BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’s ONLINE:

How it started: Association of Flight Attendants Union and Association of Professional Flight Attendants Endorse Joe Biden For President.

—The American Presidency Project, October 28th, 2020.

How it’s going: American Airlines to close SFO base, displacing over 400 flight attendants.

American Airlines announced that over 400 San Francisco-based flight attendants would be forced to transfer to new locations after it closes its Bay Area base, according to a union representative for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants.

The Flight Attendant base at SFO will be closing on January 21, 2023. The base currently serves as a home base for flight attendants from Sacramento, San Jose and the San Francisco area. This closure will displace around 403 locally-based flight attendants, forcing them to choose a new home base or retire. The SFO APFA Base President Tim Schwartz says that the flight attendants will be able to bid for nearby bases except LAX, which the company says is already overstaffed.

Schwartz says that he has been working at the San Francisco base since 1998. He says he has seen the airline business ebb and flow over the years, including economic slowdowns in 2008 and 2020.

“As we’ve gone through the roller coaster of financial issues that have plagued airlines, the market just hasn’t returned to what the company wants. Then COVID hit,” Schwartz said.

One problem that many of the flight attendants will be facing is uprooting their lives entirely.

“I would probably say the top 250 out of the 400 are rooted and grounded here in the Bay Area. They own homes here, they have kids that have been born and raised here,” Schwartz said.

He also mentioned the challenges that could come up for some of the flight attendants who now need to be based somewhere that isn’t near their home.

—San Francisco’s KRON4 News, Wednesday.