Originally Posted by
jabone
As a consumer what should I know?
Whatever is going on has impacted my travel. On the outbound I got within two hours of my destination and my return has been canceled.
I prefer to fly when the cockpit is full of happy people.
I don't have a 60 hour a month job nor do I have a great 401k matching program (pension- dont even know what that means. )
So help the unwashed understand why we should care.
IF you are a member of the traveling public and NOT management, then allow me to just state that the cheap airfares (subsidized by employee wages.......of course, just like the high fuel bills that the airlines are/have been facing) have caused us to lose a lot of sympathy towards the flying public. Although, I sense that again IF you are part of the traveling public and not management, then most of your travels involve business and not the $199RT to FL.
Airline employees have watched their professions go down the schitter while the traveling public has been able to fly cheaper than what it costs them in gas to drive to their destination. That last part is just plain WRONG. From the Northeast to FL should be no less than $300RT, to the West Coast $500RT, and to Europe a least a grand RT, but I digress.....
You prefer to fly with happy pilots? Guess what? Your pilots would prefer to be happy, but they along with our profession have been raped by management with the help of the courts for about three decades now. Perhaps you can understand that in our own little world there comes a time when enough's enough. Think..........the movie Falling Down. You can only push people so far and this profession's been pushed enough. Hopefully the wheels start coming off the bus so we can perhaps reverse the course a little.
You also still hold this perception of the airline piloting career that was true perhaps 30-40 years ago but is a complete fantasy even just 10 years ago much less today.
So what should you do regarding your travel plans on AA? Perhaps the best thing you can do is avoid traveling on them during these trying times. Maybe that'll send a message to their management.