When is a diversion, not a diversion? This isn’t a trick question, but there’s an important distinction at American Airlines between two similar sets of circumstances that could decide whether the flight attendants on a ‘diverted’ aircraft end up timing out or not.
We generally think of a diversion as any situation in which a plane lands at any airport other than its intended destination. This could be for various reasons, such as an emergency medical situation, technical issue, unruly passenger, or weather-related issues.
American Airlines flight AA1006 from Colorado Springs to Dallas Fort Worth on March 13 is a classic example of a technical diversion after the Boeing 737 ended up landing in Denver due to the pilots reporting vibrations in the engines.
This diversion made headlines around the world when the right-hand engine caught fire as the plane was taxiing to the gate, forcing passengers to clamber out of emergency exits onto the wing of the aircraft as smoke billowed around them.
Most diversions are, of course, a lot less dramatic, although passengers can usually be assured that the pilots and flight attendants will continue working to get you on their way until they legally run out of hours to work anymore.
That is, of course, unless your diversion is not a diversion.
At American Airlines, flight attendants are contractually obliged to work a duty day of up to 13 hours and 15 minutes, but the maximum operational duty day can be stretched to 15 hours under certain circumstances.
One of those circumstances is in the event of a less serious diversion, such as a minor technical fault or a medical emergency.
During a recent flight, the plane took off as normal but was forced to return to its departure airport to deal with an incident. The flight attendants were already nearing the end of their contractual duty day, so they contacted crew scheduling to “be released.” In other words, they were about to run out of hours.
The person they spoke to in the crew scheduling department, however, attempted to convince them that the return to the airport was a diversion and that their duty hours would be extended to the maximum operational duty day.
Here’s the critical distinction: the American Airlines flight attendant contract defines a diversion as “an unscheduled landing at an airport other than the airport at which the flight was scheduled to land and other than the airport of departure.”
In other words, even if the plane has already taken off, if it returns to its original departure airport, the diversion is actually a ‘return to gate,’ and flight attendants will ‘time out’ sooner than any other type of diversion.
According to the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), the crew scheduler involved in this incident has been “reported to the highest levels of APFA and management.”
“This egregious attempt was not just a misunderstanding on the part of the tracker,” a memo from the union alleged. “It was an intentional attempt to re-interpret our contractual protections.”
The union goes on to warn flight attendants to “remain vigilant” to potential contract breaches, although this can be a job in itself.
The flight attendant contract at American Airlines runs 304 pages long, and every sentence needs to be understood and interpreted correctly to ensure that the airline and flight attendants are working to the terms of the contract correctly.
A lot of the contract is hard-wired into crew scheduling systems, meaning that individuals can’t really mess up, but there are other parts of the contract that require both sides to have an in-depth knowledge of what’s been agreed… not so easy when these are things that don’t come up all that often.
