American Crew Rooms In Deplorable State, With Bed Bugs?!

Goodness, this certainly can’t be good for morale, or make frontline employees feel great.

The dire state of American’s crew rooms

It’s normal for airlines to have crew rooms for both pilots and flight attendants. This is a place that they can hang out before flights or during connections. These crew rooms often have some quiet areas with reclining chairs, so that flight attendants can get some rest, especially if they’re commuters, and have an extended period of time before they’re flying.

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@xJonNYC shares some social media posts of the conditions that some of these crew rooms are in. For example, take a look at the reclining seats in American’s flight attendant crew room at Dallas Fort Worth Airport (DFW), in Terminal C.

For one, the furniture is in absolutely awful condition. I mean, this makes the Global Airlines A380 interior look luxurious, by comparison (I kid… sort of!). 😉 But perhaps the bigger issue is that a crew member reports finding a bedbug crawling around the room.

The bathrooms in this lounge are reportedly often in such bad shape that they’re out of service, and crews have to use the bathrooms in the terminal. Pictures are also shared of the crew room at Los Angeles Airport (LAX), in Terminal 5. While the furniture isn’t quite as worn, something doesn’t quite look right… 😉

The sad thing is that the above aren’t even reportedly the worst of these crew rooms. Rather, this is just the standard that American has across its system.

Hopefully American addresses these issues

Admittedly crew rooms aren’t exactly public facing, revenue generating facilities. I also understand that the furniture is probably used a lot, and therefore, gets worn. However, the wear and tear is so bad that you can’t help but just instantly be a bit disappointed that a company would let a facility be this run down.

Of course the even bigger problem is the bed bugs, since that poses a major health and safety concern for flight attendants, especially as they board flights headed to points across the globe.

Are updates to these facilities just not within budget for American? Or is there no one who is empowered enough who has been made aware of this situation?

One flight attendant shares bringing up these concerns with a senior manager at the airline, and being told that they know the rooms are in bad shape, but they struggle to go to finance and show them what the return on investment is in updating these. I think that philosophy probably sums up what has gotten American to the point it’s at.

At some point years ago, the airline was reportedly looking at a marketing partnership to get new chairs in the crew rooms (meaning there would’ve been ads plastered all over the furniture), but that didn’t pan out. For what it’s worth, I’ve heard from flight attendants at both Delta and United, and both confirm that their crew rooms don’t look this bad.

Bottom line

While I wouldn’t expect airline employee crew rooms to be like Four Seasons properties, or something, I think you’d expect them to be a bit nicer than what’s being reported above. American’s crew rooms throughout the system are reportedly in horrendous condition, and are basically falling apart. Never mind that there are even reports of bed bugs.

The airline seems unwilling to invest in this, since it sees no direct return on investment. I can’t imagine this doesn’t impact morale among frontline staff…