Goodness, this certainly can’t be good for morale, or make frontline employees feel great.
Continue reading: American Crew Rooms In Deplorable State, With Bed Bugs?!
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This is actually quite shocking. I would expect the space to look like a typical corporate office building cafeteria / employee lounge- basic / sterile looking, but clean, orderly/organized, and of course maintained.
In addition to the furniture being in a deplorable state, it looks like a mess with all the cords being strung across the floor. And did they furnish it with discarded furniture from an Admirals Club after it was renovated?
Quite surprising to see this at AA's largest hub.
This is something the union should have taken up. That being said it's not an excuse. AA could at least take the 1990 AC furniture which is in pretty good shape, use it for crew rooms and give some new furniture (along with outlets) to the DFW C club (among others).
Sadly this is an example of one of the better AA crew rooms out there…
You should see the sleep rooms where the lights haven’t been turned on since 1982.
@ AA FA -- Ugh, I'm really sorry! Do you have a sense of whether AA crew rooms are much worse than those of competitors, or is this just the industry standard?
I have asked SVP of inflight about this directly. The response was “yes I know they are in a really bad shape. The hard part is I can’t go to finance and tell them what the return on investment will be for updating the crew rooms”
I’m a UA FA. I’ve never seen anything this bad in the whole system. On the bright side they have windows unlike many of ours
I wish I could give you a Helpful Heart. You literally made me laugh out loud!
@AA FA
That's just awful. It's the relatively little things like this that can really make a difference to the front line. Like, replacing the furniture and cleaning the rooms isn't a massive line item. Just take a few mil out of the stock buybacks (or Isom's salary) and it's more than paid for. There's just no excuse for this. Penny-pinching doesn't even begin to describe it.
Shame on AA Management. How much would 2 dozen new quality recliners cost ? About 15- 18 Grand (based on a recent Lay-Z-Boy purchase) ?
Yes it's not revenue generating. But when you treat your people well they tend to perform better and with a better attitude towards the company.
This is really bad. It sheds light that the problems with AA start at the top.
When an employer treats you like this, it's hard to be pleasant to your customers. Makes it difficult to blame FAs...they are human not robots.
They should be as nice and clean and tasteful and insect free as the passenger facing facilities.. ….what the heck is the matter with the crew base chief?
Horrible inattentive management.
Which really makes no sense. Like, what was the return on investment for the new AA Dallas headquarters building? I’ve seen pics of that building, and the corporate employees have a pretty nice space to work out of.
What's the ROI on having to take planes out of commission to fumigate for bed bugs?
Careful.. don't compare to Global or you'll get James sending you nasty private messages like he has to a few people who posted videos...
That’s exactly what is wrong with the company. If they put these chairs in headquarters they would revolt. One chair there cost as much as two new ones would for a crew room.
At the time they were looking into a “marketing partnership as a way to get new chairs in the crew rooms.” That was a year ago… so that didn’t pan out. We would have to have some ad plastered on chairs to get new ones. American views its employees as a cost not an investment. That is where the issue is
But you guys are at W.A.R. with the company. Why should they do anything nice for you. Get a hotel room or sit in the food court.
Why are you sleeping g at the airport? You're not provided hotel rooms on layovers? Oh, you must be talking about you CHIOSING to live outside of base and commuting. Well, you did this to yourself then.
The state of this lounge is set based on market share in New York, to align incentives for employees of all levels
Chris, these rooms are for crew on extended layovers, whether a scheduled long layover or one that becomes long due to a flight delay.
Now the American employees can experience shitty customer experience like they give to the common folk.
Wait til the bedbugs are carried home and infect crew's furniture. Will AA get sued for new furniture?
If they're on a layover, they're in a hotel. You're confusing this with airport sit, reserve and those who commute.
It would appear to the casual observer that; instead of the ‘bean counters’ reporting to senior management the poor financial health of the airline, it is the ‘bean counters’ who are the root cause of it!
