American Airlines reaches agreement with flight attendant union, avoiding strike
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American Airlines has struck an agreement with the union representing the company's flight attendants, avoiding a large-scale strike that had threatened the airline's profits.
At the center of the deal is a proposed new contract for around 28,000 workers which includes increased pay levels, though further terms have not been made public.
Members of the union, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, had long argued that working conditions in the modern aviation industry meant their pay was calculated through increasingly outdated and unfair mechanisms.
The offer from America still requires a ratification vote from members of the union next week. The union had previously turned down an offer that would have seen pay increase 18% with 2% increases each year.
Flight attendants have not received salary increases since 2019, and the union was demanding 33% upfront raises with a 6% annual uplift.
The union said in a press release that the new offer "addresses our concerns on critical areas of compensation, retroactive pay, contractual improvements, and preserving our hard-won work rules."
Picket lines had proved effective in negotiations, the statement continued, and President Biden - who joined a UAW picket line last year - said members of his cabinet including the secretaries for Labor and Transport, Julie Su and Pete Buttigieg, had helped solidify the deal. The agreement had, he said, averted a strike that "would have been devastating for the industry and consumers."
Texas-based American said it was proud of the deal that would offer "immediate financial and quality-of-life improvements" for its flight attendants, who had - the company said - earned the increased salaries.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Saturday it is investigating a Southwest Airlines (LUV.N), opens new tab flight after it flew at a very low altitude over Tampa Bay, Florida, the most recent in a series of incidents raising safety questions.
The July 14 flight by a Southwest Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab 737 MAX that had departed from Columbus, Ohio, was approximately 3 miles (5 km)from the Tampa airport when it dropped to as low as about 175 feet (53 meters), according to Flightradar24 data. An air traffic controller alerted the crew of Southwest Flight 425 to their low altitude and the plane was diverted to Fort Lauderdale.
Southwest said Saturday is in contact with the FAA "to understand and address any irregularities" following the July 14 flight. "Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of our customers and employees," the airline added.
This was the latest in a string of Southwest flights that have raised safety concerns, including a Southwest 737 flight in April that came within about 400 feet (122 meters) of the ocean off Hawaii after the first officer inadvertently pushed forward on the control column and the plane hit a maximum descent rate of about 4,400 feet per minute.
The FAA is also investigating another very low altitude Southwest flight about 9 miles (14.5 km) from the Oklahoma City airport. The June 19 incident involving Southwest Airlines Flight 4069 that had departed from Las Vegas dropped to about 500 feet. After an alert sounded, an air traffic controller alerted the flight crew.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and FAA are also investigating a Southwest 737 MAX flight on May 25 that experienced a "Dutch roll" at 34,000 feet while en route from Phoenix, Arizona, to Oakland, California. Such lateral asymmetric movements are named after a Dutch ice skating technique and can pose serious safety risks.
A global tech outage that was related to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), opens new tab affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab devices, Microsoft said in a blog post on Saturday.
"We currently estimate that CrowdStrike's update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines," it said in the blog.
A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, one of the largest operators in the industry, triggered systems problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.
Pedestrians walk past a Microsoft Experience Center, following a global IT outage, in New York City, U.S. July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Kent J. Edwards Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
"While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services," Microsoft said in its blog post.
CrowdStrike has helped develop a solution that will help Microsoft's Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix, Microsoft said, adding that it was working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, sharing information about the effects Microsoft was seeing across the industry.
The air travel industry was recovering on Saturday from the outage that caused thousands of flights to be cancelled, leaving passengers stranded or grappling with hours of delays as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage.
Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), opens new tab, one of the hardest-hit airlines, said that as of 10 a.m EDT (1400 GMT) on Saturday, more than 600 flights had been canceled, adding that additional cancellations were expected.
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