AA Low Senority FA's "Your Flying Based on Time. 12yrs + Stay at Home.."
The APFA has shared their plan for how May bidding will work for American Airlines flight attendants. As it’s explained:
- Total scheduled flying hours for May 2020 will be approximately 20-25% of the scheduled flying hours for May 2019
- The system used for bidding won’t function if all flight attendants participate, because there will be more flight attendants than flying hours/legal trips available (apparently this is a limitation of the system)
- American Airlines approached the APFA to discuss a process for reducing the number of flight attendants bidding
The union leadership decided to process bidding in a way that has the most junior flight attendants required to bid, while senior flight attendants will get the month off completely.
For example, if a base has 400 flight attendants and only enough flying for 100 flight attendants (based on legal lines), the 100 most junior flight attendants will be allowed to bid on trips.
Then normal seniority will be followed within those ranks, meaning that #301 will really be #1 seniority for the month (out of 100), while #400 will really be #100 for the month (out of 100).
The union acknowledges that flight attendants shared that they wanted to have the option of whether they had to bid or not. The union says they agree and have heard this feedback, but the technology currently in place doesn’t allow for an “opt-in” option (a claim some flight attendants are suspicious of). This means that they need to narrow down the pool of bidders in some other way.
