Officials still seething over American’s flight reductions

Tom Gardner

Thursday, April 13, 2000 | 9:58 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Three days after American Airlines confirmed it would ax 29 Nevada flights, official pique continues to roil over the air carrier's handling of the reductions and the depth of the cuts.

"That could not have been handled more ineptly," Sen. Richard Bryan said Wednesday. "You have to deal fairly with people."

Bryan, D-Nev., has been at the forefront of 15 months of efforts to retain as many of the former Reno Air routes as possible after American bought the struggling commuter line.

He led a Nevada contingent to Texas in December 1998 and then again two months ago to learn the Fort Worth-based carrier's plans for its Reno and Las Vegas markets.

"They were pretty candid in February that American was facing enormous increases with the cost of fuel being three times what it was 15 months earlier," Bryan said.

"It was pretty clear there would be some service adjustments later in the year, so I was not completely surprised when they came in. I was, however, somewhat surprised by the magnitude of the cuts."

American confirmed on Monday that it was eliminating 17 of its 28 flights in and out of Reno and 12 of 33 in Las Vegas, while adding three others.

D. Geno Menchetti, chairman of the Airport Authority of Washoe County board of trustees, came away from February's meeting in Texas with a different impression than Bryan.

"We were misled a lot. They told us they were not going to do any major cuts without letting us know ahead of time. Then they didn't even tell us. They told our congressional delegation."

Bryan said that flew in the face of what he recommended when the company confidentially advised him of its plans last week.

"What angered me was that when I was briefed on Thursday, I said, 'You've got to make sure that the community is briefed and that they don't read about this in the paper. This is going to be a real blow to a number of employees.' I was assured that they would and for whatever reason, that did not happen. I assumed that they would be talking to the community either that day or certainly no later than Friday morning."

Instead, American briefed the rest of Nevada's congressional delegation on Friday and Rep. Jim Gibbons announced the cutbacks to the media. A spokesman said the congressman was not asked to keep the information to himself.

In formally announcing the reductions on Monday, American said it "deeply regrets that word of the changes was reported prematurely over the weekend.

"The basic elements of the plan were shared in confidential conversations, but the final schedule was still being refined and the airline never intended for the information to be made public before it could be shared with employees and key community leaders," the company's statement said.

"American apologized to anyone who was offended by the news leaks."

Bryan refused comment on Gibbons' handling of the matter.

"I'm not going to make any judgment on the release of the information by others," Bryan said. "I assign the primary responsibility for communication to the employees and the community to the company. That's American's responsibility."

Bryan, who serves on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and its aviation subcommittee, said, "It's one thing to make tough business judgments involving a community that's struggling to expand its tourism base even if we don't agree, but there's no excuse for not notifying the employees and letting them read it on the front page."

Menchetti and Chuck Alvey, who joined February's trip to Texas as executive director of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, said the decision was not only a public relations gaffe, it was an economic misstep as well.

Menschetti said American indicated in February that its schedule would remain largely unchanged, at least through the summer.

"That was disingenuous," he said. "What's more disingenuous is the number of planes involved after we relied on the same number of planes when we did our budgeting."

American's withdrawal of 17 flights represents nearly 17 percent of the Reno airport's passenger flights, which provide a major chunk of its revenue through landing fees.

"I'm disappointed they didn't go back to the airport people who have been working with them. There could have been a good reason. It just seemed odd to me," Alvey said.

"A lot of people who know the airline business predicted this would happen and have already sent me 'I-told-you-so' e-mails."