Aug 24 2018

American Airlines does not allow pets to be checked as cargo on their Airbus narrowbodies. They are growing this fleet with A321neos that begin delivering at the start of 2019.

Airlines are cracking down on emotional support animals. Small pets can travel in the cabin for a fee, but larger pets need to be checked. Owners of larger animals then may be caught between Scylla and Charybdis unable to bring their animal on board as an emotional support animal, unable to bring them in cabin for a fee, and unable to check them when traveling on half the domestic fleet — and many destinations are served exclusively by these aircraft.

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Aug 22 2018

After each earnings call American Airlines hosts a ‘state of the airline’ meeting with employees. Not everyone gets to ask all of their questions live, so the airline collects additional questions and follows up with answers.

Those responses tend to be much more anodyne that the live ones given by top executives. Nonetheless they can sometimes reveal useful tidbits that either confirm things I thought I knew or tell me something I wasn’t already aware of. Here are some of the things that were shared with me and seemed worth passing on.

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Aug 21 2018

The airline has shared with employees that they “are currently collaborating with various teams to redesign the customer-facing upgrade list.” To be clear this does not sound like any change to upgrades, just to how the upgrade list appears to the customer. This change seems to focus on “which product/cabin each person is waiting for and who has been cleared.”

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Aug 21 2018

Earlier I wrote about American’s nine new routes to Europe, eight of which are seasonal.

American shared that they’ve be eliminating Chicago – Shanghai and reducing Chicago – Tokyo service while adding plenty of flying to Europe.

They’re also cutting plenty of other service too. In fact they are cutting more than they are adding.

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Aug 21 2018

For months I’ve been writing that American was considering a major pullback of their Asia routes from Chicago.

They just announced they’re dropping Shanghai and reducing Tokyo to 3 times weekly, while added 9 European routes — 8 seasonal — with nothing for New York.

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Aug 21 2018

What I don’t like in this document is that it suggests customers will be reassured their existing itineraries will still be honored if they actually ask. I can certainly see the ‘87% of passengers’ American says fly at most once a year not understanding this and not explicitly asking, agreeing to be moved to a less desirable itinerary thinking they have no choice.

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Aug 20 2018

At American Airlines nothing is more important than ‘D0’ it often seems as if American would be happy if they could eliminate customers from the equation and just run their operation they’d be happy.

D0 means flights departing exactly on-time. And they’re willing to sacrifice most everything else for that goal. Gate agents can skip processing upgrades. Flight attendants get called in if they delay a flight for catering to bring servingware for international first class.

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