Frontier, Spirit merger ‘didn’t necessarily get off on the best leg with labor’: AFA-CWA president

Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss Frontier and Spirit merging, Southwest bringing back in-flight alcohol, unruly passengers, and the shortage of crew and staff members due to the increase in Omicron cases during the holidays.

Video Transcript

- Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. In a deal valued at about $6.6 billion, Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines are combining forces, merging to combine what would be the fifth-largest airline in the country. Here to help us discuss is Sara Nelson, President Association of Flight Attendants. Sarah, thanks so much for being here. I know you don't work particularly for any one of those airlines, but why do you think this is such a big deal and a good decision for both of them? Because they both have been trying to expand.

SARA NELSON: Well, look, we represent the flight attendants at both Spirit and Frontier, and so we have a very sincere interest in this. We heard from the executives a couple of minutes before this was announced to Wall Street and the media. And I have to say that I've been around for a lot of airline mergers, and that was something new. We are used to airline management reaching out to us sooner. So they didn't necessarily get off on the best leg with labor here in waiting so long to talk with us.

But what we are saying is that this could be a good thing, but it's not going to have our support until we understand how it's actually going to be a benefit to the people on the front lines who have sacrificed for these airlines, worked hard for these airlines, worked through crises for these airlines, and really made it possible to get to this day where we can consider bringing these airlines together for a bigger network for consumers and a potential real advantage for people who have invested.

- And want to bring your attention, you may have seen this, a recent "Wall Street Journal" survey ranking several airlines across several metrics, and Frontier and Spirit ranked worst across seven different measures for the airlines. So what do you think a merger like this will mean for consumers at the end of the day and for the industry as a whole?

SARA NELSON: Look, there's a lot of kinks to work out here. I mean, we had a glitch at Frontier this morning where we had a ground stop because there were IT issues. We've had operational meltdowns recently at Spirit. We've worked with this management. This is being overseen by the billionaire Bill Franke, who's been in the industry a very long time. And if there's the right investments in putting these systems together, this could work a lot better. But we actually know how these mergers work, and they should be engaging with the unions on all of that. That will be an absolute benefit to consumers if they do that, and frankly, we're going to withhold our support until that happens.

- And then, Sara, I want to bring your attention-- you know, the Delta CEO, Ed Bastian, said that he wants to put unruly passengers on a no-fly list. And we actually had Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is on the show earlier. I wanted you to take a listen to what he had to say and then just get your reaction on the other side. Take a listen.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: The FAA is continuing to vigorously enforce and encourage referral, criminal referrals where appropriate, for this kind of behavior. I mean, in 2022 we should not even have to say that when you're on an airplane, you need to behave in a way that is safe and appropriate. But we still have far, far too many cases, far, far too many examples of flight crews being mistreated, or even other passengers being harmed by unruly passengers. It's got to stop, and we're going to continue doing everything that we can through enforcement and through just getting the message out there that we stand with flight crews.

- So we're coming right to the source here, Sara. You've experienced it. You've heard the stories from your crew. Tell us, how important is something like this? Do you agree with it?

SARA NELSON: Well, this is incredibly important, and we really appreciate the support of the Secretary. The Secretary has also said what should be on the table. In the past he has said that a no-fly list should be beyond the table because there has to be very severe consequences for those who are acting out. It's a relatively small number of people, but they have created incredible harm, incredible risk to the safety of everyone on board, and at the very least a major inconvenience to the rest of the passengers.

But what this also has done, if we accept this as a new normal and we don't get busy trying to get these incidents down, is that we're also handing another tool to those who would like to use commercial airliners as a weapon against our country, like they have in the past. And that remains a threat that we are on the lookout for every single day. We don't need any distractions from that, and that's another big consideration here in addition to the fact that the people that I represent should not have to go to work in an environment that feels hostile every single day.

- Yeah. One of the big considerations that happens is that people are upset about having to wear masks in flight. They don't want to do it. Some of them are critical about not having alcohol. I want to get your reaction to Southwest just announcing that it is going to reintroduce alcohol on longer flights for passengers. So now American is the only big carrier that isn't allowing alcohol. I know there has been some pushback from flight attendants and the union there. Where do you weigh in on this?

SARA NELSON: I really support my good friend Lyn Montgomery, who is the president representative of the Flight Attendants at Southwest. They're TWU-556. And they have said that this policy went into effect at Southwest of not serving alcohol the week after the flight attendant got two teeth punched out. And so this has been part of the efforts to keep down these violent events on the plane. And we haven't seen a decrease of those events. So why we're bringing alcohol back is a mystery to us. We're totally opposed to that. We don't need to be introducing anything else that is a major contributor to these events.

I want to give American Airlines a real-- I want to really applaud the way that they have worked with the unions and listened to us and really worked with us to protect the people on the front lines, and that they have kept that no alcohol policy in line. But we also need airports stopping pushing alcohol in the airports with to-go alcohol. These are some of the things that we still need to work on, because these incidents are just way too high, way too frequent, a major risk to everyone who is flying, and we're getting to a place where people are starting to think that this is what you're going to experience when you buy a ticket, and that has real economic consequences potentially, too.

- And then I want to turn your attention, finally, to-- you know, we just came through the winter holidays and airlines got hammered for having to cancel flights. There wasn't enough crew. There weren't enough pilots. Part of it has to do with vaccines and mandates for crew and staff to be vaccinated. Where do you stand on that? And you know, what percentage now of the flight attendants in your union are vaccinated?

SARA NELSON: Well, I want to be really clear that the cancellations had nothing to do with vaccine mandates over the holidays. It was all about the rise of the Omicron variant and that we actually had crews that were getting sick at the same rate that the rest of the public was getting sick. And so people were out sick and not able to cover those flights. We're already running an operation where people are not willing to pick up the voluntary overtime hours that they were before the pandemic because of the conditions at work, because of the concerns around the pandemic and the concerns of the conflict when they get to work.

So this was really a result of that surge, and we were feeling it everywhere. We were feeling it in staffing, in the airports, on the planes, and in the transportation even getting to our airports, and the restaurants and hotels around there. So everyone felt it, and this is not really about the vaccine mandates, where we are well over 90% vaccinated in the airline industry.

Don't forget that our workplace is the world, and we're also subject to vaccine mandates with other countries as well. So in order to do our jobs, it's just critical. This is something that we're used to. We're used to having to have vaccines for any number of communicable disease, and this is the same with coronavirus. And so the flight crews are very highly vaccinated, and at United Airlines, of course, they're 100% vaccinated.

- All right. We are out of time. We'll have to leave it there. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, thanks so much for stopping by today.