APA personnel....please confirm or deny

[eolesen]

There's fair use of a trademark, and there's unfair use of a trademark. Media reporting would fall under fair use. What APA did was inflammatory and unfair use. Not at all unlike the case where one of the European LCC's used a photo of France's president and now-wife in an ad without their consent, was subsequently sued and had to pay damages to the first couple.

 

[Skymess]

I dissagree.
Pilots negotiate with management, who in theory work for the stockholders.

Management has not been willing to come to a fair deal.

Management has not done a very good job at running the company either, they squandered the concessions and goodwill of the workforce by stuffing millions in bonuses in their pockets. The ad is really targeted towards stockholders and creditors who may see the animosity created by this management team as a threat to their investments.

Maybe if management feels that their jobs are at risk they may be more willing to negotiate, or maybe a new team would realize that in order to provide good service in a service industry you need happy employees.

While I agree with you that AA management needs to realize that happy employees make for better service, I disagree that the billboard was a smart move on the pilot union's part.

I completely agree with WingN A Prayer in post 14.

The stockholders are only a percentage of our passengers. My experience dealing with most people on the airplanes is that even if something as innocuous as a traytable is broken they worry that the airworthiness of the airplane is questionable as a result and start obsessing we are going to crash. Talking them off the ledge in that situation isn't always easy but the assurance that "if the pilots and flight attendants are willing to fly on here you can bet we're safe" usually calms them down. When you see a billboard that states we are flying unsafe airplanes and we are all still flying them it kind of takes the confidence away and also takes away the FAs ability to emphatically state that everything is ok. Passengers have neverending faith in the God like ability of pilots and even though I don't always like the God complex that many get as a result of this adulation, I'd like to believe for myself that the pilots wouldn't be flying things that are unsafe. Posting a sign that states they are flying broken down airplanes is not a good way to get a raise if you chase off your passengers.

 

[eolesen]

You'll have a hard time convincing me that the target of that billboard was shareholders. It was customers.

Only a very few people deliberately buy stock in a given company. Employees and activists like Evelyn Davis. Other than that, the days of shareholders actually caring about an individual stock are long gone.

Hell, with AMR being so heavily institutionally owned, the majority of the stockholders don't even know they're partial stockholders in AMR unless they bother to ask the administrator of their 401K what stocks make up the portfolio...

 

[WingNaPrayer]

There's fair use of a trademark, and there's unfair use of a trademark. Media reporting would fall under fair use. What APA did was inflammatory and unfair use. Not at all unlike the case where one of the European LCC's used a photo of France's president and now-wife in an ad without their consent, was subsequently sued and had to pay damages to the first couple.

There appears to be a double standard in your logic here. It is fair use for the media to show a trademark while reporting on the exact same information that was on that billboard. But, when the pilots put the exact same information on the billboard, and don't use any trademark, constitutes inflammatory and unfair use? How? The fact that AA had 200K+ flight cancellations/delays last year was well publicized in the media, especially the two local rags that are distributed in the same area as the billboard.

It seems, to me anyway, that if a legal challenge were to come up on the pilot's union over the billboard, (a billboard that does not use any AMR logo mind you) that all they would need do is file a quick MSJ and attach all of the newspaper articles and videos of local news broadcasts about the exact same information to have it thrown out.

Sure, you'd have to go a long, long way but you could probably find a judge that says the case has merit, or who would even rule in AMR's favor, but it would just get overturned and no judge likes to have a reversal on his or her record.

While the BB was tasteless, and everyone who sees/saw it most likely knew exactly what it meant, I don't see where it constitutes unfair use. Telling the truth is not unfair use of the information and since they didn't use any of AMR's logos or other trademarks . . . . . see my confusion with your theory?

 

[WingNaPrayer]

Only a very few people deliberately buy stock in a given company. Employees and activists like Evelyn Davis. Other than that, the days of shareholders actually caring about an individual stock are long gone.

Hell, with AMR being so heavily institutionally owned, the majority of the stockholders don't even know they're partial stockholders in AMR unless they bother to ask the administrator of their 401K what stocks make up the portfolio...

I hear that! Hell, I have my proxy buried here somewhere on my desk and unless I accidentally run across it before the deadline, I probably won’t even bother to vote since the institutional holders outnumber the smaller investor and pretty much give their proxy to AMR to vote as they wish.

Everything is a shoe-in and all the employee proposals added again this year will get flushed.