At the start of the summer I wrote that American Airlines wasn’t performing nearly as reliably as they were claiming.
If passengers are getting delayed, cancelled, and diverted – and if their bags are lost, or they’re turned away from flying completely despite having a ticket – it’s probably happening on American Airlines, according to Department of Transportation data.
While it didn’t help explain mishandled bags and involuntary denied boardings, the airline claimed to be the victim of bad weather. But when they’re consistently having their operation negatively impacted by weather, that’s still important information for passengers when choosing an airline and its hubs to connect through.
The August DOT consumer travel data is available, and American Airlines was 14th in the U.S. for on-time arrivals in June, ahead of only Frontier. When you’re getting clobbered by JetBlue operational performance you know something is seriously wrong.
For the year to date, American has even fallen behind Alaska and United which were significantly affected by the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 to start 2024.
The other major carriers also beat American in cancellations.
And as for just blaming weather, DOT has data on that. American did suffer more extreme weather delays than others – but only slightly more than Delta. The single biggest cause of delay is late arriving aircraft… so maybe contra their ‘D0’ mantra, late arrivals are important. They have a knock-on effect.
In any case, weather is certainly not the reason they lose more bags than anyone else. Maybe they should reconsider their opposition to technology investments here. They are the clear leader both for June 2024 and for the first six months of 2024:
Perhaps it’s consolation to the airline’s operational leaders that both Spirit and Frontier (but also, only Spirit and Frontier) are more likely to lose wheelchairs and scooters? Interestingly Southwest Airlines checks a lot more wheelchairs than American does – after all, wheelchairs get passengers earlier boarding and choice of seats. (See “Jetbridge Jesus”)
It seems notable as well that while Delta involuntarily denied boarding to only one passenger in the first six months of the year (‘bumped’), American Airlines involuntarily bumped 6,832. That’s more than all other U.S. airlines combined.
The airline’s thesis has been that if they could become reliable, then they’d be profitable. However reliability alone isn’t enough. It’s table stakes. They’re a high cost airline and need to earn a revenue premium to be profitable. Customers have to prefer American, not just ‘not avoid it’. They need to offer reliable transportation or no one will choose to fly them. But once they do that they need a compelling product that will entice high value passengers.
Yet even though their primary focus for many years has been this first piece, to the exclusion of the second, they clearly haven’t accomplished it. No wonder their future prospects are bleak enough, and stock so beaten down, that they’ve been kicked out of the S&P 500.
“The August DOT consumer travel data is available, and American Airlines was 14th in the U.S. for on-time arrivals in June, behind only Frontier. ”
Do you mean “ahead of only Frontier.”?
I assume that if they oversold the flight and tell you that you will be bumped, but they then pay you compensation to take another flight, that counts as a voluntary rather than involuntary denied boarding. However, it sure doesn’t feel voluntary at the time – they are not letting you on that flight.
I’m curious what AA’s leadership thinks their value proposition is these days
American has the personnel (Pilots, FA’s, GA’s & Mechanics) to win. Thanks to poor decisions by their recent Leadership (I use that term loosely), they don’t have all of the right assets, but with the right Leadership they could muddle through. In sum, the only thing that’s going to fix American is to fire and replace all of the currect Leadership and the entire Board of Directors.
Blame Parker (Former American Airlines CEO). It takes a while to turn things around.
All this started with Doug Parker and USAir C-suite taking over AA….
When any company primarily emphasizes return on investment and loses site that customer satisfaction drives ROI, the situation at AA starts to happen. Southwest is very likely on the same path being driven by their unwanted investor. Certainly, a company has to provide a reasonable return and in doing so, sometimes decisions will not be in the best interest of customers. However, you just can’t minimize customers objectives and wishes as much as AA and hope to be financially or operationally successful.
Being PHX based I fly AA as my airline of choice (SWA is the worst, honestly). I would say this summer it’s been hit and miss. My flights to Europe and back were mostly uneventful, except for my return leg PHL to PHX which was delayed an hour. The rest arrived within :15 or early even when we left a little late. I think they needs to make a few changes with boarding to help the turn around: 1. Only group 9 should gate check bags, usually plenty of overhead room on A321/737 (bump up to group 7/8 for the A320/A319)
2. Start boarding 10 minutes earlier. . .like DL
3. 2 gate agent / 3 for wide bodies
4. Announce when pass ports are needed for boarding
That can honestly help.
Also, PHL CLT need some real help get those airport remodeled. . .UGH just the worst.
