American Airlines Flight Attendants Were Forced To Sleep In Airport Concourses Last Weekend After Carrier Forgot To Book Hotel Rooms

Flight attendants at American Airlines were forced to sleep on the floor in airport concourses or on broken furniture in dilapidated crew rooms last weekend after American Airlines forgot to book hotel rooms after the carrier faced mass disruption from severe summer weather events that swept the country.

Unsurprisingly, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents tens of thousands of crew members at the Fort Worth-based carrier, has slammed the airline over the serious oversight.

“Over the last few days, American Airlines has experienced significant irregular operations that have left many Flight Attendants stranded with no contact from the company,” the union told its members in an internal memo.

“Some were stranded overnight without hotel accommodations, unable to reach Crew Tracking or the Hotel/Limo desk for assistance, and left completely in the dark with no communication from the company.”

The memo added: “The lack of support and basic resources during this IROPs [Irregular Operations] is not only inexcusable—it’s a serious breakdown in the company’s responsibility to its Flight Attendants.”

What appears to have happened is that American Airlines made the decision to cancel flights due to the bad weather far too late in the day, meaning that the crew scheduling and hotel booking departments were overwhelmed with requests to reaccommodate flight attendants at very short notice.

Stranded flight attendants attempted to get in contact with the company to arrange hotel rooms but found themselves stuck on hold as hundreds of other crew competed to get hold of someone who could arrange them accommodation in whichever city they found themselves stuck in for the night.

And while there were widely documented issues in New York and especially Newark, which left passengers stranded on planes for hours on Saturday night, the disruption quickly spread across the US, with multiple airports hit with mass cancellations.

Not that this is the first time that summer weather had left American Airlines flight attendants abandoned by their employer with nowhere to sleep for the night.

In 2021, the crew union threatened to take legal action if the airline didn’t sort out its subcontracted hotel booking desk, which was failing to book rooms for flight attendants stranded due to late-night cancellations or delays.

The same issues were also impacting pilots and resulted in some flight crews refusing to take off until American Airlines had confirmed that hotel accommodation had been booked for them in their destination.

The Allied Pilots Association (APA), which represents pilots at American Airlines, has once again urged its members to delay a flight departure if necessary until accommodation is confirmed.

Matt’s Take

The flight attendant union is pinning the blame on the current hotel booking fiasco on a problem that is all too common for passengers – AA’s insistence on showing flights as departing on time, even when it must be well known to the airline that there is no chance at all that the flight will take off on schedule.

American Airlines seems to rely on rolling delays, living in the hope that they’ll reassign a plane from another trip or some other miracle will occur that will get their schedule back on track.

On paper, it seems like a sensible tactic to keep the airline’s operation running, but the reality, felt by both passengers and crew alike, is very different.

This story originally appeared on PYOK.