American Airlines CEO Promises Big Changes But Can’t Explain Why Anyone Should Care—Employees And Investors Left In Limbo

American Airlines is making bold moves, from new premium cabins and better meals to rolling back unpopular policies, yet CEO Robert Isom struggles to clearly articulate a vision—leaving employees, customers, and investors unsure of what exactly the airline aims to become.

The airline has actually been making a lot of great improvements over the past year, from finally introducing new premium cabins on their Boeing 787-9P aircraft and on their Airbus A321XLR narrowbody (which entails too many tradeoffs, but premium economy is excellent) to investing in clubs and meals (even food for sale in the back) to rolling back some of their most customer-unfriendly policies.

I think a lot of the criticism that Robert Isom is receiving now is unfair, or at least the timing is unfortunate. American is making far better decisions now than at any time in his tenure (or that of his predecessor). We don’t yet know whether they’ll be able to turn the airline around, but the mistakes of the past have been made and many of those seem to be in the past!

However, the CEO hasn’t yet explained where they’re going so that employees know the kind of service they’re supposed to deliver. They haven’t told investors who they are and what their thesis is for the business. And they haven’t offered a vision of what customers can expect, investing in loyalty to American’s ecosystem.

Senior executives have been out implementing a more premium vision, turning around an airline that under former CEO Doug Parker and then under CEO Robert Isom was too focused on Spirit Airlines and Frontier – despite high costs that meant they needed to earn a revenue premium in order to make a decent return on capital. It’s no surprise that they’ve been financial underperformers, without enough premium seats to sell and without a strong enough relevance in top credit card spend markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

When earnings for 2025 hit and American basically broke even, as Delta and United made billion, and at the same time the carrier’s operations were melting down in the aftermath of winter storm Fern, calls for CEO Robert Isom to step down hit a fever pitch. The irony is that he’d finally seemed to ‘get it’ and finally greenlit many of the investments – years late – that American needed.

However Isom hasn’t yet been able to articulate a vision for the airline, which is something that the CEO needs to do as one of their most important core responsibilities. Isom offers the proof points but not the direction. Isom continually gives a laundry list of stuff that they are doing, but doesn’t tell employees and customers what that list means.

Appearing on CNBC to promote ordering new aircraft engines, Isom was asked, “What do you say to those pilots who are questioning whether you should be running this airline given the financial performance over the last three years?” And his respoinse was a laundry list of initiatives – all of them (more or less) good but not a vision for the airline.

$AAL orders new engines from $GE. The CEOs break down the details of the deal: https://t.co/dJUYBrzBLT

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) February 19, 2026

Here’s the answer Isom gave:

They’re right about our performance. We must do a much better job for our customers, for our team members. We’ve got to offer them a much better experience and ultimately for our shareholders too. I’m determined to deliver. And from that perspective, I really like what we see in this coming quarter. I like what we see for the year. Our plans are in place to address all of those issues and more… Our plan is to:

• first off, make sure that we’ve restored our capacity in our big hub networks. We’re going to do that this year.
  
• We have regained our sales and distribution share, and we’re pushing even further with our premium product.
  
• New deal with Citi. expanding the best loyalty program in the business, the advantage program.
  
• And then on top of that, it’s the customer experience.

And so whether it’s flagship suites or more reliable engines, I’m telling you.…I am focused on delivering, and I know our team is behind us. We’re 100% aligned with our team members on what we need to do. Better for our customers, better for our team members, better for our shareholders.

What is American Airlines working to become? That’s the question that the CEO needs to answer, and then lay out to customers, shareholders and employees. Here are some possibilities that they could organize themselves around, to develop a clear value proposition for the business:

• We will get our customers where they’re going more reliably than anyone else. Operational reliability hasn’t been a strong suit, and not only do they suffer delays more than Delta (and Alaska, etc.) but they perform worse than the rest of the industry in mishandled bags and wheelcharis and involuntary bumping of passengers. So this one seems like a stretch to pull off. American’s Dallas and Charlotte hubs aren’t well built for this, either.

• We are taking care of our customers better than anyone else. This one is plausible but would take tremendous work, and American Airlines flight attendants aren’t likely to deliver the kind of customer-facing experiencing as at (non-union) Delta. But they could orient everything that they do at the airline, from premium experiences in both economy and up front to policies, around this goal. They could also decide who there customer is – a subset of passengers – and focus on them. That’s the old business traveler (‘we know why you fly’) strategy.

• We provide a better value than anyone else. That may even be true already, or close to it. They rebate more to the customer through AAdvantage. As they add premium seats, they’ll upgrade more passengers (and they already do a marginally better job with upgrades than Delta and United). Between the most domestic connections, business class lounges open to more passengers, and add on more premium offerings they’ll deliver more to the customer for their money than anyone else. This isn’t quite the premium play they want, but it’s achievable.

The point is to paint a vision of who they want to be, what customers they’re serving, and (1) use that to focus all decision-making, and (2) offer it as a narrative to tell the story of each specific change or addition that they make – so that the sum becomes larger than the parts. Currently, they’re doing quite a lot and making plenty of investments but it’s like tomato juice poured into the ocean. The ocean doesn’t turn red. And it doesn’t change the overall narrative for American.

Robert Isom was dealt a challenging hand. His predecessor Doug Parker made every big decision wrong. He loaded the airline up on debt to fund stock buybacks (appearing to sell his own shares into those buybacks). He stripped down the product, removing premium seats from planes, cramming in passengers and ripping out seat back screens. He retired too many aircraft during the pandemic.

Robert Isom With Former CEO Doug Parker

But Isom was Chief Operating Officer and then President when those decisions were made, and failed to offer a different vision. It was just a year ago when the airline belatedly began intentionally investing in a more premium experience.

The CEO needs to paint a vision, sell that vision to employees (and explain how it’ll generate profits that turn into cash in employee pockets, as well as put them in an existential fight that gives them a missio nlarger than themselves) and to customers (to frame not just what they’re buying today, but what they’re investing in for their loyalty towards the future).