The same middle managers who walk around with clip boards monitoring how many connecting passengers get left for D-10 stats.
If the pilots were empowered to be informed about connections and allowed the final say about push times, customer satisfaction just might go up. Most passengers will tolerate a reasonable delay to accommodate late runners.

United guy here. When you say the pilots aren’t allowed the final say about connections, what happens if he/she simply doesn’t allow the door to be closed in order to accommodate last minute passengers or standbys? I, as well as many others, do it when necessary and never hear a word about it. Are you telling me that if a Captain tells an agent to keep the door open, they have the option to ignore him and close it anyway? Not sure I buy that.

The official policy is that the flight is closed out D-10. Our agents are under pressure from middle management to abide by this. It’s commonly accepted that we don’t wait for late runners. Too many delays by the agents and it’s their job. CA’s will tell them to put the delay on the captain in certain situations. The D-10 has become an intense obsession at AA. It’s misguided and we all know it but it’s their airline to run. In my opinion this is one reason we are where we are.

You will get a call from the boss. When you try to reason about last flight out and we will be early etc., you will get the company reply about how important slamming that door at 10 prior is. I just don’t care anymore. I really feel bad about the poor people I leave behind but I have given up. We suck so bad it is really a shame.

We need to clean house. At the CEO level you need to rely on your managers telling you how it really is out there. I’m afraid those managers are naive and full of lies. If I were CEO I would start by firing any chief pilot that has been in his/her position longer than a couple years. It’s too easy to lose sight of what is going on out on the line. Make them have a 4 year tenure. Then back to the line, not a Check Airman position. Only after a couple years back in the trenches would you be eligible for another stint in the management position. Rumor is our highest pilot up the chain (Kimball Stone) has not flown the line since the mid 1990s.

I’m not sure removing Parker is the answer. I would start with Isom.

After hearing the idiotic rambling of information out of his mouth, I believe robert Isom is the problem.

Our managers are out of touch. They have little to no operations expertise in a business where the operation is the only thing that really matters. They obsess over theoretical ideas and policies even when the outcome is completely contrary to solving the problem at hand.

Leave half the passengers behind on the last flight of the day to an outstation.

“we closed the door D-10, what a success!”

The folks over at Amtrak aren’t too happy, maybe Richard Anderson will show up soon.

I heard Ed Bastian is being lured over. He's then buying Spirit, and going to take on Frontier head on. Source: FA.

That would be smart....lure LATAM from AA to get CEO fired, then leave company to replace said CEO and deal with the consequences....sounds like a plot from a South Park episode.

Still better source than a check airman.

Barely.

Hopefully, the board is smart enough to look around the industry and see that happy employees=big money.

It's not a secret. Airlines make much more money with employees who don't mind going an extra mile from time to time.