American Airlines – “The Reality at American Airlines”

Pros

You will make great friends, the other flight attendants are wonderful, and you do have a lot of flexibility with your schedule. If you are a playful person, thrive on changing circumstances, and don't need a lot of recognition or status in your job, but value your freedom, then this might the right job for you.

Cons

The management is terrible. Ultimately, there is no respect from headquarters toward the everyday people who actually run the day-to-day operations. Management rewards themselves with huge bonuses, as we have taken an enormous paycut to "keep the company afloat" during the threat of bankruptcy. All these promises were made at that time, that we would share in the "turn-AAround plan", that we would benefit when the company became profitable. What a joke. I never believed this, because I have seen our management be so deceitful, time and time again in the past. And my suspicions were correct. Management could not care less about keeping promises or valuing their employees. We are still working under a contract imposed on us in 2003, which reduced our pay by 35%. Overnight, I made $12,000 less each year. For doing the exact same job.

Advice to Senior Management

Give back their bonuses. TODAY. Start negotiating in good faith. Quit playing games, and retire your "corporate culture" which breeds division and animosity. Learn something from the manner in which Southwest runs their company, where they actually do value their employees. They do more than just lip service (which is all our management ever does, and it gets old. Nauseating, actually.) Gerald Arpey, you almost won the award "WORST CEO OF THE YEAR." You came in close second. The guy who actually won ran an operation that abused animals. So how do you like being compared to him? You came in close second.