Bob Crandall’s letter to a disgruntled American pilot

Obviously the pilots are also disrespecting the group that is paying them - the customers. Not to mention what are they going to do quit and work for someone else for more money? There aren't other options for most of them. Sure you want quality pilots since safety is important but a number of other jobs protect people and get significantly less pay. I'm a firm believe that the whole system of paying pilots/FAs has to be rethought and something completely different implemented. I also think a merger with US Airways is inevitable (not that it is necessarily a good thing).

One other thing that is generally missing (in my perspective) from airline labor relations (and other areas) is an internal corporate recognition that positive labor relations has a value. Ideally, they should attempt to quantify that present value, so that when someone proposes to trash what you have, you can point out that they are costing the company real money - not just hurt feelings. Some people in corporations don't understand value unless it can be quantified... How much has Southwest saved based on their labor relations policies vs. the legacy carriers? I would guess that Southwest would put that number in the seven figures, at least.

@German Expat -- Don't worry about the route network to Europe. They have a plan to fix that, and it's called US Airways. I'm more concerned about how they will ever build up a route network to Asia.

Don't think he said anything surprising in the response... pretty much common sense, what any businessman worth his salt would believe. Did the pilot really think Crandall would approve of the rejection of the LBFO, and then validate the current industrial actions, which are tarnishing AA's reputation?

I also did not see him address the network deficiencies. I did the status match and will fly enough for keeping EXP for 2013 but will have a hard time doing this going forward with their very limited options going to Europe.