Is American Airlines a better airline than we give them credit for? They have made a decade of boneheaded decisions and the customer hasn’t been at the forefront of their thinking. But they’ve also made real improvements, and I don’t think they’re doing enough to tell that story.

Schedules have been built for aircraft utilization rather than timed to when customers want to fly. Policies like baggage interlining, standby and confirmed flight changes are built around avoiding revenue leakage rather than thinking through how they’re experienced by the customer. And their long-term focus on competing with Spirit and Frontier rather than Delta and United led them to a product that fails to command a revenue premium – for instance not having enough extra legroom or business and first clas seats to sell.

But in many ways they’ve been getting a lot better. They’ve been getting a lot better even in ways they don’t take enough credit for. They were the first airline with sufficient bandwidth to offer high speed wifi to everyone, they just didn’t make it free. They’re rolling out high speed wifi to their regional jets… I’m now writing from one right now… but don’t really tell the story.

• Where is the web page tracker showing the progress updating this fleet?
• Where is even the announcement on my flight that this aircraft has the fast wifi?

American’s lounge food lags what Delta offers, but it’s actually improving quite a bit. It probably still lags United in many cases, but not by much. I was shocked to find that the cole slaw in the Philadelphia Admiral’s Club was legit by New York deli standards.

Philadelphia Admirals Club Cole Slaw

Even in my home club of Austin they’ve ramped up much better food in the past few weeks, against an already improved offering. American just really doesn’t tell this story.

I write this from the Austin club where they have the new dishware that first appeared in the Washington National E concourse club and that makes everything just look so much more appetizing.

Washington National E Concourse Admirals Club

Their new business class and premium economy products are shockingly gorgeous. They aren’t putting their new business and premium economy in the 787s and 777-200s that are already in their fleet. They’re allergic to capital investment.

Boeing 787-9P Suites

Boeing 787-9P Suites

Their new lounge template is stunning. They aren’t building enough new lounges or retrofitting lounges to this standard.

Washington National E Concourse Admirals Club

Philadephia A-West Admirals Club

Still, the airline isn’t the same one it was before the pandemic, or under their previous CEO, even though some of these initiatives (like the Adient Ascent suite on the new 787-9P) began under his leadership. The current CEO isn’t out talking to employees and selling them on a vision the way I think he needs to be. But that’s also what underscores American’s problem.

• American undersells their improvements and achievements
  
• While competitors oversell theirs

Now, American’s approach to many of its improvements seems to be ‘the same, but less than’ – at least for now. But if they’ve just gotten started on their coach food for sale program, then offering fewer choices on fewer routes that aren’t as tasty as what Alaska and United offer is ok – these things take time. They just haven’t articulated where they’re going, what that will look like, and when they’ll get there. In other words, it’s a failure to tell their story.

In contrast, Delta Air Lines is a pretty good airline! They just aren’t close to as good as they claim to be. Their business class suites aren’t as nice as American’s new suites, and their Boeing 767 business class product (on both the -300s and -400s) lag American’s old business and United’s current business even. Their domestic coach product has TVs, and their flight attendants often a bit happier, but otherwise isn’t really differentiated.

Delta Air Lines tells a story and keeps repeating how premium they are, enough that people start to believe it, like Obi Wan Kenobi telling imperial stormtroppers that ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ as he enters the security checkpoint in Mos Eisley on Tatooine. He’s Jedi mindtricking everyone. When Delta does something good, deep in their bones they need to exaggerate it.

United Airlines keeps repeating how premium they’ve become, and they’ve no doubt gotten better over the past 10 years. But their Polaris business class was designed to be just good enough for customers not to avoid buying – signed off on by disgraced former CEO Jeff Smisek, its key attribute is density.

And while they’ve revealed new business suites those too will go on new aircraft deliveries without any announced plan to retrofit existing aircraft. Their coach seats are too hard. Their boarding process doesn’t respect customers’ time.

They have a good app, good coach buy on board and they’re adding free Starlink wifi which is great (but most planes don’t have it, so for those American’s offering is better). United isn’t that premium, and aren’t as reliable as Delta (even as Delta isn’t as reliable as it used to be), no matter how many times CEO Scott Kirby groups the two airlines together.

United and Delta overclaim, American underclaims, and the marketing and positioning of these airlines has a lot to do with magnifying our perceptions.

US Airways sold an inferior product at a discount, their bread and butter was coach travelers buying on schedule and price, and I think this management team had a bit of an inferiority complex around what they could provide.

What American needs is a clear vision – both for customers to understand them and also for employees to understand the service they’re meant to deliver. There have been too many mixed messages about whether it’s a Spirit product or a Delta one. Give employees tools and inspiration and they want to offer a product they’re really proud of. The inspiration piece is marketing!