AAL Set to Foment Passenger Outrage

American Airlines pilots have ratified a new four-year contract offering an incremental $9.6-billion in added value over its term. While the agreement provides pilots higher pay and extensive quality-of-life improvements, American customers seeking upgrades are apt to be left wondering why their loyalty and dollars were summarily deemed secondary to the whims of the airline’s employees.

American’s new pilot contract comprises a provision germane to deadheading pilots. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Part 121 vernacular, the term deadheading pertains to pilots traveling as passengers for purpose of reaching their respective duty assignments. By way of example, a Chicago-based pilot scheduled to operate a flight departing Dallas would deadhead from ORD to DFW.

Deadheading differs from commuting insomuch as the latter term pertains to pilots living in cities other than their assigned bases. Expressed simply, commuting is ascribable to pilot choice, while deadheading is ascribable to airline choice.

American Airlines’s new pilot contract states deadheading pilots will henceforth be assigned the highest class of service for all transoceanic international flights, flights to Hawaii and Alaska, and flights extending south of the equator. Moreover, deadheading pilots on routes other than the aforementioned will initially be assigned economy-class seating in the following preference order: exit row aisle, exit row window, non-exit row aisle, non-exit row window. Finally, deadheading pilots assigned economy seats will remain in perpetuity atop first-class upgrade lists.

American Airlines currently offers its elite (customer) members complimentary space-available upgrades. By dint of the newly-ratified pilot contract, within 24-hours of a given flight’s departure, American pilots will—within the context of first-class upgrades—be prioritized ahead of Concierge Key and Executive Platinum members. Previously deadheading American pilots would receive first-class upgrades only after the entirety of the elite members traveling aboard the flight had been so accommodated.

American isn’t the first major U.S. airline to adopt such a policy. Pilots in the employ of United Airlines, in late 2020, secured a similar agreement.

That the optics of such agreements are unfavorable to the airlines facilitating and the pilots availing themselves of such is patently self-evident. Well-heeled travelers accustomed to perks deriving of the large sums of money they lavish upon airlines are wont to wax testy when denied upgrades. Informed the seats to which they aspire have been given to airline employees, the same, habitually comported  Concierge Key and Executive Platinum members may well fall into fits of outright apoplexy.

FMI: www.aa.com