Showing posts with label American Airlines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Airlines. Show all posts

Thursday, April 17, 2008

More Woes For American Airlines

Still reeling from the grounding of it's MD-80 (just an old DC-9 with a different name) fleet AA is being hit with more labor unrest. Incensed over the awarding of $40M in bonuses to top executives, the workforce is taking action, including a clip on CNN where a recently commended flight attendant used her awards forum to lambaste her employers. Disgruntled employees have even set up a website to share AA horror stories. By comparison, American's feel-good "We Know Why You Fly" site has no feedback forums or even a Contact Us link!

But help could be coming soon for the frustrated traveler in the form of new regulations that require airlines to financially compensate (up to $800) bumped passengers. This should curtail the industry's practice of overbooking flights & then denying boarding to ticketed flyers. I've always hated this practice since it generally targets the lowest fare/least status passengers first. These tend to be the non-frequent flyers, often the elderly, who are totally bewildered by the situation & as I've witnessed, reduced to tears.