American Airlines is confronting a surge of internal dissent as frustrated flight attendants and pilots intensify calls for accountability from top leadership. Despite posting record revenues, the carrier’s profitability continues to trail rivals Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, sharpening concerns that strategic missteps and a narrow domestic focus are eroding its competitive edge. The result is a widening rift between management’s upbeat forecasts and the lived reality of frontline crews who say they are bearing the brunt of operational chaos, meager profit sharing and a series of failed commercial bets.
Profits Under Pressure Despite Record Revenue
On paper, American Airlines enters 2026 with solid financial momentum. The company recently reported record fourth quarter revenue of about 14 billion dollars and full year revenue above 54 billion dollars for 2025, alongside a reduction of more than 2 billion dollars in total debt over the year. Executives, led by Chief Executive Robert Isom, have touted these figures as proof that a multiyear turnaround strategy is taking hold and positioning the airline for “significant upside” in 2026 and beyond.
Yet beneath the headline revenue numbers, American’s profitability tells a more sobering story. Full year net income in 2025 totaled roughly 111 million dollars, a sliver of the multi-billion-dollar earnings reported by Delta and United over the same period. Earnings for the fourth quarter came in well below Wall Street expectations, partly due to a roughly 325 million dollar revenue hit from a protracted U.S. government shutdown and higher non-fuel costs tied to new labor deals. Investors responded by pushing the airline’s share price lower, highlighting doubts about whether American’s strategy can deliver sustainable profits in a high-cost environment.
American’s leadership insists that 2026 will mark a turning point, projecting adjusted earnings per share in a range that exceeds analyst consensus and pointing to strong early-year bookings, especially in premium cabins and corporate channels. But that confidence has been undercut by fresh disruptions. Winter Storm Fern, which slammed key hubs such as Dallas and Charlotte, forced the cancellation of more than 9,000 flights and is expected to shave up to 200 million dollars from first quarter revenue while pushing unit costs higher. For flight attendants already disillusioned with management, the storm’s aftermath became a catalyst for a broader reckoning.
Flight Attendants Decry “Pattern of Failure” and Token Profit Sharing
At the heart of the rising tension is a profound sense among flight attendants that they are working harder for less meaningful reward, even as peers at rival carriers share in robust profit streams. Under American’s profit sharing program, flight attendants received a payout equivalent to just 0.3 percent of eligible earnings for 2025, translating to an average bonus of about 150 dollars. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents roughly 28,000 crew members, has labeled this outcome a “pattern of failure” by management that underlines the company’s lagging financial performance.
The frustration is particularly acute when flight attendants compare their payouts with the significantly larger profit sharing checks flowing to employees at Delta and United. American’s crew members are acutely aware that competitors are booking profits that dwarf American’s 111 million dollars, and that those stronger earnings are being shared more generously with frontline workers. For many, the disparity is not merely about money; it is seen as a tangible measure of where management’s priorities lie and a symbol of American’s slipping status in the U.S. airline pecking order.
Complicating matters is the structure of the flight attendant contract itself. In negotiations concluded in 2024, the union opted for higher guaranteed wages rather than a richer profit-sharing formula, seeking income certainty after years of volatility. That decision, once sold as a pragmatic trade, now looks painful in hindsight as profits bounce back more quickly at competitors than at American. The current agreement runs until late 2029 for full renegotiation, limiting the union’s ability to reset the balance between base pay and variable bonuses in the near term.
Storm Fern and Operational Turmoil Expose Deeper Fault Lines
The fury of Winter Storm Fern in early 2026 did more than snarl flight schedules; it exposed systemic weaknesses in American’s operational planning and crew support. As cancellations mounted into the thousands, anecdotal reports from the network painted a stark picture of flight attendants sleeping on airport floors, stranded away from home and locked in multi-hour battles just to reach company scheduling hotlines. For many, the chaos echoed prior meltdowns at other U.S. carriers and undercut the airline’s claims that it had turned a corner on reliability.
