Tag Archives for inflight card pitches.
Only 14% of passengers on a given flight have an AAdvantage credit card. That’s a huge opportunity to grow the card portfolio. The people most likely to be interested in the American Airlines credit card are those already flying American Airlines. But when the announces are made on redeye flights, or before 8 a.m., that’s a huge tax on customers.
Gradually you should now begin to see not just flight attendants pitch credit card offers, but airports agents, too. They’re being onboarded into the program where they’re paid fees for card approvals. And they’re even being paid a bonus for joining the program.
Customers often don’t like it. It isn’t something that should be done before 8 a.m. or in the morning prior to arrival at the end of a redeye. But ultimately the people most likely to take an airline’s credit card are the people who are actually already flying the airline.
American Airlines and their credit card partner Barclays have updated the offer for the credit card they market inflight. And with this change, American Airlines is again encouraging flight attendants to hand out paper applications on board to passengers, even while they’re reducing the rest of their service levels to promote health and safety of cabin crew and customers alike.
American Airlines sent out a message to flight attendants who have been through training to qualify to pitch the card inflight.
Earlier today I noted Lewis Lazare‘s Chicago Business Journal story that a new American Airlines memo to flight attendants was aiming to rein in their inflight credit card marketing.
The piece said American was telling flight attendants not to market the card when passengers are trying to sleep, or during emergencies, and to read the card announcement script verbatim. However an American Airlines spokesperson tells me that Lazare got it wrong, he didn’t have a new memo to flight attendants, just their standard training.
American Airlines issued a memo to flight attendants on improving the inflight Barclays card announcement experience for customers. It shouldn’t be made early morning or late night, it should only be made once, and it should be read verbatim from the script.
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 »
