Hannu Haukka, resting his elbows on his stack of suitcases, stared blankly at the screen inside American Airlines’ terminal at O’Hare International Airport Tuesday, wading through the lines for departing flights.
Haukka, 39, a correspondent with International Russian Radio and TV, had arrived from Helsinki, Finland, in the morning and was scheduled to take a connecting American flight to Nashville. There, he was to interview the director of a homeless shelter for a documentary on American humanitarians.
“It’s canceled,” Haukka said. “This is a terrible inconvenience. I don’t know what I will do.”
But after talking to a woman behind American’s reservations counter for about 20 minutes, Haukka said: “They booked me on a flight that will get to Nashville three hours earlier (than the canceled flight). I’ll get the chance to see some of Nashville.
“It worked out fine. It makes my day.”
Indeed, American appeared to be quickly resurrecting its flight schedule at O’Hare and throughout the rest of the U.S. Tuesday, a day after President Clinton got the flight attendants’ union and the airline to agree to end the strike and resolve their differences through binding arbitration.
By evening 80 percent of American’s 2,260 daily flights, including the 350 that depart from O’Hare, were back in service and carrying passengers, according to Mary Frances Fagan, American’s spokeswoman in Chicago.
The airline expects to have 100 percent of its schedule in place no later than Thursday, and it expects to maintain that level through the hectic post-Thanksgiving weekend, she added.
Tuesday’s upbeat scene at O’Hare and the relieved expressions on the faces of many passengers within American’s terminal was in sharp contrast to the situation the last couple of days. The strike, the largest against an airline since 1989, brought American’s passenger flight operations at the airport to a virtual standstill.
From 6 a.m. Thursday, when the strike began, until shortly after noon Monday, when it was called off, all but about 10 percent of American’s flights were canceled or flying without passengers.
As a result, thousands of passengers were stranded each day, and the outlook for getting a flight on American during the Thanksgiving holiday week, the busiest period in the airline business, appeared bleak.
“Everything is perfect now,” said Rose Rovira, who was waiting with her husband, Jose, to board a plane leaving for Puerto Rico, where the couple live.
Last week, however, things were a lot different for Rovira and her husband, who didn’t find out about the strike until their arrival at the airport in Puerto Rico.
The American flight bound for Chicago, where Jose Rovira was coming on business, “was supposed to take off at 10:30 in the morning,” she said. “We switched to United. They put us on a waiting list. We waited and waited for our names to be called. Finally, at 4, our names were called.
“We were supposed to get here at 1:30 in the afternoon. But because we got a later flight, we didn’t get here until 10:30. So we lost a whole day.
“The luggage was supposed to come to United,” she said. “It didn’t come until two days afterward. We were in the hotel waiting and calling. It was hard to get them on the phone. We had to buy a couple of things-pajamas and coats.”
American flight attendants who belong to the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and who participated in the strike also were relieved.
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“I’m glad to be back,” said Melanie Lankford, a flight attendant from Dallas. “Everybody is hyped up and happy. I haven’t seen anything negative today.”
Gina Stanton, a flight attendant from Edwardsburg, Mich., added that “everyone is smiling. There are lots of hugs and welcome-backs.”
In fact, the only American employee likely to be less than overjoyed by the strike’s end is Robert Crandall, chairman and chief executive, who still must find ways to cut costs to make American more competitive against low-cost, cheap-fare carriers such as Southwest Airlines.
He also faces the contract issues that originally led to the strike and that will now be placed in binding arbitration.
Still, Crandall has no intention of resigning, despite published reports on the West Coast Tuesday suggesting that possibility, Donald Carty, American Executive Vice President, said in a news conference.
American officials acknowledged that at least some passengers who were caught off-guard by the strike and had their flights canceled could be slow to return.
Bill Spahr, an American pilot from Rockford, agreed.
“I expected that we would have a heavy load today (at O’Hare),” Spahr said, “but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Some people have taken alternative transportation-the bus, the train and other airlines. I think it will take a while to get all our customers back.”