Internal turmoil at American Airlines is reaching a fever pitch as the carrier’s crew members are escalating calls to oust CEO Robert Isom.
On Monday, the board of directors for the airline’s flight attendant union issued a unanimous vote of no confidence in Isom’s leadership. It’s the first time such a vote has occurred in the history of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents more than 28,000 flight attendants at American.
American’s crew members began expressing their extreme dissatisfaction with the carrier’s top executive after a prolonged scheduling meltdown during Winter Storm Fern collided with a lukewarm annual earnings report that saw American fall “dangerously behind” its competitors, the union said.
With its no confidence vote, the APFA says it is calling for accountability from management, improved operational support, and a change in airline leadership. “From abysmal profits earned to operational failures that have front-line Workers sleeping on floors, this airline must course-correct before it falls even further behind,” said APFA President Julie Hedrick. “This level of failure begins at the very top, with CEO Robert Isom.”
Both American Airlines’ crew and passengers became immensely frustrated with the carrier in the wake of Winter Storm Fern, when the airline’s crew scheduling system became overwhelmed and reportedly lost track of staffers, leaving them stranded in cities without hotels and booking them to work flights during mandatory rest periods. That led to flights being repeatedly canceled and some travelers being unable to get a plane for days.
The airline assured staff and fliers it was doing everything it could to get operations back on track, but its recovery lagged far behind other airlines that were equally affected across the country.
The flight attendant union and other staffers have noted that this isn’t the first time the airline has bungled its response to a major weather event. In its note to members, the flight attendant union said that “chaotic and mismanaged operations during weather events, service inconsistencies and declining customer trust” have been ongoing and noted by the airline’s unions before.
In October 2025, all unions at American jointly called on management to create a turn-around strategy to improve operational issues, but executives declined to release one.
“Management’s repeated failures are dragging this airline down and leaving frontline Workers to pay the price, including losing out on meaningful profit sharing at a company that should be thriving,” Hedrick said. “When the recent winter storm hamstrung our operations to the point where Flight Attendants were sleeping on airport floors, Robert Isom’s response was that it was just ‘part of our job.’ His tone-deaf leadership shows a complete disregard for the human element and is actively harming both American Airlines and the people who keep it running every day.”
As the issues following Winter Storm Fern dragged on, the airline released its 2025 earning report, showing an annual pre-tax profit of $352 million, which is well behind competitor airlines like United, Delta, and even budget carrier Southwest Airlines. The union also noted that part of the logic behind the no confidence vote was the fact that as the airline’s profits have dwindled, executives’ compensation packages have increased.
The airlines’ pilots union shares a similar sentiment. Over the weekend, Isom agreed to meet with representatives from Allied Pilots Association, which represents more than 16,000 American Airlines pilots, to discuss crew members’ concerns.
"This assessment is not the result of a single interaction with management, an isolated operational disruption, or an individual earnings report; it is the result of persistent patterns of operational, cultural, and strategic shortcomings," the pilots’ union said in a letter to American’s board of directors.
Isom said that he and the board are aligned with the pilots’ “desire to make American the strongest airline possible in every respect,” according to Reuters.
It’s not clear when the meeting is scheduled to take place or what exactly will be on the agenda.
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