Union leaders seized on the storm as proof that management had failed to invest adequately in both infrastructure and people. Flight attendants have complained that staffing levels, reserve coverage and hotel arrangements were insufficient for a major weather event that meteorologists and regulators had signaled days in advance. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants publicly criticized what it described as a lack of contingency planning and a corporate culture too willing to accept extreme disruption as an unavoidable “part of the job.”
Those comments were fueled in part by reported remarks from CEO Robert Isom, who characterized the challenges year-round crews face in harsh weather as an inherent aspect of aviation work. Flight attendants and their union leaders blasted that stance as tone-deaf, arguing that it minimized the physical and emotional toll on employees working marathon shifts under stressful conditions. For crews who feel they have repeatedly stepped up through the pandemic recovery, the storm turned into a graphic illustration of what they see as a persistent gap between the rhetoric of “teamwork” and the reality of their working conditions.
Union Calls for New Leadership and a Strategic Course Correction
The immediate labor flashpoint has been the increasingly vocal demand from the Association of Professional Flight Attendants for a reset at the top of American’s leadership pyramid. Following the release of 2025 earnings and the minimal profit-sharing payout, the union issued a rare and blunt statement calling for “new leadership and a new vision” at the airline. The message was widely interpreted as a direct no-confidence verdict on Isom and his senior team, and an indictment of a strategy that, in the union’s view, has overemphasized cost control while underinvesting in the product and people who define the customer experience.
Union officials have argued that American’s relatively weak profits and low employee bonuses are not just the byproduct of industry headwinds, but of self-inflicted wounds. Among the most prominent examples is the airline’s ill-fated push in 2024 to drive more corporate travelers into direct-booking channels by restricting access and incentives for third-party travel agencies. That experiment alienated key corporate clients, ceded premium business to rivals and ultimately had to be reversed, leaving American scrambling to rebuild relationships and recapture lost high-yield traffic.
Flight attendants also point to American’s heavy reliance on domestic flying, a segment that has been slower to recover in yield terms than long-haul international markets that Delta and United have tapped more aggressively. In their public statements, union leaders say this structural disadvantage has been compounded by the company’s failure to differentiate its on-board product and service in ways that resonate with high-spending travelers. For them, management’s mantra of “accountability, reliability and profitability” has become shorthand for a narrow, cost-driven approach that leaves both employees and passengers shortchanged.
Pilots Join Chorus of Concern Over Profitability and Culture
The unrest is not limited to cabin crew. American’s pilots, represented by the Allied Pilots Association, have also voiced deep concern about the company’s trajectory and are weighing their own vote of no confidence in management. In a recent communication to members, union leadership framed American’s 2025 financial performance as a stark warning sign, stressing that the airline’s net income pales in comparison with Delta’s roughly 5 billion dollars and United’s more than 3 billion dollars for the same period.
Pilots argue that the profit gap is more than a scoreboard metric; it directly affects pay outcomes and long-term job security. Because profit-sharing schemes and career growth opportunities are tied to sustained profitability, the union fears that American’s weaker results will leave its pilots at a long-term disadvantage relative to peers at better-performing carriers. That anxiety has been amplified by management’s guidance that, even looking into 2026, Delta’s projected earnings will likely remain several times higher than American’s, underscoring how far the airline still has to go.
Beyond the spreadsheets, pilot representatives have criticized what they perceive as a culture of reactive decision-making and underpowered strategic thinking at the top. In internal messages, they have accused the current leadership team of lacking the creativity and will to return American to a position of true prominence among global airlines. That assessment dovetails with flight attendants’ own critiques and feeds a broader narrative that the airline is stuck in a defensive crouch while competitors chart bolder, more coherent growth strategies.
Strategic Missteps and the Race for Premium Travelers
American’s frontline employees often frame their grievances in concrete, operational terms, but underlying many of their criticisms is a broader question of strategic direction. Over the past several years, American has pursued a “back to basics” agenda that prioritizes on-time performance, debt reduction and a leaner cost structure. While those goals resonate with investors wary of cyclical downturns, they have sometimes clashed with the demands of competing for lucrative premium travelers in a post-pandemic market reshaped by flexible work and remote meetings.
