American Airlines is planning to reward all of its frontline employees, including pilots and flight attendants, with an iPhone 12 and a 7th-gen iPad.  The devices will be handed to the staff over the course of next year, according to a memo View from the Wing.

American Airlines Rewards Employees with iPhone 12 

American Airlines’ CIO, Maya Leibman, announced the rollout of new Apple devices to employees last week. In the note, she said about how important technology has become in keeping us ‘personally connected.’

“Given this commitment, we have decided to consolidate our frontline mobile devices onto Apple iPhones and iPads. Not only will this next-generation technology improve our customer and team member experience, but it will also allow our IT developers to create new apps on a single operating platform, Apple’s iOS.”

The airline started testing the rollout of iPhone 12 devices with gate agents at Reagan National Airport. Following the tests, the iPhone 12 will be rolled out to all of the airline’s agents over the next year. The airline has also started handing over 7th generation iPads to the maintenance technicians. The rollout of the iPad will finish by the end of June, following with the technicians won’t have to carry two different tablets for ‘different aircraft and activities.’

Some of the other points shared in the memo include:

• Pilots will continue to use iPads as their electronic flight bags which we’ll continue to enhance over time. Recently, we added a real-time weather app and a new turbulence awareness app to the devices.
• Flight attendants’ new cabin electronic flight bag and customer service tool will be an iPhone 12, and distribution will begin in the first quarter of 2022. The new devices will have a customized payment attachment that will allow multiple forms of payment, including touchless.

The report also says that the airlines still haven’t finalized which cellular network they’ll partner with, however, they have confirmed that the devices will support 5G.

Previously, we’ve seen Singapore Airlines handing iPads to its workers for crucial tasks and United Airlines distributing iPhone 6s to all flight attendants in 2015.