to combine flights and keep passengers moving for a while.  A strike would still be a disaster for both parties, in my opinion, but I kind of doubt that either party is going to back down.  AA’s flight attendants are notoriously militant and have been kind of spoiling for a strike for over 10 years but I don’t think there are many flight attendants who could withstand a very long strike financially. 

Moreover, AA has pretty good liquidity but that will start disappearing in a large cloud of smoke if there is a strike.  Their liquidity is what has kept financial analysts and investors off their backs.  Lose that liquidity and you’ll be looking at regime change real quick.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax