Traveling during the holidays is, by definition, no fun. If you caught a flight over Thanksgiving this year, you got lucky—everything ran more or less to plan. No freak winter storms, no striking baggage handlers, no collapsing computer systems.
Expecting the Christmas travel rush to go just as smoothly is a bit like expecting lightning to hit twice.Indeed, trouble has already arisen. Today, American Airlines revealed it accidentally told too many of its pilots they could take time off the week of Christmas. Now, it faces a manpower crisis that could leave an estimated 15,000 flights with nobody to sit in the cockpit.
The airline blames some sort of computer glitch. It looks like the scheduling system it uses to assign pilots to flights indicated that there were plenty of captains and first officers to go around. Meanwhile, a separate system, which assigns holiday leave based on seniority, got carried away with the festive spirit and gave way too many people time off.
To get their aviators back to work—and avoid mass cancellations—American is offering time-and-a-half pay to pilots who pick up certain flights. In a statement, it said it has reserve pilots to cover the uptick in flying time during December, and it’s working with the pilot’s union to smooth everything out. Representatives for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents nearly 60,000 pilots in the US and Canada, say the airline should have consulted them over the extra pay.
But with weeks left before peak travel times, it’s hard to imagine they won’t find an acceptable solution.Still, the tussle highlights just how complicated the process of getting an airplane…
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