Degraded Service Is Not A Contract Violation: Ruling Backs American Airlines Flight Attendant Staffing Cuts – View from the Wing

American Airlines reduced the number of flight attendants working its widebody and premium domestic flights during the pandemic. Flight attendants weren’t serving extensive meals then, and there weren’t as many passengers on board.

When the pandemic ended, the airline didn’t restore staffing levels. The union complained that this violated their 2014 contract, and filed a grievance. They lost the staffing grievance this week – American Airlines has broad latitude to set flight attendant staffing levels and workloads, as long as cabin crew receive their required meal and rest breaks.

And I’m not sure the union actually cares? After all they just completed a new contract and didn’t push to put minimum staffing levels in it!

American Airlines Cut Flight Attendant Staffing

American began reducing onboard staffing before the pandemic. Then in 2020, American Airlines further reduced flight attendant staffing,

• To one above FAA legal minimums on international widebody and transcon flights
• To the legal minimum on Boeing 787-8 aircraft

American Airlines Boeing 787-9

Here’s the current staffing levels:

American’s 787-9s are, today, staffed at more than the legal minimum and they want the FAA to allow them to operate with the fewest flight attendants legally allowed although they say this would be in situations where a crewmember was unable to fly.

Here’s What’s Changed Onboard

According to the union, the Purser and galley positions are especially overworked, and flight attendants are forced to shift work to different times during the flight and to rush service.

Generally what’s been eliminated is a dedicated galley flight attendant, who also now has to work an aisle. Some flight attendants now have to move between cabins. For instance, the purser now floats between first and business class, instead of performing first class service while the number five flight attendant stays in the galley. (The #7 flight attendant works the left aisle alone until the purser comes to assist.)

Service takes longer, but the work day of flight attendants isn’t longer, and flight attendants aren’t held to service standards for this. The arbitrator said that the decision would be different if there were timeliness standards for completing service! American’s expert report found that up to 40% of flight attendant on board time was ‘personal time’ inclusive of meals and breaks.

Why The Union Lost

The airline won its arbitration because reduced staffing itself doesn’t violate their union contract, because flight attendants still get their contractual and required breaks, and providing customers with less service is a business decision. American had argued,

• they offer much less service than they did 20 years ago, so staffing levels should be lower, for instance premium meal service has been degraded (e.g. flight attendants don’t cook eggs to order)
• current staffing levels still allow flight attendants to take contractual breaks
• reduced staffing matches competitors
• the airline paid ghost riders to watch nearly 200 flight attendants in action and documented that they aren’t overworked

American argued that fewer flight attendants doesn’t mean worse service. They cite customer satisfaction scores having gone up since they reduced staffing! But that’s silly, they’re comparing satisfaction to the depths of the pandemic where service was mostly suspended. Meal service takes longer than it used to and their own expert report cites service tradeoffs like flight attendants not getting around to hanging jackets, yet says that even without missing tasks there’s still enough time for contracted meals and breaks.

The union said that a reasonable workload was set by initial staffing levels after the last (2014) contract went into effect, but the arbitrator said that was a reasonable workload but not the only reasonable workload.

Ultimately the 2014 contract set out the required rest and meal breaks that flight attendants receive. They still get those, and have personal time on top. They aren’t penalized for taking longer to provide service, and those are hours they’re being paid for. It’s up to the company whether a degraded service is something they want to provide, and that’s not a violation of the union contract – and also not something the union fought to change in its new contract, either.