FORT WORTH -- Changing cabin cleaners for its aircraft has not gone smoothly for American Airlines.
Hundreds of flights have been delayed at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in the past few days after the Fort Worth-based airline started using AirServe as its cabin cleaners Thursday."As is typical when starting a new relationship with a vendor, we had a few hiccups during the first days; however, things with AirServe have greatly improved since then," American spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said in a statement Monday. "We hold our contractors to the same high standards as our in-house employees."According to FlightStats.com, 140 American departures from DFW were delayed by more than 15 minutes Monday. The day before, only half of American's flights departed on time from DFW, with 229 flights delayed.Sources told NBC5 that AirServ employees did not have the correct ID badges needed to work in secured areas of the airport and were entering through American's old mail-sorting facility to get to the planes.Transport Workers Union employees used to do the cleaning, but as part of American's restructuring in bankruptcy, the union agreed to let it outsource the job to a contractor. So hundreds of union workers were laid off at several U.S. airports.Darrin Pierce, president of TWU Local 513, said there have been quite a few delays at DFW since the new vendor took over the cabin cleaning work from union workers. About 220 workers in his local were laid off as part of the outsourcing agreement."The jobs we are talking about, we’ve had for decades so we know how to do it," Pierce said. "Unfortunately, we lost those jobs through the bankruptcy process. The new company that is performing this job, at a lower wage doesn't know how to do them yet, so American is going to take some lumps as it goes through this."American has said in bankruptcy documents that it would save $29.8 million annually by outsourcing the cleaning.Andrea Ahles, 817-390-7631Twitter: @Sky_TalkHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
