I don't think it is a legal issue. Its a culture issue.
First, the airline needs to acknowledge that there ARE culture problems related to the mergers. You have to address the culture to find ways to (1) build a common culture that seeks operational excellence while (2) identifying and addressing those employees who won't let go of their bitterness. You have to find ways to weed or sideline those people or they will continue to spread their toxicity.
Merger integration planning should start when the purchase strategy is considered. There's a lot more to the story with the AA/US merger (including the fact that the US unions had not been fully merged when they took over AA).
I have friends at all the majors, and AA stands out as unique in this realm right now. You don't hear Delta or Southwest people trash talk their airline. Even United with all of Munoz' media foibles, people are surprisingly defensive of their airline. But their is a lot of bad blood still present in AA and its mostly the AMR people who watched their upper management follow the Toys R Us path and stick it to the employees while they packed their golden parachutes.
I agree that AA stands out as particularly bad right now. I've also got friends at most of the carriers - unlike DL and WN, which had a long reputation for treating the employees well, AA has a long history of bad employee relations. UA isn't much better, but right now they're not suffering the same issues as AA.
I would correct one assertion: the upper management of AMR didn't have a lot of choice. Horton wanted to stay, and didn't want to take the airline into bankruptcy. Even at that, he was making progress to change things internally. Once you get into bankruptcy, you're at the mercy of the courts (and in this case, the acquiring entity which was US). Parker used to work at AA. Since they were the acquiring entity, they & the investors get to decide on the CEO. As part of the integration, they replaced most of the AMR folks with US folks. The word I get is that the headquarters is "a mess" and "full of inexperienced people". I realize how it might look to the employees, but really the AMR folks had little choice in the matter.
Under Parker, though, AA has had some major missteps. The Basic Economy product recently had to be modified because it was uncompetitive. The 737Max extra seats and restroom issues are ongoing. There is great animosity as the airline has drawn down JFK as a hub and moved a considerable amount of the AA flying to Philly (and with the unions still not merged, there is animosity between the unions because they can't bid the other group's flights out of PHL).
And problems with the new crew scheduling system haven't helped.
So a lot of this dates back decades. It has not been helped, at all, by Parker. And a lot of flyers - the ones used to the old AA service - talk about how US has hurt the airline. It's deeper than the flight attendants, it goes through-and-through to the customer experience from phone agents to ticket counter to gate agents to flight attendants. In other words, a CF.
But everyone has their own view - I think we can agree that it's a toxic environment.
Some people seem to have a hard time letting that go, but unless you address those pockets of toxicity, they present a danger of spreading to the new blood.
The other thing that might help is to train cabin crews and gate agents to work harder to defuse situations. It may or may not have been a factor in this particular case, but in too many of these social media vs airline cases, we see an FA or Gate Agent behaving poorly and no one else seems to try to step in and take over. You don't see much good cop/bad cop exchange. I think a lot of these situations could be defused or minimized by simply having another employee take over the handling of the dispute.
Agree with all of that.
). But gratuitous multiple reservations can't be the cause of empty seats that lead to the overbooking practice.