American Airlines
Article II
| The Dallas Morning News It must be more pleasant these days to shovel coal into a blast furnace for a living than to work at American Airlines. For months now, its thousands of employees have had to wonder whether and how soon the company whose paychecks buy their groceries and pay their bills will roll belly-up and float to the top of the tank. They have had to reflect that the very best they can hope for is a draconian salary cut. That's the cheerful alternative to losing their jobs, their health insurance, their kids' college funds. It must be awful. Travelers in North Texas are so used to thinking of American as the biggest Joe in town, the Bigfoot that rules the aviation swamp, that it's probably hard to get used to all this. It was just a couple of years ago that American was swelling like a tick, snapping up other airlines and flight routes. I got in the habit of buying everything, even a burger or a tank of gas, with one of those frequent-flier mile-a-dollar credit cards, with the confidence of a prudent investor buying Treasury bonds. Well, I'm no business expert, but people who are seem to generally agree that American has suffered as much from circumstance as from anything: the terrorist attacks, the slowing economy, the generous, union-protected salaries that once made the mighty carrier so attractive to work for. Even now, with bankruptcy averted by inches, with employees exhausted by the stress and the tension, the union votes, the 11th-hour uproar over secret bonuses for top execs, nobody knows exactly what the company's future will be, other than to predict with certainty that it will be different. My experience as a traveler is pretty limited and anecdotal, but I generally stick with American because of the aforementioned frequent-flier card. The last few times I have dealt with the airline, I have been surprised and impressed that every employee I saw was professional and pleasant despite circumstances that have made the travel business a lot harder than it used to be. I had a long wait, for instance, the day I had to go out to the airport to conduct some complicated ticket-switching business. The travelers in the line were restless and impatient. Their feet hurt. Their suitcases were heavy and their babies were howling and some of them took it out on the agents when they finally got to the front of the line. But the agent I got was kind and friendly, patiently trying to unravel the complicated switcheroo I needed to make. This was around the time the airline's first-quarter losses were revealed to be $10 million a day – that's around $7,000 a minute – and she was as friendly and efficient as if we had been making a commercial. It's certainly not American's, or any airline's, fault that post-9-11 security requirements sometimes serve to make travel frankly unpleasant. Mike, the Loved One, was recently subjected to airport hyperscrutiny after the foil in a packet of chewing gum in his pocket set off an alarm. He came away irate not on his own behalf, but because of a passenger behind him who was also pulled out of line for more intensive screening. It was a little girl, about 4 or 5 years old, with curly red hair and a smocked gingham dress. She was ordered to pull her little pink sandals off and stand, arms outstretched, for wanding. Mike was furious. "If that child is a terrorist, then I'm all for profiling," he huffed while I pulled him toward the gate. This is certainly not the fault of the airline, but it's the kind of incident that may have made that child's parents think that next time, instead of flying, they'll drive to Disney World or to visit Meemaw in Little Rock. Can you blame them? We got on a plane full of other people similarly snappish after their long security-screening wait. The plane was full, and there wasn't enough overhead bin space. It was hot. This was the same day that the whole perks-for-executives scandal blew up and nearly derailed the hard-won union concessions needed to hold off bankruptcy. But the chatty pilot announced points of interest as we flew over. One of the flight attendants did magic tricks to distract a fretful child. They made little jokes while they handed out the pretzels. Those are just little anecdotes, of course. But I wonder how many of us could be that composed and professional with our livelihoods at stake, with angry corporate bickering going on, with dismal headlines about the whole mess on the front page of the paper in every slumbering passenger's lap. That's one better than stoicism or determination. That's class. |