American air hose is not wait to find out whether an agreement will be forthcoming from their current round of negotiation with their flight attendants . They are grooming replacement flight attendants and recruiting more.

Terry Maxon is keeping close path of the action in Dallas on the Morning News’ airline game blog His coverage seems to indicate that aa executive are getting ready for the worst They have put out a call to airline direction for voluntary to take fa grooming and man the airplane in case of a strike.

To assist with necessary flying, the company is quest volunteer American Airlines direction employee who are volition to complete flight attendant grooming to temporarily staff flight operations. Though we hope and expect that we will not have to implement our contingence operation, this form of planning is the responsible and unfortunately necessary thing to do to protect our client and the company.

Other blog station provide some of the internal communication theory that aa has sent to their direction personnel This supplication is followed by a long list of

In expectancy of any potential job action which may be taken by the association of professional flight Attendants , we have created a contingence plan for staffing flight if a job action should occur. To assist with necessary flying, we are looking at for direction voluntary in the DFW area who are volition to go through flight attendant grooming to temporarily staff flight operations during any future flight attendant job action.

Evidently, negotiation are not going so well 90 percent of the flight Attendants have already voted to strike and their negotiating team has refused binding arbitration Meanwhile, aa is sounding their plaintive short letter and appearing to be more than volition to negotiate after years of delay.

Their missive to director notes:

… it is important to keep in mind that no job action is imminent. In fact, in order for the APFA to lawfully doings a future job action two things would first have to happen. First, the NMB would need to release the political party into a 30-day cooling-off period; and second, that 30-day period would have to be completed and run out — and the “self-help” period would need to Begin — without the parties first having reached agreement on a new contract. Only at that point could there be a lawful job action But just in case that might happen in the future, we’re starting to prepare for it now.

With their brother at British airway in the midst of a massive series of strikes, the AA flight attendants are playing hardball just like their compatriot on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean

Let’s hope we are not faced with similar disruptions.