2012 American Airlines Pilot Strike

Labor strikes are implemented in various ways. Many times, when asked about a labor strike, people associate it with a big group of people standing outside an establishment with picket signs belting out chants or songs. That’s not always the case, though. The 2012 American Airlines pilot strike was one of those instances where it wasn’t a typical strike. Yes, some pilots did stand outside with signs, but the majority of them showed their unhappiness through other various means. In order to show his or her grievance, a pilot would randomly call in sick on the day that they were to fly their plane. This act of calling in sick would cause their flight to be cancelled. Now, on a much larger scale where multiple pilots would call in sick, more than one flight is going to be cancelled. Due to this, customers of American Airlines would become disgruntled and upset, and may even choose to go through a different airline. Something like this would soon grab American Airlines’ attention and show them that their employees are unhappy, and when the employees are unhappy, customers get unhappy too.

They did this by allowing all passengers on the plane, and then right after the door closed, the pilot would order for maintenance to come and inspect the plane. This would be fine if one pilot did this, but when more than one would do this, major delays occurred, and in some instances, the flight itself would be cancelled. Delays always make customers unhappy and a cancellation is even worse, so by the pilots doing this, American Airlines would lose customers to other airlines. This wouldn’t make American Airlines happy