I have long wondered about some of the pronouncements from "Economist Dan," but I do agree with the assertion that - in the scheme of things - the flight attendants are relatively inconsequential to AA's labor cost disadvantage, if there is one (and I believe there is, but I know many here disagree). The reality is that, overall, flight attendants really don't matter as much to the cost/productivity equation for an airline when compared with M&E and especially the pilots.
Yes, in sheer numbers, there are more flight attendants than either of those other work groups, but their labor and pay is the most "commoditized" of any of the groups - it's the fastest, cheapest, and easiest to replace. And, except for any glaring disparities in productivity, their labor is largely just a function of the schedule - their work is nearly entirely out of their hands, and just correlated to the number of planes and the number of flights.
The far larger cost impacts to AA related to labor are driven not by the flight attendants, but by the pilots and mechanics. There are thousands of mechanics and pilots. The pilots obviously make the most - by far - of any of the work groups, on average. In addition, I continue to believe that much of AA's competitive disadvantage vis a vis competitors is not in base pay, or even benefits and pensions, but rather tied to the inherent inflexibility built into the union contracts - again, specifically with the pilots and mechanics. It is the pilot contract that limits longhaul flying and regional flying, first and foremost, and the TWU contract also has SCOPE provisions. Plus, bankrupt carriers have used court-imposed "flexibility" to outsource overhauls and lay off thousands of mechanics.
I'm not criticizing these contract inflexibilities, per se, nor debating why they're there - I recognize that what the company sees as "flexibility" naturally means "jobs" to the workforce. No question about that - the general pattern of the last decade has been AA's competitors using bankruptcy to achieve "flexibility," and leveraging that "flexibility" to lay off or not hire thousands of people. And - I think it's fair to say - that adds up to real money, real quickly. Now, does it add up to $800M annually? I don't know. Probably not. But, all added together, it does add up to hundreds of millions, I suspect.
