Flight attendants at American Airlines voted overwhelmingly to authorize union leaders to call for a strike, a move designed to put pressure on the carrier during negotiations over pay raises. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants said Wednesday that more than 99% of members who voted recently favored giving the union power to call a strike. The union backed up the vote with picketing at several airports. Union President Julie Hedrick said the vote tells company management that flight attendants, who have not received raises since 2019, are “fired up.” American executives, she said, “ignore this strike vote at their peril.” American said, “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made in negotiations with the APFA, and we look forward to reaching an agreement that provides our flight attendants with real and meaningful value. We understand that a strike authorization vote is one of the important ways flight attendants express their desire to get a deal done.” The vote does not mean that a strike is imminent or even likely. Federal law makes it difficult for airline unions to conduct legal strikes — they need a decision from federal mediators that further negotiations would be pointless, which rarely happens. The president and Congress can also get involved to delay or block a strike. Earlier this month, American’s pilots ratified a contract that will raise average pay more than 40% over four years. Flight attendants are not expected to reap that kind of increase, as they have less leverage than pilots, who are in short supply. Other airline unions are also pushing for new contracts. Pilots at Southwest Airlines and flight attendants at United Airlines plan to picket at airports Thursday.<br/>
oneworld
Qantas Airways was sued by Australia’s competition watchdog for allegedly selling seats on thousands of cancelled flights, piling pressure on an airline already under lawmaker scrutiny for its treatment of customers and record profits. For more than 8,000 scrapped services between May and July 2022, Qantas kept selling tickets for an average of more than two weeks, and sometimes longer than a month, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission said Thursday as it started Federal Court proceedings against the airline. Qantas also allegedly took weeks to tell ticketholders on more than 10,000 flights that their services had been cancelled. All told, Qantas pulled almost one quarter of domestic and international flights out of Australian airports between May and July of last year. In most cases, the airline continued to sell seats or didn’t tell ticketholders for days, and sometimes it did both, according to the ACCC. The forensic investigation suggests the airline benefited — at passengers’ expense — from large-scale cancellations that it failed to publicize. The claims strengthen the case to rein in an airline that controls about two-thirds of the Australian market, months before a government white paper is due to address competition in the sector. Qantas “engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct,” the ACCC said. The airline took payments for tickets on flights that it knew, or should have known, were already cancelled, it said. The competition regulator already draws more complaints about Qantas than any other business in Australia.<br/>