American Airlines has received a single operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for American and US Airways, marking a major milestone in the integration of the two airlines.
The FAA’s approval for American and US Airways to operate under one certificate is the culmination of more than 18 months of work aligning the carriers’ operating policies and procedures. Most flight operations, maintenance and dispatch procedures will be identical for all flights moving forward. Air traffic control communications will refer to all American and US Airways flights with the call sign ‘American’.A team of more than 700 employees reviewed 465 manuals along with policies, procedures and programs from both carriers and selected best practices to implement for the merged airline. More than 110,000 employees completed hundreds of thousands of hours of training in multiple phases and more than 115,000 pages on policies and procedures were published.The FAA’s recognition of American as a single operator does not mean change for customers, who will continue to check in for their flights on aa.com, usairways.com, or at American or US Airways ticket counters until later this year when American moves to a single reservations system. Since American and US Airways merged in December 2013, the airline has been making steady integration progress, including inducting US Airways into the oneworld alliance, merging separate frequent flyer programs into the single AAdvantage program and reaching five-year joint collective bargaining agreements with its pilots and flight attendants.