We all heard this same stuff in 2005, almost to the letter. Remember the big push for PLI? The PLI was rejected and nothing happened.
As far as the pilot salaries, if you used a source other than scab Vaughn Cordle or AA management we may have a discussion. Did you realize that AA includes hotel costs and training costs when the company talks about the cost of the pilot contract? I didn't realize that a hotel room on a layover was a negotiated benefit. If the company wants, I will also give up all future recurrent training and trips to DFW for FREE! 🙄
OK, Scab Cordle's numbers aren't to be believed because he once scabbed at UAL. How about Bob Herbst? Didn't he used to fly for AA? His numbers confirm that AA's pilot costs are the highest (pilot costs, not hourly pay rates, which I realize are not industry-leading). What about UAL's assertion that AA's pilot costs are the highest? In 2009, UAL provided a 56 or so page .pdf to employees that showed that AA's pilots and FAs were the most expensive. Bob Owens will email it to you if you ask. Even if you subscribe to the belief that your employer would lie to you, why would someone else's employer fib about your costs? If UAL was going to exaggerate, why didn't UAL say its employees were the most expensive? Instead, UAL cried poor-mouth despite its employee costs being in the middle of the pack. The APFA's own economist has admitted what everyone already knew: AA's FAs are the most expensive per ASM. If you do the math, so are AA's pilots. I understand that when you're asking for substantial restoration of earlier concessions and your employer is reporting billion dollar losses and doesn't want to pay, you're not happy about evidence that you're already the most expensive in the industry. I get that.
I realize that the AA pilot concessions were costly and the absence of real pay raises for a decade has hurt. Many pilots moved from the left seat to the right seat and many additional pilots were furloughed. AA retired 34 widebodies and has sort of replaced them with 738s, which of course pay less than AB6s did. None of that changes the fact that as a group, AA's pilots cost their employer more per ASM (or block hour) than pilot costs at the competition.
While AA pays for crew hotel rooms, those expenses are not included in wages, salaries and benefits on the financial statements. Besides, crew hotel costs are a trivial expense out of the $24 billion AA will spend this year. I'm sure that someone with the APA and APFA have a good idea how much AA spends, on average, per room per night. My guess is that the average is less than $50 per. If AA buys 3,000 rooms per night, at $50 each, that adds up to a whopping $55 million total for the year. Drop. In. The. Bucket. AA pays about six times more than that to credit card processors for accepting MC, Visa and Amex.
And if anyone has serious concerns about the financial statements accuracy, then your union should hire an auditor to find the discrepancies and with that evidence, go to the SEC and help send Horton and Arpey to prison for violations of Sarb/Ox. Then your union could sue AA and its accounting firm and collect piles of money for violations of the securities laws.