Tag Archives for american airlines.
Three years ago I wrote about the problem of gate agents skipping over people for upgrades if they weren’t waiting at the gate. American has just sent out a memo addressing this problem.
Airlines fight tooth and nail to operate on time. When they’re lucky they push back a few minutes early. It isn’t often you see flights leaving 5 to 7 hours before they’re scheduled to depart. However a unique situation in Santiago, Chile is causing American Airlines to leave that much earlier than planned.
Are these recent reports from American Airlines international first class really that surprising, when there’s so little emphasis on what service delivery for premium customers looks like at American?
I criticize many of the decisions that American Airlines leadership have made. They’ve managed to anger shareholders, employees, and customers alike. While racking up more debt and worse operating statistics than competitors they’ve also re-started their project to degrade the domestic product.
There’s one area though that they’ve performed at an outstanding level.
American told customer service managers this week by memo that “[t]he FAA issued a notification to American Airlines indicating [they] are failing to comply with [their]r carry-on baggage program parameters.”
In response the airline “committed to increase the number of self-audits at each mainline station.”
American Airlines announced yesterday that their mobile app will prompt customers when their flight is boarding. That’s something that Delta, United, and Southwest have already offered.
There’s some confusion in the blogosphere over how this feature works.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker, the biggest troll in aviation, gave an interviewing suggesting American Airlines got outmaneuvered by Delta, that he thought their CEO would get replaced, and that he’s still considering leaving oneworld over bad relations with American.
American Airlines plans to drop the cheeseburger from lunch service in mid-November, however they have already run out of beef patties and aren’t buying more. Instead of a choice between salad and a cheeseburger, customers are being given a choice between salad and vegetarian pasta. Customers who may have pre-ordered cheeseburgers are getting a surprise – no meat option at all.
Last month I reported that American Airlines was still considering whether to allow lifetime club members to keep accessing Admirals Clubs when not flying American or its partners same day.
According to spokesperson Leslie Scott, they’ve made the decision to honor access for lifetime members. She tells me, “We are making an exception for lifetime members, we will not require them to have a same-day ticket on American or partner airline in order to access the Admirals Club.”
None of this represents change for the airline, instead it’s a shuffling of roles and reporting. Interestingly this announcement of changes to leadership does not include the words Doug Parker. I might have expected Parker, under normal circumstances, to have a quote included in the release.
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 »
