Tag Archives for american airlines.
American Airlines failed to build a mockup of its new domestic interior, and that’s how obvious mistakes were made. In CEO Doug Parker’s telling, they cared about squeezing seats onto the plane not what it was like to sit in those seats or for employees to work the new configuration.
That’s changing for upcoming retrofits and new products like the Airbus A321XLR and Boeing 787-9 new interior.
A mask resister live-blogged his experience flying American Airlines to Philadelphia and home to Manchester, New Hampshire. He drank at the airport and mocked other passengers along the way. And while he reports being successful walking through the airport and flying to Philly without a properly-worn mask, he was eventually kicked off his last flight by American for something entirely unrelated to masks – taking a seat in an empty row to promote social distancing.
American Airlines shared its plans for integrating with JetBlue, building back its Philadelphia hub, and whether or not their new flight to India will actually take off at a meeting with employees last week, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing.
Here are 6 insights into the American Airlines strategy for recovery that came out of this session.
Brian Znotins, Vice President of Network and Schedule Planning at American Airlines, offered “When people ask me as a network planner ‘what’s my favorite airplane?’ it’s the cheapest.” And he reported that if the price is right they’ll buy planes.
Americans may be on the verge of receiving $1400 in Biden Bucks, but U.S. commercial airlines are getting $14 billion – including $3 billion for American Airlines. And according to the CEO of American, who has spent much of the last year working Capitol Hill, Republicans were ready to break ranks with their party to ensure that subsidies would flow to the airline industry.
In fact, from Parker’s telling at an internal meeting with employees, the Republican Party may not have tried to remove these subsidies because it would have caused some of their members to defect and create bipartisan support for part of the legislation.
At the beginning of February American Airlines sent out 13,000 WARN Act notices letting employees know they might be furloughed at the beginning of April. At the same time American was preparing to provide widespread across-the-board raises to management.
View From The Wing has learned that American provided Level 5 (manager) employees and above. A third taxpayer bailout stopped the furloughs, but taxpayers will now be picking up the tab for raises.
American Airlines CEO catapulted from securing Air Transportation Stabilization Board subsidies for America West, to taking over government-subsidized US Airways, to getting the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation on the side of acquiring American Airlines from within bankruptcy. Then he spent all his time in D.C. realizing there’s more revenue in taking money away from taxpayers than selling to customers. U.S. airlines will receive over $79 billion in federal support in a year.
As I put it about anti-Gulf carrier coalition member Delta, the U.S. airlines have always believed in subsidies for me, but not for thee.
American Airlines is launching 7 new year-round routes out of Austin and 3 seasonal routes. American is the second largest carrier at the Austin airport, behind Southwest, and historically it has produced some of their highest non-hub yields. With these additions, together with their partners they’ll service 26 destinations from Austin.
With people thinking more about getting out more in the not too distant future, on board card promotion is back in a big way in fact for March and April they’re incentivizing this with additional cash and donations.
What’s perhaps most interesting though is the statistic they’re promoting, that only 14% of passengers on a given flight have an AAdvantage credit card.
American Airlines just boosted the amount they are borrowing against the AAdvantage program to a record-breaking $10 billion.
The blended average rate on this debt is 5.575%, paid by three subsidiaries that now make up AAdvantage based in the Cayman Islands. When the pandemic is over I’m encouraging American to throw a Members Only Party on board several flights to Grand Cayman where we can all visit our miles.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
