It is generally understood that a goal of every employee is to increase his or her income. And, we anticipate that the collective bargaining discussions will explore a myriad of ways to achieve this goal. At the same time, we must also find ways to improve productivity in order to address our labor cost disadvantage, since our productivity is lower and our compensation is higher than virtually all of our competitors.

The significant drivers and competitive measurements of flight attendant costs are wage rates, pensions, vacation, pay guarantees, sick time, health benefits, personnel expenses and training. To compare how these "expenses per employee" stack up against the competition, we regularly review publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). Based on DOT numbers, and even without taking into account our higher comparative expenses per hour worked, American has higher flight attendant costs than the other network passenger carriers, many of which the company competes with on a head-to-head basis.

US & HP reported separately in 1Q-3Q, and combined in 4Q; US value includes HP for full year 2007