American Flight Attendants Demand Management Change… They’re Right

Yesterday, American Airlines announced its 2025 financial results. The airline reported a profit of $111 million, down 87% compared to the year prior. Employees were informed that their profit sharing for the year would be equal to 0.3% of their wages. As you’d expect, this left just about everyone disappointed — American is just becoming more and more of a distant third to Delta and United.

Employees aren’t too pleased about this financial performance, with one union calling on the resignation of CEO Robert Isom. Admittedly that’s nothing new, though I’d argue it rings true now more than ever before.

American flight attendant union furious over performance

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents American’s 25,000+ flight attendants, has published a scathing letter, directed at American’s management. Honestly, it’s absolutely brutal (yet accurate), and I feel like it’s worth sharing in its entirety, so here it is:

Today, American Airlines released its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 earnings—and once again, the results disappointed employees, investors and Wall Street. While we are pleased American achieved a small profit, our airline continues to lag its competitors by a significant margin. This is no longer an anomaly, but rather a pattern of failure under the leadership of CEO Robert Isom and the American Airlines Board of Directors.

American’s workforce is not the problem. Leadership is.

Employees have a vested interest in seeing American succeed. Our jobs and our futures depend on it. Yet while employees deliver every day, American remains a distant third behind Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, and at or near the bottom of the industry.

While Competitors Finances Surge Upward, American Continues to Lag

The contrast is undeniable.

These results reflect priorities—and American’s priorities are being exposed by comparison.

Wall Street Journal 2025 Rankings Show American Airlines at the Bottom

In October of 2025, we communicated concerns about American ranking dead last in overall customer satisfaction in the J.D. Power North America Airline Satisfaction Study and hoped that we would see improvements in all areas. Sadly, that is not the case.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal released its 2025 Best and Worst Airline Rankings for 2025, and American Airlines was once again left behind our competitors in almost every measured category, with performance worsening in many categories year-over-year. For Overall Best Airline, American slipped from fifth place in 2023 to last place in 2025. American ranked in the bottom three for on-time arrivals, mishandled baggage, and involuntary denied boardings. American ranked dead last in canceled flights. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

It is easy to see why employees, investors, and Wall Street are deeply concerned, and it is no surprise why CEO Robert Isom has ended all Labor-management meetings, employee town halls, Crew News sessions, and, perhaps most telling, the question-and-answer session at today’s State of the Airline.

They don’t have answers, and the excuses have run out.

Employees see the reality every day. Long-overdue upgrades to onboard products are welcomed, but they cannot make up for poor strategic decisions or an uncompetitive hard product. While we are happy to see leadership upgrade our premium cabins, our coach cabins, where many of our most loyal customers are seated, are outdated, uncomfortable, and far from competitive.

Lack of investment in the product has left American years behind its competitors, forcing employees to absorb the consequences and apologize for management’s inaction as leadership delivers the same lackluster results, quarter after quarter.

To management we ask: What is American’s plan to compete? Why are we not hearing from the Board of Directors as American continues to fall further behind?

The status quo is indefensible. The bottom of the rankings, quarter after quarter, is unacceptable. Accountability at the top is long overdue.

American’s hardworking employees want nothing more than to see this airline lead the industry, and we are ready to make that happen. But leadership has failed to clearly define our brand, articulate who we want to be as an airline, or provide the staffing, tools, and resources necessary. Quarter after quarter, executives leave employees to carry the weight of their mismanagement while American falls further behind.

For years, CEO Robert Isom and his team have solely focused on Accountability, Reliability, and Profitability, ignoring investment in our product and the overall customer experience. During that time, our competitors focused on all aspects of their airlines, while American now stumbles to pick up the pieces.

The employees at American Airlines, our passengers and the investors can no longer wait for Robert Isom and the American Airlines Board of Directors to deliver on their empty promises.

As the entire industry leaves American Airlines in the dust, it is time for new leadership and a new vision for American Airlines.

The flight attendant union is undeniably correct

People can disagree as to the extent to which frontline employees at American are responsible for the company’s failures. However, I don’t think anyone could reasonably deny that American’s management team has for a long time lacked a vision, and is primarily to blame for what’s going on.

Several weeks ago I wrote a post posing the question of who is going to fix American, and when they’re going to replace Isom. I would love for anyone to try to make a coherent argument for how the current management team is leading the company in the right direction, and is taking drastic enough steps to make up lost ground.

Even if you take past failures out of the equation, just look at American’s earnings call transcript. Is there anything that Isom said that gives us hope that he has a vision, and that things will improve? As I view it, the narrative basically boils down to the following:

• “We’re positioned for lots of upside” — yes, when you dig yourself a deep enough hole and profits decline 87% year-over-year, hopefully there is some upside
• “Premium, premium, premium” — right, but that’s also what Delta and United are doing, so simply trying to narrow the gap a bit isn’t going to be a competitive advantage
• “We have an amazing route network” — yes, if Charlotte (CLT) and Dallas (DFW) and domestic travel are all you care about, then maybe that’s true

Isom even went so far as to say that “we know who we are, we’re a premium global airline.” See, that’s the problem… if you think that’s who you are, then you really don’t know who you are.

The most fundamental job of a CEO is to “rally the troops” and get employees behind a vision, and that’s something that American’s management team simply hasn’t done. And quite honestly, they’re simply too far gone, and have lost the ability to command any respect from frontline employees, after so much failure.

Any turnaround of American requires a motivated workforce, and that can only be done with new management. And no, reshuffling of the “Tempe boys” (in reference to all the ex-America West people still running things) isn’t going to do anything. An actual outsider needs to come in, with a radically more ambitious vision.

I’ve said it before, and I’m not meaning to volunteer anyone for a job here, because I can’t imagine he would actually want to step into this mess, but American needs someone like Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith to fix things. The airline needs someone who excels at labor relations, who can motivate employees, and who is good at actually fixing things quickly (just look at Air France’s fleet transformation, compared to that of Lufthansa, as an example).

What are the odds that something actually happens? Probably pretty low. For so long I was like a naive kid, thinking “wait, the board’s job is to make sure they have the right people in place to run the company, because their obligation is to shareholders, right?” I didn’t realize the extent to which in the United States, boards are basically like country clubs, where the best course of action is to just do nothing, take your paycheck for doing little work, and fall in line. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing.

Bottom line

American’s flight attendant union is demanding management change, after another disappointing year of financial results. The airline saw an 87% decline in profits year-over-year, and it’s getting to the point where the airline is barely breaking even. So while Delta is aiming for a 10% margin, American can’t even achieve a 1% margin.

The worst part is that management doesn’t actually seem to have a vision to fix things, other than continuing with the status quo, and thinking that they’re continuing to make good progress.

I’m not suggesting someone else could fix the airline overnight. What I am suggesting is that a CEO’s job is to motivate employees, and the current management team has lost respect of the team, due to their lack of a vision.

US airline CEOs earn eight figures, and I don’t think anyone could argue that American’s current CEO is the best candidate for the job. It’s time for change, it’s just a function of when we’ll see it…

Do you think we’ll see a management change at American sooner rather than later, or will the board just continue on their paid vacation?