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American Airlines, jolted by mass cancellations last weekend, has offered flight attendants as much as triple their pay to work holiday trips if they also have perfect attendance through early January. The offer comes just days after American canceled hundreds of flights, many of them tied to staffing shortages of flight attendants. The extra incentives show American is willing to pay up to avoid a repeat. American said flight attendants and reserve cabin crew members who work trips that fall between Nov. 23 and Nov. 29 or Dec. 22 through Jan. 2 will receive time-and-a-half, according to an internal memo that was reviewed by CNBC. If they also have no absences from Nov. 15 through Jan. 2, they will receive another 150% pay for those peak-period trips. “To ensure we’re providing certainty for both our customers and team members, we’re doubling down on our efforts related to our schedule and staffing,” American’s COO David Seymour said in a staff note on Friday. “On the schedule front, we’ve ensured that November and December are built to meet customer demand and that they are fully supportable by our staffing.” Other work groups will receive pay incentives, Seymour said in his note. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the labor union that represents some 23,000 American Airlines cabin crew members, said it negotiated the incentives with the company. “From mother nature wreaking havoc on the operation, the myriad of policy changes you’ve had to keep up with and an increase in incidents of customer misconduct, you’ve been dealing with a lot,” American Airlines vice president of flight service Brady Byrnes wrote to flight attendants Friday, announcing the new pay incentives.<br/>

BA owner IAG is banking on the reopening of transatlantic travel to revive its business after warning it will lose another E3b this year. The group, which owns airlines including Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling, has racked up huge losses over the past 18 months while it has been shut out of its most lucrative north Atlantic market, in effect closed since early 2020. But Luis Gallego, IAG’s CE, said Monday’s reopening of the US border to foreign nationals represents “a pivotal moment for our industry”. IAG’s airlines plan to increase their flight schedules to 60% of normal levels this quarter in response, up from the 40% flown over the summer, which are typically the industry’s busiest months. Looking further ahead, Gallego expects capacity on the north Atlantic routes to reach 100% of pre-pandemic levels by next summer, which he said should allow IAG to finally return to profit. Transatlantic bookings on BA have risen 167% since the US announced the reopening of its borders in September, with planes next week expected to be nearly full as people take advantage of the easing in restrictions. The airline’s boss Sean Doyle said the “very encouraging” bookings included early signs of a rebound in high-yielding business travellers, which are crucial to the business. “We are seeing a strong recovery as markets open up,” Doyle said. IAG has grown into an aviation powerhouse since it was formed through the merger of BA and Iberia a decade ago, and has built its business around its lucrative long-haul routes.<br/>

BA hopes to finalise talks with unions and London Gatwick airport over a new short-haul operation in time to launch its summer plans around the end of November. The Oneworld carrier has not flown short-haul routes from Gatwick since the pandemic hit and has said it will only restore such flights under a separate lower-cost operation. That was underlined by Luis Gallego, CE of BA parent IAG, during a Q3 results briefing. “What is clear is we cannot continue with the model that we have in the past, because in the last 10 years only in one of them have we made a profit,” he said. “So we need to deliver more, because also competition is going to be tough. So BA is trying is trying to reach an agreement to develop a platform and to create a new AOC with the BA brand.” The project almost appeared to fall at the first hurdle when pilots’ union BALPA initially walked away from talks on the project. But pilots last month backed terms for a Gatwick operation after talks resumed and BA is continuing negotiations with other staff groups. BA CE Sean Doyle says: “We are close to finalising our crewing agreement with cabin crew, we are working on our ground staff [deal] and also we are in the final stages of negotiations with Gatwick airport –I think that will come to a conclusion in the coming weeks. What we need is a flexible operation and a competitive cost base to compete with, in primarily a point-to-point leisure market.”<br/>