Tag Archives for american airlines.
Late last year American Airlines started locking AAdvantage accounts and cancelling pending award travel for people they believe took advantage of a ‘loophole’ to sign up for multiple Citibank credit cards.
Several customers whose accounts were shut down filed complaints with the Department of Transportation. American has now responded to a formal complaint, and reveals a lot about what they know – and how they know it.
When supermodel Chrissy Teigen has an opinion on aviation, you take it seriously. She’s got the bona fides. This time, though, she’s gone off the deep end calling American Airlines management murderers for selling middle seats on their planes.
When people (1) fly because they have to, and (2) don’t have many competitive options because of reduced schedules, inflight product doesn’t drive business. And airlines are looking to conserve cash. Even when business turns around, it’ll take time for product to recover as carriers try to manage their debt burdens.
In the near-term, airlines are restoring their schedules (somewhat) on domestic routes and there are (some) more passengers willing to travel. That means competition starts to matter.
Once American Airlines is no longer restricted from laying off employees as a result of the CARES Act – October 1, 2020 – they will start staffing flights were fewer flight attendants. It will mean more furloughs and lower service levels.
Just before the pandemic grew out of control, American Airlines data revealed that frequent customers represented a declining share of airline revenue.
It seemed that a combination of award chart devaluation (higher prices for the best awards), product devaluations (less space per passenger on domestic narrowbody aircraft) and making status harder to earn (minimum spend requirement and taking away the ability to earn as much towards that via credit card) had in fact pushed frequent customer share of wallet towards competitors.
On Saturday I told you that a big international route announcement was coming from Americanincluding, quoting internal comments by CEO Doug Parker, “what we plan to fly next summer and what we don’t plan to fly.” That announcement is now out.
They’re revamping their international strategic focus, and bringing back many routes for summer while break-even load factors are so low thanks to the CARES Act. LAX is no longer their Pacific hub. They’re doubling down on close partnerships. And that means a lot of flight changes.
CDC Director Robert Redfield has something to say about American Airlines. He thinks it’s horrible that American will sell middle seats on planes, which he explained in response to a question by Senator Bernie Sanders, In doing so he seems not to know that American Airlines hasn’t blocked middle seats throughout the pandemic, and other airlines like United haven’t done so either.
It’s troubling that six months into the coronavirus crisis the CDC is only just now studying whether or not distancing on planes matters.
My home state of Texas is seeing a surge of cases, including in the Dallas area. But American Airlines flight crew at DFW and Dallas-based ground staff were photographed not wearing masks.
When airline employees don’t wear masks, they’re endangering passengers and scaring them away. That’s bad for business. And when employees don’t wear masks, passengers model them. It’s tough to get passengers to wear masks when pilots don’t.
A crisis is an opportunity to rethink the business. In normal times there are plenty of good reasons not to take chances, and too many entrenched interests standing in the way. Those are largely swept away. And the old arguments favoring the status quo hold little weight when the status quo is no longer an option.
Parker is right that the pandemic and rebuilding the airline’s routes and traffic from almost zero is an opportunity to re-think the business. Unfortunately he does not articulate here a creative new vision for how American Airlines might do that.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker shared with pilots last week that they’re planning an international route announcement in a couple of weeks. The flights they’ll be adding soon have already been shown to pilots, who had to bid on which trips to take. They’re also going to share plans for which flights they’ll run next summer – and which they won’t.
Senior Vice President Vasu Raja then went on to explain how they’re deciding which flights to add, and dropped two that look likely to start back up in August.
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 »