Oh and never lost a bag which was a miracle transfering in PHL 🙂
I agree, planes are good, wifi good, service onboard getting better, crews amoung the best, but improvements preflight/gate could go a long way.
Time to clean management house. . .sorry Robert, but time to bring in Ex DL to fix the problems now.
For those of us that use PHL as our home airport, I guess we’re screwed!
I feel sorry for the front line employees. I believe almost all of them come to work wanting to do good, to succeed. Unfortunately for them company management is giving them a crap product they have to account for. They should understand by now, help is not on the way.
@Sunvinking. Maybe bring in Tim Dunn. He is a Ex Delta to fix the problems now.
AA tried for a short period post covid to be a more reliable airline but they clearly decided it wasn’t delivering enough revenue.
Being on-time means that connection times are longer so crew and bags can make flights instead of forcing passengers to run through crowded terminals.
AA’s CLT hub is beyond overscheduled and dependent on short connections while DFW is just a massive sprawling complex that the amount of labor to make flights move is astronomical
AA is about carrying volumes of connecting passengers while getting high value revenue from its hub captive business passengers. Even semi-regular connecting passengers increasingly get burned by AA and go somewhere else; DL’s ATL hub might be huge but it is eons more operationally reliable than AA at CLT. There are lots of competing hubs to AA at DFW, ORD and PHL.
AA no longer thinks long-term but what has to be done to pay debt and salaries for the next quarter to year. Who knows how long before this all runs out.
I am a Million Mile United flier and recently retired from active road warrior stuff. I made the decision early in my career when based in ORD to prefer United over American when I started my active business travel , and it proved out to be one of the best early decisions I made.. Over the last 10 years, I only flew American when visiting a major customer in CLT, and an occasional trip up the Eastern US when my employer forced me to as AA was cheaper in Concur. I have accumulated a bunch of AA points that I need to burn up, but struggle to do it as I really don’t want to fly AA. I think that AA’s major issue is their tight scheduling. In order to maximize their profits, they run their banked hubs at as close to minimum connection times as possible. If everything goes right, they make the most profit. But Murphy is evil, and it never seems to go right. What idiot thinks that a 30 minute connection at CLT from a regional to mainline AA flight is valid? Has any of the AA management team sat on one of their planes and tried to make a connection from B to E in 30 minutes? They would hear the wails of inexperienced travelers “but my next flight is already boarding!” and the pleas from FA’s “we have a lot of tight connections so if your destination in CLT could you please stay seated to allow those with tight connections to get off the plane earlier?”
This should read: Why Delta is the best choice for 2024 — least likely to lose your bags, get bumped, have the flight cancelled or arrive late.
I really don’t understand why you only post negative stories, especially when it comes to the best US3 airline (and after seeing the DOT data there’s no denying that the JD Power survey is correct).
Thought experiment: Do you think that it may be the case that because has a much larger long-haul operation than Southwest, which basically has zero, could possibly account for some wheelchair handling differences? Also, I would suppose that those in wheelchairs are more likely to be older than the general population, which may lead them to choose what is perceived as more close-in destinations requiring a shorter domestic flight (although Boston to LA is just as long as Boston to much of Western Europe).
The idea would be that those in a wheelchair are just less likely to choose to go outside the United States, particularly given that the US, shockingly, does a better job with physical accessibility than other countries, primarily due to the fact that we just have built things a lot later than the centuries old buildings in Europe, which would be held up to more ADA standards.
Just an idea, I do not have customer sentiment data to back this up.
Also, in case anyone wants to get up in arms about any of these potential hypotheses, I fully support being accessible to all people.
HT,
even if you compare AA just to DL and UA as global carriers, DL’s rate of mishandling for baggage and wheelchairs is half what AA’s is.
and, as Gary notes, this data is only through June so before the CrowdStrike meltdowns but DL’s performance on those metrics will still be at or above AA and UA’s on a year to date basis when July data is factored in and DL will still end much better than AA and UA on all of the DOT’s metrics at the end of 2024; DL is already handedly outperforming AA and UA and has been since the CRWD meltdown – which affected UA on a percentage basis as much as DL for 2 days – DL just took 2 days longer to get re-established.
Without the MAX 9 grounding that hurt AS and UA’s numbers and the CRWD meltdown that hurt DL the most followed by UA, AA will still significantly underperform the industry – which says volumes about how poor of an operation AA runs day in and day out – and also why experienced travelers spend good money someplace besides AA
With AA (can’t speak to other airlines) tight connections are almost cheaper. Yes AA will put a warning on anything less than 45 minutes but too many people have no clue of the endless number of things that can gone wrong, even when your first outbound flight leaves on time. So they miss that 35-45 minute connection, bags go misplaced and they’re sitting in an airport for hours on end trying to get re-accommodated.
