Tag Archives for american.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
American Airlines now uses brown paper bags to hand out food to passengers in coach on international Boeing 757 aircraft and they’re looking at using them more broadly, too.
A little over a year ago British Airways laid out their plans to offer a product that’s a close as possible to economy on Norwegian’s Boeing 787s. Their London Gatwick-based 777s would get 10-across seating in coach and in total add 52 seats.
The plan is to offer a product that won’t be better than a low cost carrier, so they don’t appear to be going for a revenue premium. They want to push cost per seat as low as possible and just compete on price.
American’s Flagship First Dining is the best lounge offering in the United States. I used to argue that distinction went to the Qantas first class lounge at LAX, but all three American spaces open so far are more peaceful and JFK especially but also the others have better views.
There are really just two shortcomings, in my opinion.
An American Airlines flight attendant recently asked the carrier’s President Robert Isom, “What is being done to create more consistency in onboard service for example I commute through Denver, Denver-Phoenix you might see one service with a different crew base side you might see a different service.”
Isom, though, saw this as an opportunity to emphasize the theme of consistency which is important to the airline all of a sudden.
Traditionally ‘premium’ domestic markets have been limited to New York – Los Angeles and San Francisco because they’re premium revenue markets and East Coast – Hawaii because though it’s primarily leisure it’s a longer flight than Europe. That means at a minimum lie flat seats up front.
There’s increasing competition offering a premium product on other routes from United, Delta, and JetBlue.
On Friday United sent out a memo that they’re eliminating quarterly performance bonuses of up to $300 and replacing those with a lottery which fewer than 2% of United’s employees will receive anything from.
Employees are not happy about this change. A flight attendant created a change.org petition detailing grievances, but was forced to close it.
In this week’s “Tell Me Why” podcast for American Airlines employees, airline CFO Derek Kerr explains why they do not hedge fuel.
I offer a slightly different formulation of Kerr’s answer and it evinces surprising humility and self awareness.
The flight attendant who runs the ‘Flight Service Official’ Facebook page made up of American Airlines employees says the group’s number one question is whether they’ll “ever see profit sharing numbers competitive with other airlines like Delta and Southwest.”
American should offer to match Delta on pay and profit sharing on equal terms with Delta. American’s unions will never agree to this of course. They want a less efficient work force that makes more.
At an American Airlines Crew News Q&A session between employees and management one flight attendant raised the problem that customers don’t know how to access the inflight video American is providing, “Our customers are having a problem finding the landing page for our inflight internet… they’re having a hard time finding the videos. I probably get 5, 6 people asking on a flight.”
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 »
