American Airlines lays off 656 workers, will create new customer service team

FORT WORTH, Texas - Fort Worth-based American Airlines will lay off 656 workers as it overhauls its customer service department, including more than 300 non-union customer service jobs in Dallas.

"After three years of record profits at American Airlines, American Airlines has decided to lay off three work groups at our company," said Deborah Johnson, the president of CWA Local 6001, which represents front-facing passenger service employees, like ticket and gate agents.

The union does not represent the customer service employees being laid off, but Johnson knows many of them. 

"The real big loser in this is our passengers, because this work is going to be outsourced," said Johnson.

American did not confirm that, but the airline does say it is streamlining the way it handles passengers' complaints about lost luggage and canceled flights.

Instead of several teams to address various problems, they'll create one new service team.

In the most recent earnings call, the airline's CFO described some of the planning.

File photo of an American Airlines Boeing 787 landing at London Heathrow Airport in 2022. (Photo by Robert Smith/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

"We have spent the last 18 months sizing the opportunity and developing plans to re-engineer our business to be more productive, while improving the customer and team member experience," said American CFO Devon May.

Travel expert Gary Leff says, in theory, this could make things easier for customers dealing with multiple problems as they would have a single point of contact.

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But he added that customers should be skeptical about the consolidation of multiple teams into one, at a time passengers routinely complain about already long customer service wait times.

"They're reducing staffing at a time when we've certainly seen agents who are facing mandatory overtime because there has been, you know, such a workload for them to get through. And so it doesn't strike me that the reason for the layoffs is because of better customer service," said Leff.

Johnson tells FOX 4 the layoffs will go in effect on March 31.

Workers impacted by the layoffs will get the first chances at the 135 jobs for the new team.

FOX 4 reached out to American for comment, but have not heard back.