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).
American is years away from turning things around, and that’s assuming they can. And Isom is not the person to do it. He should do everyone a favor and take a package.
It’s really simple. To be considered in the league of DL or UA, not only does AA need the LOPA, but AA needs (or at the least, articulate a plan) to have a near globe girding network.
Another quote attributable to Isom was that, “we (nee AA) weren’t going to fly any “exploratory” routes. If AA truly seeks premium revenue, then Transpac has got to be on the table.
Enough of the El Paso to Elmira nonsense.
Pilots are interested in where they’ll be flying to, point blank.
The past three times we have flown America the planes were filthy, broken seats and seat tables and internet problems. Who cares? WE DO!
“Parker did everything wrong” is the best quote in this article.. Robert Isom inherited a mess but he had 3 years to turn things around.. Time for new leadership! Isom should resign.
He is able to list a bunch of initiatives – some of which are underway – but doesn’t list the things that passengers see the most like broken and dirty planes and unpleasant employees.
But let’s be clear that banging on AA for bad service and acting like UA delivers it is hypocrisy of the highest order. UA’s on-time only gets them 6th place for 2025 on-time through Nov, as far as the DOT has released. AA is at #8. DL is at #2 and WN is at #4.
AA and UA perpetually sit at the bottom of the industry for baggage mishandling.
AA needs a marketing department as good as UA’s to blabber about how great they are and deliver mid-tier performance at best.
This dude has to go!
AA employees need to believe things are improving for AA to turn it around.
UA led the Big 3 in DOT metrics over the holidays and so far in 2026 especially during winter storm Fern and correspondingly UA’s net promoter scores (NPS) are soaring. Southwest has also continued their outstanding operational performance though it is a bit easier for more point to point airlines.
You’ve been the CEO of how many airlines?
You may see some improvements to long haul Business as that’s where the money is. Maybe some modest changes to domestic first. Coach will remain coach. Outside of MCE and a free drink in MCE (assuming a service is performed) coach will remain Frontier like. And that goes for UA and DL.
I’d say one of the things they really need to work on is to “Provide a CONSISTENT experience for Advantage customers.”. All too often the experience in 1st is dramatically different from one crew to the next. You have one guy out of PHL who busts himself to serve all pre-flight drinks for 20 passengers, and gets it done well before doors closed, and on the same flight, at the same time, with no delays, you just get water (they were stocked), or they just chat with each other while no one is entering the plane.
Same thing with serving some additional wine- just got off a SAN-PHL flight, and after a 3 hour delay (replaced aircraft on an earlier leg, it happens), the FA was *ready* with pre-flight beverages and was awesome in the air. Two weeks earlier? Crickets and you have to hit the call button because it’s been 20 minutes since they last checked in with you… And since I usually sit in row 1, I see the on their phone or reading a book.
So it’s totally inconsistent.
Meanwhile, it’s inconsistent on the ground too. I got the best service out of MSP 2 days after Fern when AA canceled ALL flights from MSP to the East Coast. I was literally escorted to the front of the line on Delta, because the gate agent new that “Nancy” from Delta was working there and they help each other out. That was really cool and a very real “George Clooney Up in the Air” experience.
Meanwhile I was stuck in DCA and no one could help and I had to call to get help. Sigh.
So very inconsistent service- needs to be improved, and while I think it’s getting better, there is still a LONG way to go.
At this point, American feels stuck in a loop. The company continues to trail key competitors on profitability while promising yet another strategic reset. I predict that Isom won’t be able to get out of his own way, because cost discipline is so deeply ingrained in his strategic and operational DNA. “Pivot to premium” and “don’t spend a dollar you don’t have to” simply do not go together. And until results materially improve, skepticism about execution is not unreasonable.
For that reason, shareholders are justified in scrutinizing the composition of the board itself.
Gregory D. Smith was a long-time senior executive at Boeing, including CFO and later in expanded enterprise roles, during years that included major safety crises and intense regulatory scrutiny. He was not CEO for most of that period, but he was part of the top leadership team as those events unfolded.
John T. Cahill served as Vice Chairman of Kraft Heinz during the period culminating in the company’s 2019 $15.4 billion brand impairment. That era was widely debated among investors as reflecting an aggressive cost-focused strategy that proved difficult to sustain.
Kathryn Farmer has led BNSF since 2021 during a period when some shippers and labor groups have publicly criticized staffing levels and service reliability across the rail industry, including at BNSF.
Susan D. Kronick was a senior leader at Federated during the consolidation of multiple regional department-store brands into a centralized model, a strategy that drew criticism from some customers and retail observers.
Denise M. O’Leary has served on Medtronic’s board during years that included significant product-related litigation and shareholder disputes, including matters tied to the INFUSE device.
Doug Steenland was CEO of Northwest Airlines when it entered Chapter 11 in 2005, and labor unions at the time publicly criticized executive compensation practices during the restructuring.
Howard Ungerleider served as CFO of Dow through the DowDuPont merger and separation, a complex restructuring period that coincided with ongoing legacy chemical liability litigation affecting the broader corporate family.
And then, of course, there is Isom himself.
None of this implies individual misconduct. It does, however, reflect a board whose collective corporate experience may not be the optimal fit for a company that badly needs innovation, greater risk taking, and sustained operational outperformance rather than another defensive reset and the same tiresome talking points.
It is long past time for the shareholders to take action.
His time is over. He has had 3 years and only now is articulating changes that should have already been made. As stated, he cannot articulate any vision of who AA is going to be in 5 years. That should be job 1 for the CEO. Once you have that, you can lay out all the things it will take to get you there and even if you say it will take 5 years to get there, everyone knows the vision and how each of the changes relates to the vision. He thinks making changes is progress.
I’ve been flying with AA for decades and using miles accumulated on occasion too. Recently need to get to Vegas from AUS and the ONLY flights available with this “world class airline of yesteryear” were 5-6 HOUR flights (NO NON STOPS from podunk Austin, the Capital of Texas to Las Vegas no less!) at a price of $700+ and up. When I decided to use my miles, I was told the miles would be 75K for a round trip IN ECONOMY…..
American has been slipping for years and they no longer suit the general public. I wound up on a NON STOP (2 hour fight) with Southwest (at 1/2 the price) who is creating a hub in Austin and I will be flying with them from now on.
I will donate my 90K miles with American as they won’t get me to podunk and back. Very sad!
I wonder if boards feel safer now as compared to the past since such a large chunk of the stock market (not a majority yet) is owned by various retirement plans that don’t throw their weight around to fine tune them. Such situations make it difficult for small time investors to get the boards that will move the companies forward instead of just muddling along.
I do think AA should talk more about the “value proposition” for travellers. Isom should be bold enough to refer to Delta’s frequent flyer miles as “Sky Pesos” — because that’s actually kind of true. But, otherwise, I think this vision thing is a bit overrated. Isom knows what he wants AA to be: a well-run profitable airline. He’s got to make AA more profitable this year — at least compared to UA and DL — or he will be gone.
I would also note that your constant reference to “AA thought they were competing against Spirit” are silly. They WERE competing against Spirit at the time. Most people thought those airlines would be the future — just like Ryanair actually BECAME the future in Europe. For various reasons, things didn’t turn out that way. You can argue that AA was a bit late to pivot to the changing industry dynamic. That’s fair. But I think the real reason for Delta and United’s enhanced profitability was the surprising williness of northern urban elites to want to spend gobs of money making themselves more comfortable when they fly. Everyone thought Americans would only do that if their companies were paying the bill. Sometimes, humanity surprises you. I see every indication that AA has recalibrated to the new world order. We will find out soon.
I am a VERY long term frequent flier on AA bumped up about 50% of the time so I know the difference between the biscotti in coach and the service up front. staff can be mechanical or pleasant service can be rote or friendly and personal. I remember “back in the days” when flying transcontinental from LA an elderly gray haired woman would single out the frequent fliers nod and ask if “everything is OK” to a much more impersonal “greeting” and service. maybe one flight in 10 I am thanked for my status or offered my complimentary free beverage and food.
while the big things matter they are built on the back of the little things
I’m not the CEO nor advocate for staff but just a traveler who (in their words) has a choice in airlines
but since I am a life long AA flier II feel I have the right to express my disappointment
Lol. Apparently you haven’t riden in these new premium cabins or coach seats. Cramped and horrible comfort and padding. No space. Only upgrade of meals is on select flights. Horrible product!
For the size of the compensation package for American’s CEO, performance has to be awesome, not just good. And it is not even good now. Employees and customers deserve a new CEO, now.
Here’s my latest AA experience. Last night, I was flying DCA-DFW, in (paid) first.
We boarded the plane and, as the door was closed, the flight attendant working first announced there would be no meal service. (This was the 6:37pm departure on 3 hour, 20 minute flight; it’s listed as “dinner” when you buy a first class ticket on AA.com.)
The reason? According to the FA, AA has decided to use a new “off-site” catering vendor at DCA, and the catering vendor couldn’t figure out how to get the meals to the airport.
The FA told me, when I asked for more detail, that he had asked the manager at DCA if he might, at least, get the buy-on-board coach meals to serve his first class passengers. He was denied; “those are for purchase.” So he got an extra snack basket.
Think of all of the ways AA could have handled this:
1. They could have just figured out how to cater a first class flight.
2. They could have made an announcement in the club and terminal about the catering problems and provided first class passengers a meal voucher to purchase a meal before the flight.
3. They could have done the buy-on-board coach meals, as the FA suggested.
4. They could have purchased food in the airport and served that to the first class passengers.
5. They could have equipped the FA to offer, via his app, apology bonus miles to all affected customers.
Instead, they did nothing. And when their frontline team member tried to do right by his passengers, given the situation, he was denied by management.
Passengers were told to write to AA with a complaint; of course, right now, there’s a bar on the complaint page telling you to expect a long wait for a reply because volume is high. (No surprise: it being AA, everyone’s complaining.) I’m fairly sure once they finally write back I’ll be told that, in fact, the flight was catered (just as I’ve been told that maintenance delays and cancellations are “for weather”) and told to pound sand.
“Pivot to premium,” my a**.
rebel,
you are proof that compensating someone well gives them incentive to push their company on social media.
As an obvious UA HDQ employee, you don’t get to wow actual UA customers so you think it is your job to do it on social media.
UA ended up mid-tier for 2025 at best in operational metrics; most of its frontline employees are not paid industry competitive wages.
you and other obvious UA HDQ social media stalwarts touted UA”s low “seat cancellation rate” by “weighting” out regional carrier flights; jonnyc even joined the line even though the DOT says no such metric is possible. When UA execs used the term in their earnings call, it was obvious that the people on aviation social media were insiders incessantly doing all they can to lie and distort to make their company look good.
AA just needs to have a cadre of group of employees who are detached from reality but believe it their role in life to lie, distort and manipulate – and then they will actually be better than UA because AA’s “seat free high speed WiFi access” rate will be demonstratably be superior to UA’s.
Given that UA has at least the 4th lowest “seat free high speed WiFi access behind DL, then AA, and B6 and yet we hear endlessly how about great Starlink is on the 12 mainline UA aircraft that have it, AA has a whole lot they should be touting.
And we haven’t even gotten to the fact that AA has no CRJ 550s, the UA regional jet where you have to dig through a closet to find your bag underneath 60 other people’s bags.
Delta has been having increasing trouble recovering from irregular ops like over the holidays and during winter storm Fern, though AA was worse. UA’s IT prowess and SW’s simplicity shines in such situations. Just today DL has already cancelled 73 or 2% of its flights. United has only cancelled 10 or 0% of its flights with about 50% fewer delays. DL used to go days without cancelling flights back in the good ole Richard Anderson days. Yikes!
DL had fewer cancelled domestic flights than AA and UA in the first 11 months of 2025, as far as the DOT has released data.
In November, UA cancelled – and its regional partners which ARE part of the UA network in the DOT’s eyes – more flights than DL despite operating a considerably smaller network
UA has had the worst baggage handling for a year and counting. Heaven help anyone that happens to check a bag on UA.
and summer hasn’t even come when UA will clog the skies of Chicago w/ 50 seat RJs to try to satisfy the testosterone imbalances of a few UA execx
“DL had fewer cancelled domestic flights than AA and UA in the first 11 months of 2025” “UA’s low “seat cancellation rate””
Exactly. I guess it is related to the DL pilot trip pickup program changes still. Not sure why they can’t get it fixed. And not sure why DL doesn’t also cancel flights with fewest passengers first like UA so the fewest customers are affected. Seems like common sense. Maybe it’s another IT issue.
As Jeremy Irons brilliantly portrayed the CEO in “Margin Call”… his role is “to guess what the music is gonna do a week, month, a year from now. That’s it, nothing more.”
Isom doesn’t even know what his role is (mission, vision and execution). My goodness.
dodge and deflect to avoid admitting that DL really does run the best operation of the big 3 at the minimum.
DL still manages to cancel fewer flights including on its regional partners than AA or UA.
DL has the best baggage performance of the big 3.
And there is a pretty big gap between DL and UA’s on-time.
and, of course, DL is in rare thin air in not involuntarily denying anyone quarter after quarter.
AA just needs a few paid blowhards that spend most of their day under the CEO’s desk. that will fix AA’s problems once and for all
DL is a fine airline. Maybe this is just a rough patch and not a trend like it appears.
of course DL is a fine airline.
There are operational ups and downs at every company – not just airlines.
Given that UA has employee social media advocates that have access to top strategic information, then it should come as no surprise that they lie and manipulate data as if they are establishing reality – just like UA execs do. How else would they know about the term “seat cancellation ratio” only for UA execs to use it in the company’s earnings call? and then people wonder why I hate jonnyc so much when he sucks up to any mgmt w/ internal information that he can push and then spreads it as if it is gospel.
Somehow, DL manages to end up w/ operational performance that exceeds at least the rest of the legacy carriers and on some of those metrics the rest of the US airline industry.
AA needs a leader at the top that can communicate vision and then a few paid internet conveyers of lies and manipulation to echo mgmt so everyone believes how great AA really is.
On many metrics, AA and UA are not that much different in operational performance. AA is not as bad as it is made out to be while UA in reality is far less than it is painted.
TD says, “UA”s low “seat cancellation rate”” “How else would they know about the term “seat cancellation ratio”
You introduced the phrase in the replies.
absolutely not.
It was you and a couple other UA fans that introduced the term only for it to be later used by UA execs on their earnings call.
You have been caught red handed and are backpedaling as you lie and manipulate at record speed.
What an imagination! Add it to the list: NYC market share/on-time, DL MRO, NickW, Riyadh Air, 2031, DL A220 delays for Air Asia A339 cancellations & now seat cancellation rate. Your dogs don’t hunt.
Isom is a manager, and a terrible one at that. He is not, has never been and never will be a leader. He’s not CEO material. Hopefully he will be ousted before he can cause more harm to a once great airline. And hopefully he has not inflicted unrecoverable damage to American Airlines.
The difference between US Carriers on time performance from The best Delta at 80% and American at 79% is a non issue. lots of these metrics that everyone measures Airline performance are very close so there all about the same depending on the day, weather, ATC. A few people make a big stink out of something that is nothing. In my 54 year career in Aviation UA Air / American is the best job I have ever had. I have outstanding support from my upper Managment a great team working for me. So all you folks whining and complaining are just BS.
To turn AA around they need to do the following:
Shed assets (regional carriers and other non-essential business) and find other ways dilute the stronghold the union has over labor costs by outsourcing less critical operations.
Kill one of the extra US Air hubs like PHX or PHL (or both) and use the resources and routes to go all in on building back the coastal markets in NYC and LA
To pull that off they probably need a new CEO and whole new board.
Dennis,
while many people esp. here use statistics to beat other people up, the difference between AA and DL’s ontime for the first 11 months was over 6 percentage points which is large enough for anyone that flies even close to a statistically valid number of flights – multiple times per month – to perceive.
The reality is that UA is right between AA and DL in on-time and both AA and UA have worse on-time than WN.
People create lots of realities that don’t exist.
You or anyone can say your experience with airline X has been good but when you start talking about something that is measurable, it better be accurate and in line with what real data shows.
I think one of the biggest disconnects with this new premium strategy is that it only really shows up to people taking long-hauls or very particular transcons with American on these new jets. The entire short-haul fleet has been Oasified (and still is! They are still ripping screens out of A319s!). There is absolutely no mention of anything like United Next, which would be both welcome and required to align with Isom’s messaging. So this new premium branding feels like a mirage to anyone flying most domestic routes- including, I’m sure, a lot of domestic business travelers. Ergo, it’s all just words.
Every time he opens his mouth the same “snake oil” salesman utterances come out. They have finally admitted Parker chasing Spirit was a total disaster. Now the pitch centers on expensive upgrades. On top of that he has gotten sucked into a dog fight with United at Chicago which will lead to disastrous financial consequences. End of the day, like Parker he doesn’t get it’s the front-line employees that make or break you. He has zero connection with them and putting on a dog and pony shows with flashy slides does nothing to move the needle with this key group.
The only hope for American is for he and his C-Suite clueless cronies to be shown the door.