APFA News: American Airlines appears to have ramped up their “sidetrack campaign” to divert employees’ attention – as well as the Press and the public’s– from the exorbitant stock bonuses set for a second annual payout next month, to the far-off possibility of Profit Sharing in 2008 as included in Attachment P of the APFA/AA 2003 Restructuring Agreement. Briefly, Attachment P contains language that pays all of American’s employees 15% in cash payouts once the threshold of $500 million in annual AA pre-tax income is reached. The Attachment P Profit Sharing formula is based on an assumption that the company will meet and exceed $500 million in pre-tax income in a single year. Not only are the overly-rewarded top AA Executives included in that profit sharing, but their April 19th bonuses are not based on company profits at all.

We have uploaded another poll question at www.apfa.org regarding the Executive Bonus payouts scheduled for next month. Please visit the Web site and register your response. Almost 10,000 votes to split $200 million among all employees rather than the “elite 800+” have been tallied so far in the current poll. The correct response to the poll question asking for the total amount awarded to our CEO (assuming a stock price of $33 on April 18th) is $7.8 million dollars in stock payouts.

The fourth APFA Membership Online Survey has been available via apfa.org since Monday and we’ve had a great response so far. Please take ten minutes out of your day to complete this online membership opinion survey. As a reminder, individual survey results will remain confidential and only percentages of each response will be made available to the APFA Leadership. Even though you are able to visit the survey site more than once, only your first response will be recorded.

From the APFA Archives: APFA is actively searching for a flight attendant interested in working part-time in the APFA Archives. An article contained in the next issue of Skyword includes details of the position. If you are interested, please contact our current archivist, Cilla Golas, at archivist@apfa.org for more information.

From the Scheduling Department: The Max On-Duty Limitations can be found on page 12 of the On-Duty Contract Guide. Please be aware that unless the sign-in/departure time is rescheduled, the originally-scheduled departure time is the applicable departure time for calculating the scheduled/rescheduled On-Duty Max. For example, if a FA is scheduled to depart at 2020 and a delay results in a 2100 departure the contractual timespan of 1800-2059 applies and the maximum scheduled on-duty is 11 hours, rescheduled 12 hours and operational maximum is 13 hours.

Rumor Control:
Q: Is it true that American Airlines owns United Healthcare?
A: No. American Airlines is self-insured and uses United Healthcare to administer its health insurance.

Industry News: Rep. James Oberstar, Chair of the House Transportation Committee, and Rep. Jerry Costello, Chair of the House Aviation Subcommittee, sent a letter to the Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Mary Peters to express their concerns with the tentative U.S./E.U. Open Skies agreement. If you would like to read this letter, it has been uploaded at apfa.org under Legislation .

Please remember that we still have 2,366 Flight Attendants on furlough.

That’s it for this week. Thank you for calling the APFA Hotline.