American employees – both front-line and management – have as their first order of business to operate and coordinate a safe, caring and efficient airline for thousands of customers every day. The success and security of the airline, its employees and their families depend on everyone’s hard work in achieving a safe, industry-leading and profitable company. However, every day we battle a continuous array of significant challenges.

Variables like the cost of fuel continue to hinder American’s ability to achieve sustained profitability, which is the key to American’s success in the future and to its employees’ job security. Without sustained profitability, we lose our ability to reduce our debt – which is important so that we can obtain the financing needed to sustain our business – and, more importantly, to obtain the profits that allow us to reinvest and grow. Whether it is the purchase of new aircraft, the development of new and better ways of satisfying our customers’ needs, or the additions to our route system, continuous reinvestment in our business is good for employees, customers and shareholders alike. And, growth brings important benefits for flight attendants, for instance, with the addition of new employees and new destinations.

The bottom line is that achieving sustained profitability has always presented tough challenges for our industry. The current volatile and unpredictable environment simply highlights the necessity for finding ways to meet them.

Over the past several years, American has made great strides in reducing costs in virtually every area of its business, including ongoing initiatives to simplify its fleet and schedules, reduce fuel consumption and find more efficient ways to sell products and services, but always without compromising safety. Because of these and other efforts, American now has one of the lowest non-labor costs per available seat mile (CASM) in the industry.

However, to be truly successful in this business and secure our future for many years to come, we must also find ways to address our labor cost disadvantage when compared to most of our major competitors – many of whom chose the path of bankruptcy as a means of achieving dramatic labor cost reductions. American and its employees did not choose this path, and we continue to believe that working together will achieve a better result. Consequently, American is committed to working with the APFA to reach a competitive and mutually-acceptable contract that addresses our flight attendants’ need for work-life balance, stability and opportunities to increase their compensation, while at the same time, positioning our company for long-term success in this challenging and unpredictable industry.

We look forward to using this bargaining process to find creative yet realistic solutions that balance the interests of our company, flight attendants, shareholders and other constituents. Our interests in these negotiations, as outlined in the Section 6 notice letter that we sent to the APFA in late February, include:

• Exploring scheduling flexibility that recognizes our flight attendants’ need for work-life balance and stability while allowing us to efficiently and predictably utilize American’s workforce.
  
  
• Exploring compensation systems that financially reward our flight attendants for productivity and performance.
  
  
• Addressing rising health & welfare and retirement benefit costs by exploring market-based benefit plan designs.
  
  
• Examining ways to reduce the cost of contract administration and dispute resolution by simplifying processes and contractual language.
  
  
• Discussing options to enhance our global network.
  
  
• Exploring ways to increase productivity and achieve competitive flight attendant costs that promote sustainable growth for our company.