Tag Archives for american.
It’s easy to look askance at corporate mission language, but I actually think that American’s leadership has a pretty clear idea of where they’re going and what’s important to them. They’re really transparent about it. You can agree or disagree with the strategy, or like or dislike it as a customer. But they aren’t mealy mouthed about it at all.
Qatar has the best business class product in the world in its new ‘QSuites’. To be sure even their older Airbus A350 business class is very good, a B/E Aerospace Super Diamond seat and a phenomenal soft product. But QSuites are revolutionary suites with doors and moveable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space.
Currently they fly the product to New York JFK, Washington Dulles, and starting Saturday to Chicago.
Yesterday I received a nice box with a thank you note inside and a book 1000 Places to See Before You Die with my name inscribed onto the cover.
I reached out to Barclays to see what’s going on with this and they shared:
At last Thursday’s American Airlines employee Q&A with management, someone asked American’s CEO Doug Parker how to talk to people who prefer Southwest over American ‘for their flexibility’.
Doug Parker told the employee “well you’ve got to find some new friends, first of all.” But he also did a fantastic job explaining how American thinks about its business, and its pricing strategies.
At American’s employee town hall last week a 26 year Dallas-based flight attendant asked if “any airline strives to be number one other than from the bottom line standpoint and for our shareholders?”
He said it “used to be nice” at the end of a flight “when people weren’t so crammed in” so he wanted to know “Do we strive to be number one at all or are we just striving to fill every seat and the bottom line?”
American Airlines sent out a press release today touting new service to Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America. There are several new routes. There are new flights that didn’t make the release. But they didn’t talk about the service they’re eliminating…
Earlier this month American Airlines maintained that they hadn’t decided whether or not to put Boeing 757s with lie flat seats on domestic routes or not, even as their competitors roll out more domestic flights with lie flat seats up front.
It’s been expected for awhile that American would respond to this competition, and indeed they’ve taken some 757s off of international routes, but they wouldn’t say they’re adding them to the domestic schedule. Nonetheless they are now saying privately that this is what will ultimately happen.
A DFW-based captain asked American Airlines CEO Doug Parker about ‘D0’. He said the airline’s emphasize on exactly on-time departures, and the processes around questioning decisions and following up when they miss exact on-time departures “feels punitive on all the people.”
During Thursday’s American Airlines employee ‘crew news’ question and answer session a Lima-based flight attendant asked about the old Boeing 757s and 767s American flies down there.
She says the one thing “that is sad for me” is that when she tells people she’s a flight attendant their interest is piqued, but then when she says she works for American “they’re like really?”
American held a Crew News session with employees on Thursday and a first officer asked about new aircraft orders and the extent that manufacturers consult with American on what they want to see as they develop new plane types. As an aside he asked about American’s A350 simulator and whether it might be possible to rent time in it.
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 »