AA needs to do a better job with connections. It is crazy that they will offer a 45-minute or 30-minute connection at many of their hubs. It’s like they don’t realize that they have trained their own gate agents to give away the seats to standby passengers and shut the doors 15 minutes before boarding ends.
They seem even worse on award bookings. They either want to give you 45 minutes to change terminals and connect to an international flight that is already boarding “if” you arrive as scheduled. OR the other choice is a 9-hour layover. They also bank flights too closely together and at neighboring gates to boot. I’m sure they do this to try and save ground staffing costs but it just creates more chaos.
AA should be winning the air carrier wars but they chose to devalue the experience (hard and soft products). They abuse the AAdvantage cash cow and eventually, the golden goose will be dead.
I’ve always dreaded flying American. Been stranded countless times. I used to love US Airways. Great traveling experience, sometimes multiple trips in a week. Then they merged and I thought American would get some of US Airways abilities. Unfortunately the merged company has all of Americans bad and none of US Airways good.
AA is a crypto currency poorly masquerading as an airline.
AA is yet another example of how mediocre finance MBAs have no respect for operations or customers.
First they get displaced from the S&P500 and now this…the hits just keep on coming. I wish the analysts who participate in earnings announcement days, like Helane Cowen, would ask Isom some tough questions but ultimately they just offer up softball questions for fear if they do, Isom will ignore them on future earnings calls.
I live by the adage ” I don’t have to eat shit twice to know what it tastes like” – For me, American Airlines is shit – I will never understand why anyone would fly that airline when there are so many other better choices available. As you can assume, I will NEVER fly American Airlines – their track record proves that they are the worst, period.
The so called “lost bags” is a misnomer as almost all of them are simply delayed as a result of AA’s delayed flights and their offering very short connections, almost a guarantee of a misconnect of the passenger or his bag.
But why should AA worry about customer satisfaction and service delivery ? (Sarcasm intended)
We just need to remember that the schedule is the product . (More sarcasm) .
Reliability , on board product , delivering bags , competitive million miler program , corporate sales = bah humbug in the eyes of AA.
One would hope that the AA Board would concentrate on their fiduciary responsibility and force a course correction . The operative word being hope.
I’m BA gold and embarrassed that AA is part of One World. Sometimes, to keep my status, it is unavoidable to fly them. I wish it were not so.
AA has fully lost its way however it’s across the board – pilots sitting in first denying paying customers, agents going on jet bridge to hide,etc
AA is focused on all the wrong things they need to get back to passenger experience I have had to explain to countless passengers the agent can’t help you get on an earlier flight even though there are seats etc – AA has decided to make it hard to fly with them at every turn.
Now Tim Dunn is also in denial about his beloved DL while it’s great he will bash AA any chance he gets and hold DL in high regard – many friends who are DL diamonds have given up on them as well. Both airlines have slipped in performance and UA might out maneuver them both.
hey bro,
for companies that serve hundreds of millions of customers per year, you can find enough anecdotes to support any thesis you have.
Regarding customer service metrics, DL is still far ahead of AA and UA as well as the low cost carriers including WN.
UA is increasingly improving their finances because they are running a better business but they still are not expected to overtake DL in earnings this year or next. in part because UA’s earnings are much more cyclical from winter to summer because UA is so small in Florida relative to AA, DL and WN.
and remember that AA and UA both have yet to settle with their FAs so are “saving” hundreds of millions of dollars per year in labor costs that DL (and WN) are incurring – on top of huge retro payments that will be necessary to get AA and UA FA compensation up to DL and WN standards.
US airlines are reporting very good operations right now – typical for much of the fall – but UA starts the day w/ far more cancellations than any other airline – including multiple international cancellations just about every day.
Three Certain things in life:
1. Death
2. Taxes
3. Tim Dunn closely monitoring a comment section to reply to the slightest delta dig with 5 paragraphs in under 15 minutes
I’ve made it pretty clear that I will read and reply to articles about the business of aviation in contrast to other stuff Gary writes including anecdotal bad passenger or employee stories.
The funny thing is the vast majority of people that are replying support Gary’s take. I am glad that Gary is writing about the findings from the DOT’s Air Transportation Consumer Report.
You and others just don’t like the facts that I add to the conversation even though they are aligned with what most people here see as does Gary.
