At an employee question and answer session with American Airlines leadership this past week American’s Vice President – Planning, Vasu Raja, talked about my post about the airline’s service cuts at New York JFK. He defends focusing on flying to hubs, a limited number of international destinations, and smaller cities where they have a strong customer base.
American has withdrawn from being a player in the New York market, with each retrenchment helping to accelerate the next retrenchment. American can no longer compete for the wallet share of business customers, and is only able to pick up business on a limited set of routes. As a result customers can’t remain loyal to the carrier and pay a revenue premium to go out of their way to do so, but choose it when they represent the best choice (with their limited schedule or based on price) on a one-off basis.
