Tag Archives for american airlines.
When American Airlines CEO Doug Parker famously said his airline would never lose money again, he also said it’s difficult to offer a better product than competitors, because competitors will match the product. As a result it’s the company’s culture and employees that will give them an advantage. It seems like he has work to do.
American Airlines is suspending their New York JFK – Madrid flight January 7 through February 29. There are three reasons why – and all point to how much American has gutted their New York operation.
Last September American Airlines was named a 5 Star Global Airline by the Airline Passenger Experience Associate (APEX). The airline placed logos on their planes beneath the oneworld logo to note the achievement.
American is excited to celebrate their second year of this achievement, which was just awarded.
American is making it harder once again to deal with irregular operations despite a long hot summer of cancelled flights and displaced passengers.
American has a new system set up to cancel extra backup segments in an itinerary. If agents add extra segments to give you options when things go bad those segments will be removed automatically.
American Airlines has added 7 new winter routes and 6 new summer routes. They’ll be flying to Fairbanks, Alaska from two hubs and to an airport whose three letter call sign stands for “Everyone Can Party.”
How far have we fallen that American Airlines considers a hot dog to be a meal in international first class rather than the top off to a good Costco run?
Choose the airline with the best schedule, where they’re equivalent with the best reliability, and for regular coach comfort go with Southwest. Since I need to work inflight pretty much all the time I prefer American or Delta, United still isn’t an option though if I lived on Staten Island I’ve fly out of Newark and sacrifice productivity.
No airline is all things to all people, no airline frequent flyer program among those four carriers is a real differentiator and reason to go out of your way to fly a specific airline, but it’s useful to stick with one carrier and earn status where you can. Your miles will be earned through things other than flying and there flexible points transfer programs are best.
When US Airways management took over at American they brought with them a revenue management philosophy of making far less award space available. However they’ve made efforts to make more economy award space available, bidding for space based on a fare value of miles.
International business class is another matter, even on the most lightly booked of flights.
The retirement of the American Airlines MD80 has been written about extensively and covered across all sorts of media. I am didn’t find the event nearly as momentous and many did, but there were plenty of celebrations as the plane made its last commercial flight – AA80 – from Chicago O’Hare to Dallas Fort-Worth and then media took a trip on an MD80 to park the aircraft in the desert.
While I’ve read reports that American sent the last of its MD80s to Roswell, New Mexico in fact there’s still an MD80 sitting in Dallas and it’s going to stay there.
News that an American Airlines mechanic in Miami sabotaged an aircraft before it prepared to take off with passengers was truly shocking. The man admitted that he wanted to delay or cancel the flight out of frustration with union contract talks, and to force more overtime work to fix the problem he had caused.
American Airlines had to address the issue with employees as well. Here’s the memo that was sent internally:
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 »
