4.14.24 – APFA LGA Base Brief – Base Meeting Notification

Base Meeting Notification

Sunday, April 14, 2024

The New York APFA Base Council is pleased to announce an in-person Base Meeting for all New York-LGA-based Flight Attendants.

Time: 10 am – 3 pm (ET)
Location: TWA Hotel, JFK Airport, Jamaica, New York.
When: Wednesday, May 15, 2024 

We will share further details, including the specific location of the meeting and the meeting’s agenda, in the upcoming weeks via the official APFA base brief. As Flight Attendants are submitting May 2024 PBS bids, we wanted to inform them of the meeting as soon as possible. It is essential to secure a venue at a reasonable cost, and we are pleased to host the event right at the airport to make it easier for members to attend.

With the expected increase in summer travel, Flight Attendants are expected to forge on and keep those profits coming in despite American Airlines depriving us of a fair contract five years into the current expired one. WE ARE UNDERSTAFFED, UNDERPAID, AND UNDERVALUED.

As the APFA LGA Base President, I am a firsthand witness to the physical, financial, and moral impact of working in a city like ours with an upper management team like the current one at American Airlines. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic and post-pandemic, Flight Attendants continue to work daily to connect PEOPLE worldwide, driven by our passion for this profession. However, in 2023, American Airlines discontinued COVID-19 protections and worsened an already inhumane attendance policy, causing a further decline in morale among workers.

The airport MOD team is responsible for supporting us and, in turn, our customers, but just like us, they are understaffed. They are the folks who work in what we call the “Box.” This has resulted in a lack of support during unexpected situations. Additionally, the local management team has increased the number of meetings they schedule,  which is unproductive and exposes their loyalty to records and numbers, not you and me. Furthermore, they have been conducting investigations via email, which does not comply with our contract and is intended to dodge paying us for our time off to resolve customer complaints or other performance and attendance issues in meeting with individuals who display no empathy or individual consideration as instructed.

This base meeting is our time to recalibrate and be on the same page moving forward on how we will push back on the lack of support, disregard for our Union rights, and reduction in resources, which ultimately transfer over to customers but boomerangs back to us in the form of repetitive and ridiculous investigations. In New York, we will use our contractual rights and collective power to push back on an unempathetic management and irresponsible, understaffed work environment at American Airlines. We will call out this mismanagement.

Hope to see you there!

In Solidarity,

Christian M. Santana
APFA LGA Base President
[email protected]