After a computer scheduling malfunction left thousands of flights with understaffed cockpits, American Airlines has agreed to pay its pilots quadruple their usual wage.
Early on Saturday morning, a glitch in the scheduling software allowed pilots to cancel flights they were scheduled to fly for the remainder of the month to take a vacation. As a result, according to the Allied Pilots Association, the pilots union at American, which has about 13,000 APA members working there, the number of flights with one or both needed pilots still on board swiftly surpassed the 12,000 mark.
American has agreed to permanently double-time compensation for pilots who fly on peak days, which frequently coincide with peak traffic times around holidays, even if the triple pay is a one-time windfall for the airline’s pilots.
The issue arises as American (AAL) and other US airlines struggle to handle an uptick in flight cancellations brought on by a lack of manpower.
Thousands of US flights have been canceled this summer due to a crew member shortage, affecting the whole airline sector. In many cases, those cancellations have increased around holiday weekends, such as Memorial Day, the weekend of Father’s Day, Juneteenth, and the Independence Day holiday. During the Christmas and New Year’s travel season a year ago, cancellations also spike.
For the biggest airline in the country, the computer error brought about a unique set of issues. On Wednesday, more than 800 flights—or around 26% of those scheduled—were delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware, while close to 200 American flights—or about 6% of its schedule—were canceled.
The number of flights affected by the scheduling blunder on Wednesday was unknown, according to American spokesperson Matt Miller, who also claimed not to know what caused the cancellations and delays. But American pilot and union representative Dennis Tajer asserted that it was obvious that the scheduling concerns were the root of the troubles.
Tajer continued by saying that things rapidly returned to normal following talks between the pilots union leadership and American Airlines’ new CEO, Robert Isom.
The APA’s president, Ed Sicher, told members that he hoped this agreement might serve as a springboard for negotiating a new labor agreement for American pilots.
A new contract had been up for discussion between the union and the airline since 2019, but the pandemic scuttled efforts to come to a lasting deal. As a result, an agreement from 2015 that was supposed to be renegotiated in 2020 is still in effect for pilots.
