Travelers Cut Trips, Brace for Strike Chaos
Passengers cut short leisure and business trips to stand in seemingly endless lines at the American Airlines ticket counters at Los Angeles International Airport and other airports nationwide Friday afternoon, vying for space on flights before a potential 9 p.m. strike by American pilots grounded the nation’s largest domestic airline.
Tens of thousands of air travelers nationwide braced for chaos and some suffered St. Valentine’s Day heartbreaks Friday as pilots prepared to shut down the airline.
Dallas salesman Dan Cummins said he was intent on visiting his girlfriend in Chicago for Valentine’s Day but will be in trouble if he gets stranded and misses work on Monday. “My boss is going to be mad as hell if I don’t get back on time.”
In the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, Natasha Civil, 21, said she could not get to New York to be with her boyfriend. “This has ruined my Valentine’s Day. My heart is broken.”
In Los Angeles, Jennifer Lischy gave up a long-awaited visit with her year-old niece to fly back to Dallas before a potential strike.
The 28-year-old Lischy, who spent the week in Santa Barbara planning her May 25 wedding there, was supposed to return home Sunday night from LAX after spending the weekend with her brother’s family in Los Angeles.
“I could have stayed and changed my reservations to another carrier, but then I would have had to fly from Los Angeles, change planes in Salt Lake City and then fly to Austin, and then drive three hours to get to Dallas. That was just too much,” she said.
American’s management and pilots’ union leaders met Friday in Washington for a fifth straight day of negotiations in a final effort to cut a new four-year labor contract. Both sides and a federal mediator said progress was slow, and pilots insisted they were determined to strike if no deal had been reached by 9 p.m. PST, although talks could continue with the airline shut down.
American accounts for 20% of domestic flights and carries about 200,000 passengers on 2,200 daily flights. The airline has 70 flights scheduled through LAX each day, carrying about 12,000 passengers to its major hubs, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, New York and Miami.
Its American Eagle commuter operation flies 68 flights to and from LAX each day, taking about 1,100 passengers on short hops throughout the Southwest.
American Airlines canceled about 250 international flights scheduled for Friday night--most of them to Europe, Japan and South America--because it did not want planes stranded abroad, an airline spokesman said. Flights to the Caribbean and London were not canceled. About 10 domestic flights were halted.
The airline said if pilots walk off the job, it will ground its 640 planes and put most of its employees on an emergency furlough.
Friday afternoon, non-pilot American Airlines employees walked briskly through the American terminal at LAX, talking of the strike in hushed tones while passengers waiting in long lines at the ticket counters and TV crews roamed the building.
Many passengers, worried about the possible strike, said they had kept in almost constant contact with their travel agents for most of the week.
“I’ve been calling twice a day all week and they kept saying my [London] flight was going to go on time,” said Steven Trenkle, a San Bernardino medical examiner who was about to make his third annual winter visit to London.
“Hopefully at midnight the pilots won’t bail out of the plane over Newfoundland or something,” he said.
Other passengers were uncertain whether their return flights would be canceled.
Adam Eagle, a label manager for the London Music Production Co., said he had to be back in London on Thursday to deliver a music video for the British pop group Personelle.
Eagle, who had just arrived in Los Angeles from London to edit a music video he shot in Palm Springs several weeks ago, was hoping to get a return flight on another carrier.
Pilots picketed on the sidewalk outside the American terminal.
American Airlines pilots--about 800 based in Los Angeles--are determined to win pay and seniority concessions for the union, said Norm Jones, a media representative for the Allied Pilots Assn. Jones is among pilots who have been demonstrating outside LAX for 2 1/2 weeks.
“I support what they are doing,” said one American Airlines flight attendant, who asked not to be identified. “They have to stand up for what’s right or they will get walked on.” She was one of the flight attendants who struck American Airlines for five days in 1993 before President Clinton stepped in. The New York-based flight attendant said she would have to cancel a weeklong ski trip to Lake Tahoe if the strike begins.
Elizabeth Elliott, a New York shoe company owner, was upset by the possibility of a strike. She said she had empathy for American Airlines employees who are not pilots and said the pilots and the company should be able to compromise. Elliott, who owns several shoe stores, including the Western Boot Clothing Co., left the Western Shoe Assn. convention in Las Vegas early to take a flight to Los Angeles in order to be able to return to New York before a strike.
“People in Las Vegas were panicking,” she said. “Many were leaving early because of the potential strike. I would have liked to have stayed longer.”
Times wire services contributed to this story.
