Tag Archives for american.
After American’s earnings calls the company’s executives meet with employees and take their questions. One of the questions was about the restoration of the most important element of an interline agreement between American and Delta, the ability for each airline to put their passengers into empty seats on the other carrier during irregular operations.
And Doug Parker, American’s CEO, wound up and took a swing at Delta…
After American’s earnings calls the company’s executives meet with employees and take their questions. One of the questions was about the airline’s internal employee survey which revealed significant discontent.
American’s policy is vague, but they do not ask flight attendants to enforce seating with a cabin. If there’s an empty seat with more legroom and you move to it, flight attendants aren’t expected to stop you (let alone charge you, the way United might).
American told flight attendants today that starting in the spring Main Cabin Extra seats with more legroom also get free booze, and overhead bins will have reserved signs.
However that may mean changes soon to limit frequent flyer benefits.
This morning we learned that Delta and American re-started their interline agreement allowing each airline to book seats on the other carrier in the event of irregular operations. It’s limited to this re-accommodation function, but that’s what customers primarily care about and it’s the key item Delta refused to allow in September 2015.
Here’s how that happened.
Two years ago Delta and American eliminated their interline agreement the most basic level of airline cooperation. That’s the agreement necessary to allow flights on the two airlines to exist on the same time, and that’s necessary for one airline to put its distressed passengers on the other carrier — without literally walking over with a credit card to buy a passenger a ticket.
The point of ‘Basic Economy’ fares — which don’t let you assign seats in advance, upgrade, or make changes for a fee, and at United and American don’t allow you to bring a full-sized carry on onto the plane — is to make the travel experience so unpleasant you don’t want the fare, and will spend more to avoid the restrictions.
The risk is that customers don’t spend more with the airline offering the inferior Basic Economy product, but instead book a different airline instead (or even just decide not to travel). That’s what happened when United launched their basic economy product. They lost business. And they lost about a hundred million dollars.
In the middle of last year American started flying its first plane with high speed satellite internet. I lucked into flying the aircraft at the beginning of November, and internet worked though I was surprised it wasn’t faster. I know what Gogo’s 2ku service can do unthrottled and I wasn’t getting anything like those speeds.
I flew American’s inaugural 737 MAX flight at the end of November and the ViaSat satellite internet didn’t work well.
American Airlines has been uniquely stingy making award space available on its own flights. I value American miles, but really just because I can book awards on partners like Cathay Pacific and Etihad.
Over the past few years there have been availability ‘dumps’. There will be a day or two or sometimes just a few hours where tons of international business class award space opens up on American flights. We haven’t seen that in many months, but are seeing it again right now.
Years ago there was a story about former American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall having olives removed from first class salads, saving $40,000 a year. Small savings add up across all an airline’s flights and passengers. So carriers are often very careful about their pennies in catering.
In the spring of 2001 United replaced steak at lunch with gourmet cheeseburgers. Today’s inflight burgers on domestic airlines are much smaller and I find with lower quality meal. They keep figuring out ways to push the savings envelope farther.
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 »
