Airline gets in hiring mode
American to add flight attendants
Passengers flying American will soon see some new faces on board.
American Airlines said Wednesday that it will be hiring new flight attendants for the first time in a more than a decade.
“We look forward to welcoming new faces and working together to bring a fresh energy to our team,” Lauri Curtis, American’s vice president of flight service, said in a statement.
The airline is looking to recruit more than 1,500 flight attendants, posting the new slots next month. Their training starts in January.
The new hires are needed, as more than 2,200 flight attendants accepted buyouts and will begin leaving the airline in December.
Airline spokesman Bruce Hicks said the hiring push helps American take advantage of new productivity measures negotiated with its attendants union as the airline reorganizes under federal bankruptcy protection.
Leslie Mayo, spokeswoman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, said hiring new attendants is long overdue.
“It’s been 11 years since we’ve seen a new flight attendant,” Mayo said. The buyouts, she said, were “to get our senior flight attendants a way to leave ... with some dignity and $40,000. And it also gives our junior flight attendants some movement within the system that hasn’t seen movement in 11 years.”
American’s parent company, AMR, filed for bankruptcy reorganization in November, and the airline has been seeking ways to shave its annual labor costs by roughly $1.1 billion.
While it has worked out deals with its attendants and mechanics, American is still trying to reach an agreement with its pilots, whom the airline has accused of calling in sick and filing nuisance maintenance reports to disrupt the airline’s flight schedule.
On Tuesday, American sought a 30day extension with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. If approved, the airline would have until Jan. 28 to file its restructuring plan.
The airline said in the filing it needed more time to work out the plan’s details and resolve labor issues with its pilots and its regional carrier, American Eagle.
Restructuring costs contributed to AMR reporting a loss of $238 million for the third quarter on Wednesday. Without those costs and special charges, the airline said, it would have had a net profit of $110 million.
American CEO Tom Horton said in a letter to employees that the $110 million profit was a $272 million gain compared with the same period last year, and that the carrier successfully cut costs in the last quarter.
But Vicki Bryan, senior high-yield analyst at corporate bond research service Gimme Credit, said that it was the bankruptcy protection from creditors and declining fuel costs that helped the airline’s bottom line.
“It’s not paying all the bills, and then they got a savings on fuel,” she said. “This is nothing to brag about.”