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The CEO of 
American Airlines, Robert Isom, has suddenly become the target of an unusual public revolt from the people who run the airline on a day-to-day basis. In early February, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) backed a unanimous vote of no confidence in Isom and escalated the pressure with a protest outside the airline’s headquarters in Fort Worth. For crew members, the dispute is not just about labor politics, but more so, the belief that repeated operational breakdowns and lagging results are being treated as normal, all while frontline employees absorb the chaos across the board. The immediate flashpoint was American’s messy recovery from Winter Storm Fern.
During this time, mass cancellations and crew schedule disruptions left flight attendants stranded and, according to the union, some were even sleeping on airport floors. But unions argue the storm simply exposed deeper problems for an airline that has fallen behind Delta and United in both reliability and profitability. Leadership choices have consistently required course-correction. Pilots have echoed the sentiment in a separate letter calling for decisive board action and a culture reset. With customers watching service wobble and profit-sharing shrink, employees want directors to step in now. The message from the rank-and-file is very straightforward – if American wants to compete in the market, the turnaround has to start at the very top.
Robert Isom’s Time At American Has Been Full Of Ups And Downs
Robert Isom became the CEO of American Airlines on March 31, 2022, after serving as the president of the company since 2016, and earlier served as the airline’s Chief Operating Officer (COO). His tenure has been fueled mostly by a post-pandemic rebuild, including restoring schedule reliability, trying to win back corporate customers after a disruptive sales and distribution shift, and leaning harder into premium revenue and loyalty as the carrier’s principal profit engine. The carrier has struggled heavily in relation to its competitors, which have otherwise seen a period of margin expansion and relatively disciplined growth. American, by contrast, has been bogged down with its own troubles.
Management has argued that investments in product, network, and fleet deployment, and sales tools can narrow the profitability gap with 
Delta Air Lines and United Airlines. American Airlines, despite this, entered 2026 forecasting earnings above analysts’ expectations. Execution, however, has proven a challenge, and the airline has routinely faced consistent employee anger, most visibly after Winter Storm Fern, during which the airline was forced to cancel more than 9,000 routes with a revenue impact of somewhere between $150-$200 million, a number which analysts certainly do not like.
In February 2026, the flight attendants’ union, the APFA, issued a unanimous vote of no confidence, blaming persistent operational shortfalls, weaker results than peers, and poor leadership decisions as all pieces behind the airline’s continued decline. Pilots have also pressed the board for decisive action. Robert Isom’s time at the top is now a referendum on whether promised operational fixes and a premium-led strategy can translate into durable performance quickly enough to satisfy employees, customers, and investors.
Why Is The Flight Attendant Union Demanding Change Now?
The flight attendants’ union says that the moment to force change is very much now because the latest disruption was not a one-off incident but rather a breaking point that made long-running problems impossible to dismiss. Their immediate catalyst was American Airlines’ chaotic recovery from Winter Storm Fern, when large-scale cancellations and crew dislocation left some flight attendants without timely hotel accommodations and, in the union’s telling, with flight attendants sleeping on the ground in terminals.
What escalated anger was not only the overall hardship, but also leadership’s posture, with the APFA arguing that management treated the breakdown as routine and showed little urgency about the human and contractual consequences across the board. When looking at the bigger picture, the union frames Fern as proof that American’s operational model and strategic execution have been deteriorating for years, producing weaker financial results than Delta and United, leading to smaller profit-sharing outcomes for employees.
Repeated irregular operations that land disproportionately on frontline crews while executives remain insulated is one of the union’s key complaints. APFA also points to what it calls extensive strategic missteps, including corporate sales decisions and constant course correction, and it has also indicated that internal conversations with management have proven relatively fruitless. With pilots also publicly pressing the board, flight attendants are trying to move the fight from management to governance, ultimately pushing directors to intervene before another peak-season disruption actually hits.
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Is There Any Merit To What The Union Is Calling Out?
