After more than 50 years, American Airlines just made a tough decision and flight attendants aren't happy

Finding a job as a flight attendant with American Airlines has always been difficult. Since the pandemic, it has become more difficult to do this job, and perhaps even more difficult to keep it.

But now it will become literally impossible, at least for American Airlines flight attendants who hope to continue working from San Francisco.

That's because American Airlines announced this week that after more than half a century it will stop allowing its flight attendants to be based out of town, a move that affects about 403 employees according to the flight attendants union.

“There are people who have been based there for 20, 30, even 45 years who are not ready to retire,” Paul Hartshorn, Jr., national president of communications for the IAAF told me on Friday. Association of Professional Flight Attendants. "So imagine: you're going to have to uproot your life, your family's life, find a new city, or else try to get from San Francisco to your new city of assignment every week on your own. ."

Now, I don't come here to praise American Airlines or bury this decision. There is a defensible business reason for the change.

In short, American Airlines tells me that they just don't see San Francisco becoming a hub or a destination. (The airline's full statement can be found at the end of this article.)

This is perhaps unsurprising given that San Francisco itself lost 6.7% of its population in the first year of the pandemic, compared to 3.8% for New York and 2, 8% for Washington, D.C. This is also American Airlines' smallest flight attendant base.

However, it's disappointing, and the kind of difficult decision - affecting many different types of stakeholders - that will likely resonate with business leaders across many industries.

I remember a classic example: how Warren Buffett spent decades trying to run unprofitable textile mills in Massachusetts just because they employed so many people.

After 20 years of struggle, he liquidated them, telling shareholders he was prepared to maintain barely profitable businesses for the sake of workers, but that it was "inappropriate" to continue operating at a loss indefinitely .

“Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition, and Karl Marx would disagree with the second; the happy medium is the only position that leaves me comfortable,” Buffett wrote at the time.

I think it's a sobering reminder that the choices you make as a business leader can change people's lives, even when you deem them legitimately necessary for the health of your business. This is also why I say it's worth watching airlines almost no matter what industry you're in.

As I write in my free ebook, Flying Business Class: 12 Rules for Leaders From the U.S. Airlines, the industry feels like a never-ending experiment in which all four big players compete simultaneously the same challenges, while a battalion of analysts, investors and journalists try to dissect their every move.

Remember, as I know you, people's lives and livelihoods depend on your decisions.

“It was tough for two and a half to three years,” Hartshorn told me. "We're trying to get some sense of normality back, but the streaks aren't the same, the days on duty are longer, the commutes are more difficult. It's certainly not the same job as before Covid. "

Here is the official statement from American Airlines regarding the change: