The sad truth is that the great ship American Airlines is captain-less and rudderless. In fact, the entire bridge crew seems to be made up of individuals who may be competent enough to run an accounting firm or a tax preparation business, but have proven totally inept at managing a dynamic operation like an international airline. Our "truth message" is simple - no one can rely on AMR management.
-- The Allied Pilots Association

 

 

From a Chicago-based crewmember:

 

As a Super 80 First Officer, I had a ringside seat to observe the abysmal breakdown in flight operations caused by AA's lack of foresight to incoming poor-weather conditions.

 

The Captain and I (along with many of the passengers I'm sure) witnessed three deicing trucks try to care for dozens of aircraft requiring badly-needed deicing procedures. After roughly a two-hour delay before finally getting our turn in the de-ice pad, the deicing personnel informed us that they only had minimal maintenance workers to check the fan blades as well.

 

And during the midpoint of this chaotic evolution, AA clearly stuck their foot in their mouth by sending us an embarrassing ACARS message that proclaimed none of this was (their fault) because the weather came in much earlier than anticipated and AA couldn't be expected to provide personnel to handle such a colossal event in such a short amount of time.

 

What did AA expect us to do with this information? Tell the passengers (who already knew many hours beforehand that a major storm was supposed to hit the area).

 

This is incompetence at its very best on the part of AA. Please explain to me why they have a dedicated weather center in the "war room" complex if they can't even handle an obvious inflow of poor conditions that everyone else in the state of Texas knew about.

 

My perception of the erroneous ACARS message is so that AA can “justify” to the AMR board that this monumental mess just wasn't their fault.

 

Arpey and the overpaid executive staff are not only letting the employees down, but leading the company, the stockholders, and the Board of Directors down a path of airline destruction and eventual implosion. By the way, what are these "irreplaceable" Senior Executives getting paid for anyway? I'd like to see some accountability, not fabricated excuses delivered to the delayed pilots via ACARS messages.

 

This last weather incident was unacceptable!