From a perspective of measurable characteristics, the union’s criticism has some merit. First, American’s Winter Storm Fern disruption was extraordinary, even by the airline’s own standards, with around 9,000 cancellations and an estimated $150-$200 million revenue hit, far exceeding analyst expectations. 
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) was especially poorly prepared. American has also been verifiably underperforming its peers, with American generating around $352 million in adjusted pre-tax profit in 2025 versus the roughly $5 billion at Delta and $4.6 billion at United.
Unions have consistently tied this gap to smaller profit-sharing checks. Third, reliability metrics have also trailed, with data from Cirium naming Delta as America’s most on-time airline while American fell as low as sixth. Other industry data has noted that American had the highest cancellation rate among its major rivals in January. These are all factors which could be behind the complaint.
The causality of the union’s criticism is what is difficult to confirm. While the union has called out leadership failure, there are pieces which were certainly outside of Robert Isom’s control, such as the airline’s natural hub concentration, the severity of the weather, and the system’s fundamental constraints. Comments about a failed sales strategy are also difficult to confirm empirically. Management says that a premium-and-corporate-client turnaround should show results in 2026, and some analysts expect this kind of improvement.
How Did American Airlines Respond?
To be fair to the airline, it has attempted to respond directly to the concerns of its union, as one would expect when management receives this kind of criticism and a direct request for a CEO to be ousted. When writing this story, Simple Flying reached out directly to American Airlines for a comment on the situation. The airline noted to us that Robert Isom had addressed the complaints of his union in a video that was sent out to the entire airline’s staff, one which the carrier also sent over to us.
In his address, Isom discusses the extensive challenges that the airline has faced over the past year, especially in terms of its operational and logistical failures during the recent winter storm. He acknowledged the burden that this placed on many of the airline’s flight attendants, and he thanked them for their assistance during the operational nightmare that took place a few weeks ago. Then, Isom turned his attention toward the rest of the year, stating as follows:
“As we look forward to 2026, it is with a lot of excitement and confidence. I know that we are going to do better financially and operationally.”
Isom then went on to explain the airline’s plan for improving profitability this year, and he directly called out the airline’s initiatives to improve its reputation and operational performance. He also noted that this will be good for the airline’s shareholders and for employees looking for healthier profit-sharing checks.
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The Elephants In The Room
There are a few key things for us to keep in mind as we analyze how American Airlines chose to respond to this. For starters, the carrier is dealing with the obvious backdrop of Delta’s recent announcement of the largest profit-sharing payouts in the industry, ones which grabbed the headlines. American’s flight attendants are certainly well-aware that their peers are getting nicer bonuses this season.
The second major elephant in the room is the increasing threat of shareholder activism, which has proven to have an impact on the industry in recent years. Most notably, an underperforming Southwest Airlines was aggressively targeted by activist investment manager Elliott Global Management, which argued executive change would be a solution to the company’s problems.
Whether Elliott managed to solve Southwest’s challenges (including similar operational struggles) is not really something for us to answer. But, it is very clear that the threat of activist investors pressuring board change and strategic overhaul is not out of the realm of possibility in this industry.
What Is Our Bottom Line?
At the end of the day, it is very clear that American Airlines’ leadership team and long-standing CEO Robert Isom have some big questions to answer. Flight attendants are not satisfied with the airline’s operational and financial performance, and its profit-sharing initiatives have been far less rewarding than those of competitors like Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.
Crew are one of an airline’s most important assets, especially as a global shortage of pilots and flight attendants only continues to grow. Thus, there is a big question that needs to be answered by management. Does it legitimately have a strong, credible plan to end the airline’s operational and financial woes?
It is not up for debate what that plan is, but more so, whether it will be successful. Investors have yet to buy American’s case, given their inability to reward the airline with improved trading multiples. We will simply have to wait and see what American’s next move is, and whether Robert Isom is still at the helm.
