Sick Time Abuse on Airlines Radar Screen

American Airlines is concerned with its holiday schedule integrity and is looking at sick time abuse as a possible culprit. According to Michael Mellerski, vice chairman of the pilots union for the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, “pilots long-term sick is way up, evidenced by the increase in pilots running out of sick time”. He also said it’s particularly bad among reserve pilots, those who fill in when others can’t fly.

The union’s chairman of the Washington DC chapter, Gary Boettcher, said “the sick issue has gone beyond an integrity issue, it has become a reliability issue for our customers – you know, those folks who pay us”.

He also said in a message to pilots that if American starts canceling flights because of sick issues, American will start terminating employees.

American declined to elaborate on lost time due to sick issues but said they were looking at it closely.

With things as bad as they are, the last thing American needs is customer service issues due to pilots abusing sick time.