American’s aborted corporate sales experiment is Exhibit A for critics who view the carrier as having misread the market. By trying to sidestep traditional travel management companies and intermediaries, the airline effectively pushed some of its highest-yield customers toward rivals offering smoother booking experiences and richer corporate perks. The subsequent reversal, including the appointment of a new chief commercial officer tasked with repairing those relationships, has stabilized some revenue flows but also underscored how costly strategic detours can be in a fiercely competitive industry.
At the same time, Delta and United have leaned aggressively into transatlantic and other international growth, adding premium-configured widebodies, expanding joint ventures and refreshing their cabins with upgraded business-class suites and premium economy products. American has moved in a similar direction, ordering new Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A321XLR aircraft with more premium seating and investing in loyalty partnerships and airport lounges. But employees and analysts alike note that the airline is playing catch-up. Its route network still skews more heavily domestic, and the brand has struggled to command the same pricing power on long-haul routes that its two main rivals enjoy.
Tension Between Costly Labor Deals and Long-Term Competitiveness
Overlaying all of these dynamics is a structural challenge shared by many large airlines, but one that feels particularly acute at American: how to reconcile rising labor costs with the need to invest in product, technology and network growth. In 2024 and 2025, the company inked a series of new agreements with pilots, flight attendants and other work groups that delivered double-digit pay increases and improved benefits after years of wage stagnation and pandemic-era sacrifices. Executives acknowledged at the time that these labor deals would drive non-fuel unit costs higher in the near term, even as they framed them as necessary to attract and retain skilled workers.
For flight attendants, the new contract provided wage hikes of up to roughly 20 percent and retroactive pay, while locking in additional raises over the coming years. Those gains have improved paychecks, but they have also heightened scrutiny over management’s ability to generate enough revenue and margin to support them. When profitability fails to keep pace, unions argue, management tends to respond with pressure for further productivity improvements, tighter staffing and more aggressive cost control, deepening the sense that workers are being asked to do more with less.
Executives counter that higher labor costs are a reality across the industry and that American is working to offset them with better revenue management, premium upselling and more efficient use of its fleet. Yet employees see a disconnect between that narrative and their own experiences during events like Winter Storm Fern, when basic support mechanisms seemed stretched to the breaking point. The perception that there is money for new aircraft, loyalty partnerships and executive compensation but not for robust resilience planning or meaningful profit sharing has become a powerful rallying cry among union leaders.
Implications for Travelers and the Road Ahead
For travelers, the internal friction at American carries real-world implications that extend far beyond balance sheets and boardroom politics. Labor unrest, even in the absence of strikes, can seep into the day-to-day experience through subtle channels: lower morale, reduced goodwill, and a greater likelihood of operational friction when weather, technology or air traffic control problems arise. Flight attendants who feel undervalued and overextended may find it harder to deliver the warm, consistent service that business and leisure travelers increasingly expect, especially at a time when premium fares and loyalty status are sold as pathways to a stress-free journey.
The risk is that a self-reinforcing cycle takes hold. If American’s employees perceive that management is failing to harness the airline’s strengths in order to close the profit gap with Delta and United, they may become more skeptical of new initiatives and less willing to go above and beyond. That, in turn, could affect customer satisfaction and loyalty scores, further weakening the airline’s competitive position and making it harder to justify investments in better amenities and services. In a sector where brand perception can pivot quickly, this kind of internal discord can quietly undermine years of painstaking network and product development.
At the same time, there are signs that American’s leadership is aware of the stakes. The company continues to emphasize its commitment to improving the premium experience with upgraded cabins, expanded lounge offerings and new digital tools. It has also made meaningful progress in reducing debt, which could free up capacity for future investments if earnings grow in line with guidance. The challenge now is to convince a skeptical workforce that these strategic moves will translate into not only shareholder returns but also fairer rewards and more sustainable working conditions for the people on the front lines.
How American navigates this crossroads will shape not only its relationship with employees, but also its standing among U.S. and global carriers. If management can bridge the trust gap with flight attendants and pilots, and deliver on promises of improved profitability without sacrificing reliability or service, the airline could yet reclaim the prominence it seeks. If it cannot, the current wave of no-confidence votes and public rebukes may mark the beginning of a longer era of internal turbulence, one that travelers will inevitably feel at 30,000 feet.