Airlines
American Airlines is Trying to Stop a Popular iPhone App That’s Become a ‘Must Have’ For its Flight Attendants
#AmericanAirlines is Trying to Stop a Popular iPhone App That’s Become a ‘Must Have’ For its Flight Attendants
The creator of an iPhone app that has gained popularity among the airline’s flight attendants is being prevented from gaining access to crucial data that is required to keep the program functioning by American Airlines using sophisticated “bot detecting” software.
American Airlines flight attendants now consider the “Sequence Decoder” app to be a necessity because it has all the data they require to manage their schedule and daily activities in one place.
Spirit Airlines looking to hire 200 Orlando-based flight attendants(Opens in a new browser tab)
The software is especially well-liked by American Airlines’ huge number of “reserve” flight attendants since it offers them more control over their schedules and has additional features like a calculator to ensure the crew is working within legal limitations. The program’s creator, Jeff Reisberg, purportedly asked American Airlines to work with him on the app, but the airline did not provide its own version of it. Instead, bots used by Jeff to run his own program “scrape” data from AA’s computer systems.
Regarding the current scenario involving the Sequence Decoder, one flight attendant remarked, “I have never seen a firm do anything to make life tough for its staff.” Another user on Reddit claimed that the software has made it “far more efficient and easy to retrieve” the data that flight attendants require.
The use of third-party iPhone and Android apps by airline employees has increased recently. While the bulk of the staff may keep their rosters up to date, some are permitted to gather information from several internal computer systems and present it to her in a single location.
Airlines might permit the existence of these applications because they see a profit in their work but lack the means or desire to develop their own apps. Another significant US airline recently developed its own version of this type of software and promptly restricted access to other apps.
Currently, the airline is suing The Points Guy for using a third-party program on its website to scrape information from AAdvantage accounts of users. The Points Guy is accused by American Airlines of breaking its terms of service and enticing thousands of consumers to do the same.
