American Airlines Flight Attendants Rate Management: The Results Are Brutal

Several months ago, American Airlines management decided it would start scoring flight attendants, with a program called me@work. The idea is that the scores are based on customer experience, operational contributions, and delays.

As you’d expect, the union representing flight attendants didn’t take kindly to this, so it responded by (sort of) trolling management with its own scoring. Well, those results are now in, as flagged by View from the Wing, and… ouch!

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American management fails flight attendant survey

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents American’s nearly 30,000 flight attendants, decided to conduct a survey among members regarding their perception of management. This was called them@work, clearly intended to troll the me@work scoring that management tried to do of flight attendants.

The results have now been published, and the union claims that management has received a failing score. More than 8,000 flight attendants took part in the survey, to share how they feel about their relationship with inflight management, including the level of support they receive. The survey results include the following:

• 96.2% of flight attendants surveyed say that management hasn’t followed through on its promise to provide dedicated subject matter experts and increased support for flight attendants
• 84.1% of flight attendants surveyed say that they haven’t seen inflight managers provide the level of in-person support in the terminals that were promised, including assistance with catering, contractual issues, legalities, hotels, and transportation
• 81% of flight attendants surveyed say they don’t feel empowered to go above and beyond for customers, without fear of criticism or discipline from inflight management
• 72.6% of flight attendants surveyed say they’ve personally experienced the operational effects of excessive flight attendant removals, including TTS denials, staffing shortages, rescheduling, or reduced scheduling flexibility
• 61.4% of flight attendants surveyed say they have found inflight management to be unsupportive

The union goes on to share the following:

The assessment worked as intended, and your push for management accountability is already producing results. Inflight Management has reached out to APFA Leadership and provided assurances that meetings that previously could have been handled by phone or email will return to those more appropriate channels. This change should significantly reduce the number of Flight Attendants removed from the line for meetings. Fewer unnecessary removals mean fewer vacancies for the operation to absorb, less strain on staffing, and greater scheduling flexibility for Flight Attendants. It should also allow Inflight Management to spend more time where Flight Attendants need them most: providing meaningful support in the terminals and on the aircraft.

We said that if Inflight Management would not survey Flight Attendants about their relationship with management, APFA would do so and bring the results directly to management to drive change. These results make it clear that American must invest in the relationship between Flight Attendants and Inflight Management. Building trust and providing meaningful support are essential to creating the workplace and customer experience that American says they want to deliver.

The union is trolling here, but I can’t really blame them

What can one really say here? The union representing American flight attendants is obviously sort of trolling management here… but can you really blame them?

In theory, I’m all for flight attendants increasingly being scored for things other than just seniority, since it might help to change the service culture. However, it has to be more collaborative than what management proposed.

Also, management’s timing was simply awful. Management’s performance has certainly been dismal in recent times in terms of financial results, flight attendants had issued a vote of no confidence in management, and pilots had made subtle threats to the board regarding failures.

So of course when a union puts out a survey like this, results are going to be negative. For that matter, just over 25% of flight attendants participating in the survey isn’t exactly great participation. So it sure seems like those with grievances would be most likely to respond.

Again, I don’t blame the union here, but ultimately I wouldn’t read too much into this, and would just view this as typical catty drama between two opposing parties.

Perhaps the most alarming survey result is that 81% of flight attendants say they don’t feel empowered to go above and beyond for customers, without fear of criticism or discipline from inflight management. I’m not sure what exactly this is referring to, but that’s definitely not a way you want frontline employees to feel, if that actually represents the overall sentiment.

Bottom line

Several months ago, American management said it would start rating flight attendants with a me@work score, so the flight attendant union responded by rating management with a them@work score. Unsurprisingly, management failed pretty brutally, but that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. If anything, it’s interesting how low participation was, as only a little over 25% of flight attendants participated.

What do you make of these American management scores?