American Airlines, Inc.

O’Melveny secured a victory for American Airlines in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in one of the first appellate decisions addressing the McCaskill-Bond amendment to the Federal Aviation Act, which was enacted in 2007 to ensure that the integration of airline seniority lists after a merger occurs in a “fair and equitable manner.” After American Airlines and US Airways merged in 2013, a group of flight attendants who previously worked at TWA sued the new American Airlines, arguing that the new American and the flight attendants union at the new American were obligated, as part of the 2013 merger, to specifically improve the seniority of the former TWA flight attendants, arguing that the TWA flight attendants were not fairly integrated into the pre-merger American flight attendant seniority list in 2001 when American acquired TWA. The district court accepted O’Melveny’s claim that the new American had acted properly when it accepted the seniority list that the flight attendant unions negotiated as part of the 2013 merger, and that any allegations of wrongdoing addressed the 2001 merger of American and TWA, which was not properly at issue in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs’ then appealed this decision, which was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.