Scott Kirby's Letter to APA BOD: November 11, 2014
To: APA Board of Directors
Today the Company passed a comprehensive joint collective bargaining agreement (JCBA) proposal to APA that does not include the anticipated request for adding five seats to our larger regional jets. We have excluded that request, even though we believe it is in the Company’s best interest, in an effort to build much needed trust into our labor-management relations at the new American.
Most of you know that I strongly believe adding five more seats to these larger RJs is in the best interests of American Airlines and our pilots. Allowing our RJ providers to properly configure those jets with 81 seats, rather than being constrained to 76 per the APA contract, would increase the number of passengers flowing onto the mainline. And we know that more passengers flowing to the mainline is good for everyone at American including our pilots. My own conservative estimate is that adding these five seats would mean tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue annually to American. Equally important to the additional revenue, though, is that those five seats greatly enhance our network feed to grow the mainline – particularly in international markets.
We know there is a lot of history and skepticism around this issue that causes our pilots to believe this change would harm the careers of mainline pilots. Over the last several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking with pilots and explained my macro-economic views about this issue. I’ve concluded through those conversations that most pilots, once they understand the economics today between RJs and the mainline, become more open to this change. However, economic rationale aside, given the prior history surrounding this issue, it is understandably difficult for our pilots to feel good about the request for five more seats today.
It seems the reason it is difficult to convince our pilots that this change is in their best interest – and not some nefarious scheme to harm them in some way – is because the pilots of American do not fully trust management. Given the history of labor relations at American and US Airways, we can appreciate why that feeling exists. But we want to change that perception and the entire leadership team at AA is working very hard to do so.
Trust is vital to our ability to move forward and build the greatest airline in the world – together. So, even though we believe the scope request is in the best interest of all involved, we believe that establishing trust with our employees is even more important. Today’s proposal omits a request to add five seats to the 76-seat jets as a sign of good faith to demonstrate the trust we want to build. Our proposal gives American pilots the highest pay rates amongst our large, network peers, and does so well before anyone could have contemplated. It is my hope that as we build a stronger, more trusting relationship that, together, we will be able to reach the best economic considerations for the 100,000 employees of American and the Company in the future.
So today we take an important step to jumpstart the trust-building process. We would ask each of you move forward in a similar spirit. Building the new American requires all of us to think differently about how we work together – your management team is committed to a new approach and we look forward to working with APA to restore American to greatness.
Sincerely,
/s/ Scott Kirby
To: APA Board of Directors
Today the Company passed a comprehensive joint collective bargaining agreement (JCBA) proposal to APA that does not include the anticipated request for adding five seats to our larger regional jets. We have excluded that request, even though we believe it is in the Company’s best interest, in an effort to build much needed trust into our labor-management relations at the new American.
Most of you know that I strongly believe adding five more seats to these larger RJs is in the best interests of American Airlines and our pilots. Allowing our RJ providers to properly configure those jets with 81 seats, rather than being constrained to 76 per the APA contract, would increase the number of passengers flowing onto the mainline. And we know that more passengers flowing to the mainline is good for everyone at American including our pilots. My own conservative estimate is that adding these five seats would mean tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue annually to American. Equally important to the additional revenue, though, is that those five seats greatly enhance our network feed to grow the mainline – particularly in international markets.
We know there is a lot of history and skepticism around this issue that causes our pilots to believe this change would harm the careers of mainline pilots. Over the last several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking with pilots and explained my macro-economic views about this issue. I’ve concluded through those conversations that most pilots, once they understand the economics today between RJs and the mainline, become more open to this change. However, economic rationale aside, given the prior history surrounding this issue, it is understandably difficult for our pilots to feel good about the request for five more seats today.
It seems the reason it is difficult to convince our pilots that this change is in their best interest – and not some nefarious scheme to harm them in some way – is because the pilots of American do not fully trust management. Given the history of labor relations at American and US Airways, we can appreciate why that feeling exists. But we want to change that perception and the entire leadership team at AA is working very hard to do so.
Trust is vital to our ability to move forward and build the greatest airline in the world – together. So, even though we believe the scope request is in the best interest of all involved, we believe that establishing trust with our employees is even more important. Today’s proposal omits a request to add five seats to the 76-seat jets as a sign of good faith to demonstrate the trust we want to build. Our proposal gives American pilots the highest pay rates amongst our large, network peers, and does so well before anyone could have contemplated. It is my hope that as we build a stronger, more trusting relationship that, together, we will be able to reach the best economic considerations for the 100,000 employees of American and the Company in the future.
So today we take an important step to jumpstart the trust-building process. We would ask each of you move forward in a similar spirit. Building the new American requires all of us to think differently about how we work together – your management team is committed to a new approach and we look forward to working with APA to restore American to greatness.
Sincerely,
/s/ Scott Kirby
