Still angry

American Airlines is still in hiding, keeping its head down after all those cancellations and delays the other week. But American’s pilots aren’t shy. They haven’t been for several months, and their latest bit of posturing involves pointing the finger. Or something bigger. The pilots, in the form of the Allied Pilots Association, have put up a billboard in an approach road to DFW, noting the number of cancellations, urging people to write to a website that the union has set up and suggesting that American doesn’t really care. Well, actually it does, enough so that the billboard was taken down quietly the other day. The APA, which represents only pilots at American mainline, says it is going over alternatives with the company that owns the billboard. Incidentally, American is saying that the whole fiasco with its MD80s, put into the garage by the FAA, will cost it at least $75 million.