Hey, at least they get a nice recliner chair. What do we get in the lounge for paying customers? A prayer in finding a seat - and when we do it's a hard old lobby chair with idiots putting their feet on the table.
Still waiting for someone to point out that crew carries luggage on board. Bedbugs may tag along and find a better home in passenger luggage.
When the crew provides service as dire as American's crews, why should the company waste money in making them comfortable?
Bust the union, fire crew who cause complaints and use some of the savings to pay for the new crew rooms!
Any money for these will come straight out of margin, and margins drive the oversided bonuses that execs make.
No chance in hades that executives will take a smaller bonus.
Maybe if you make them more comfortable, they will provide better service? Unions aren’t evil, fyi.
Maybe if the company was already doing nice things for the employees, they wouldn’t be at “W.A.R.” with them?
George, your submission reads like you have taken the narrative straight out of the Trump business ethics playbook. Advocate this form of business practice and expect to fail as AA are proving so admirably.
Before the recent renovation, this is what the first class section of the the SEA BA lounge looked like…
@CHRIS
You're the one claiming that AA is getting hotels for FAs on a 4 hour layover, so not like you have room to talk lol.
@kenneth,
How about when the bedbugs get carried on a flight and get transferred to paying passengers?
The vibe kind of checks out for DFW. But even by AA standards, this is pathetic. Especially if you’ve seen what they’ve done with their HQ.
so sad to see for AA crew members...
at some point they figure out the difference between the way their company and others are run
While these certainly look bad, and I certainly wouldn't want to stay in them, let alone try to actually get some "rest", it does make me wonder. What about the other jobs at the airport and the rest facilities? Like, what does ramp crew rest look like? TSA? Customer service and gate agents? I do feel if we were to peel back the curtains, we'd find many similar conditions at other jobs. I've seen the rest facilities that train engineers and conductors have to use, and, it's not any better, or worse.
Not trying to defend it, but, there is some perspective I think that is lost. It would sure be swell if they at the very minimum had clean and operational rest facilities, even if they are basic. No excuses there. AA can, and should, do BBetter.
Wonder what the crew rooms look like with Qatar, Emirates, Etihad, Singapore....
No wonder AA is so bad, if the crew gets treated like this, my goodness, what do they expect them to treat passengers like?
This is certainly bad no matter what, but I will say that DFW Terminal C is being renovated as we speak. They're intentionally showing the worst rooms that are going to be replaced any day now.
Thank you for sharing this!
Some may think well, y’all don’t have to use the rooms? However some based such as PHX and
LAX have 80 percent of the base serving reserve. As part of reserve we have to report at the airport for 6 hour shifts. Guess where we sitting? On those broken ass chairs.
AA needs a whole overhaul from the ground up. Just shut it all down
ramp crews typically have regular break rooms. In-flight crew may have hours to wait if flying reserves or arriving from their homes city which may involve a red-eye. Different work groups and situations.
No DECENT company would let their employee's break room look like that. Unacceptable. Do better American. No wonder your employees have a crappy attitude.
How about Robert Isom and/or upper management take a 1% pay cut, I'm pretty sure that should be enough to furnish the rooms for FAs.
While everyone deserves to have a clean break room with functional chairs, other staff at the airport would generally only use the break room during a ~15-60 minute break. Whereas airline cabin crew need to use the break room during layovers and delays, which could be for many hours at a time. Airline cabin crew are also customer facing, so you would think American would want to provide them with a break room that would make them feel proud of the company that they are the face of to customers.
How about a "Go Fund Me Page" to help AA to afford new crew room furniture. That might embarrass AA into doing the right thing. If that is possible. Anybody know what they did with the old Admirals Club furnishings?
David Seymour is very well aware of these issues. He was literally walked through a crew room and shown the state of the furniture and could not have cared less. Meanwhile headquarters is pristine.
The comment made by mgmt about how does this affect the bottom line, if actually said, is Extremely shortsighted. That's the viewpoint of ignorance.