American Airlines Group management told the new joint workforce at AA and US that they can earn up to $150 each month if they beat Delta, Southwest, and United in on-time arrivals, baggage handling, and customer satisfaction. Winning in all three will result in $150 per employee, winning two will earn them $100, and winning one will get each “New AA” employee $50. If they don’t win any category but have at least 70% of their flights depart on time, they will still earn $50. The USDOT statistics will be used to judge performance.
Chief Operating Officer Robert Isom said the following in his message to employees:
D0 (departing on-time) will be at the core of everything we do at American Airlines. Departing on time leads to consistent on-time arrivals and baggage delivery. But in order to excel at D0, we must be ready. That means no matter your job, you’re there on time, in position, in uniform, with your tools and equipment, trained, rested and ready to go out there and excel. In doing so, we’ll be safe, reliable, and well on the road to restoring American as the greatest airline in the world.
Former US employees had a similar program that awarded incentives for performance in the same three categories. Will legacy American employees be able to achieve the same? We’ll have to see, but I’ll bet customer service will be the hardest category to win in. Customer service at AA wasn’t so great prior to the merger and as we all know, things seem to go downhill during the post-merger integration period.
Related – No TV and Poor Service on AA 777 Dallas (DFW) – Tokyo (NRT) in First
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2 comments
Rewarding against DOT on-time stats – straight out of Gordon Bethune’s textbook…understand what the customers want most, then incentivize your workforce to work together to excel at it. I hope staff still use common sense though; however rare, there are times where it makes complete sense to delay a flight.
No! Don’t do it. One captain, leaving the gate five minutes too early, because of pressure from a dozen other employees, really could hurt someone. Flying too fast, taxing too fast etc., could hurt. There are other ways to stimulate and reward staff members, but block time is NOT a great choice.