American Airlines Pilots Union To Members: "Enjoy Your Time Off" You Don't Have To Fly

American Airlines made a big error with pilot schedules. Knowing they are short of pilots needed to fly all of the trips they’ve sold this month, they sent out a memo that certain pilots would not be able to trade their trips at all – even when they’ve got someone willing and able to cover them.

They allowed pilots to take a break from trips for a period of time, instead of blocking them. 2000 flight sequence and 37,000 hours of flying were done by a number of them.

The pilots union says that American Airlines is violating their contract by adding these flights to their schedules. American's position could cost them some money. It appears that they did that. They told me over the weekend.

We already have restored the vast majority of the affected trips and do not anticipate any operational impact because of this issue.

JonNYC shared that the pilots union is telling pilots who were affected not to travel.

• The trips were dropped properly (American’s claim of a ‘technical glitch’ notwithstanding)
• The contract doesn’t allow the airline to add flights to pilot schedules unilaterally
• So they don’t have to fly, and the union has their back

pic.twitter.com/ttzmCppdph

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 2, 2022

The result was in the end.