The numbers, especially the percentages, are somewhat misleading. It’s kinda like what my Dad used to say about profit margins. “One percent of $1.00 is a whole lot different that one percent of $1,000. So when looking at the numbers in all categories, XXX airline has 400 voluntary denied boardings and 0 involuntary denied boardings. But they only had 9,000,000 passengers. Good record! But then YYY airline came in #2 in denied boardings. They had 60,000 VOLUNTARY denied boardings and 1 involuntary denied boarding but they also had 91,000,000…NINETY ONE MILLION passengers. Percentage wise, the numbers look close. The actual numbers are TEN TIMES different. Not to belittle anyone who died of the COVID mess, the Spanish flu of 1918 killed far more people IN NUMBERS than did COVID. The world population was no where near what it is today. So the percentages of those who died of COVID was far less than those who died of Spanish flu. The numbers of deaths of Spanish flu was WAY higher than COVID. Statistically, your chance of getting and dying of COVID was FAR LESS than Spanish flu. But then if you DID get it, your chances were 100%!
Could care less about your supposed facts.
You just have the most tragic life any of us have ever seen wasting your life in a comment section saying the same thing day after day hoping someone respects you
we get it… you don’t like the message so you try to shoot the messenger. Like others, you haven’t figured out that if you just let me say my piece and say yours and then move on, you will end up seeing less of me. But you, like others want to argue w/ me by name and then act surprised that I participate as actively as I do.
the data speaks for itself and it is not mine… it comes from the US government.
Seems you just talk and talk regardless of the commenter
Again. Could care less about what you say, you’re just clearly an unwell person
oh, I am very well.
And I am determined that those people that choose to attack me not only hear more from me than if they would just let me say what I want to say, they say theirs, and we leave well enough alone.
none of what you have posted changes that AA is near the bottom of just about every DOT ranking while DL is at or near the top.
Whether I or Gary or Uncle Sam himself writes about it doesn’t change that reality which you and others clearly don’t want to hear or said.
It isn’t a surprise that AA’s financial position is equally fragile. Airlines are service businesses and can’t sustain poor customer service and expect to do well financially.
Feel free to remind us of what US airlines did well financially but had very poor customer service ratings.
Gary might want to add a counter for Tim Dunn posts you have to feel bad for him how much blind rage he has around his beloved DL – everyone knows DL rules
Tim still struggles to admit DL botched completely their most recent outage – we should all take pity on him
Ok, weirdo
Nobody said any of that but ok
I guess you enjoy saying what others don’t want to hear but don’t seem to realize what others are saying
Life is full of information that we would rather not hear or read… healthy people just let other people say what they want to say and go on with their lives.
You and others somehow seem to think that attacking me or anyone else will serve to end the discussion you don’t want to be taking place.
Again, as hard as it is for you to grasp, Gary is the one that wrote the story using government data.
and, bro, the real irony is that DL’s cancellation percentage and DL and UA’s on-time percentage for the year even though UA had the MAX grounding (with AS) and DL AND UA both had significant cancellations due to CrowdStrike. Gary has posted data that shows that DL cancelled 4.2% of its July flights while UA cxld 2.5% (IIRC the numbers correctly but UA’s percentage was much closer to DL’s than WN’s)
The reason why AA’s statistics as Gary, not me, has reported is because AA’s operation is so much worse than the rest of the industry day in and day out – which means more mishandled bags and oversales.
The DOT doesn’t report consumer complaints the way they used to but AA still has a much lower customer satisfaction rating than most other airlines based on public and private sector tracking.
It’s not hard to figure out… if you want me to stop replying to the conversation and adding details you don’t want me to say, leave me out of it.
Isom and I both went for the same job as President of AA. I started at the bottom ( Reservations, Ramp, Cargo, Baggage, Customer Service, Pricing & Inventory, Interline, Planning & Scheduling, Analyst to the CEO). Isom was a Planning & Scheduling ( he has No Real Operational Experience, but was a Friend of Ex- CEO Parker.).
I tried to bring AA in the 2050s with new Technology ( Quantum), but Isom went with an outside Consultant who give them Technology I used in the 1980s. This Old Technology plus Bad Operational Managers is causing the Problems ( major Gate Switches, Short Connections, terminating 30 year Experienced Employees, over $8 Billion AA Maintenance/Pilot Pension Debt ( $500 million interest )…Etc… ).
Isom.. Contact me (senator1231957@gmail.com) if you want me to take over and Fix the Operational Problems.
Sorry you can’t.. your Staff Wrongfully Terminated me because of my 40 years in the Airline Industry and Retaliation for Employee Safety Issues ( remember when I ask your Staff to shut down Jetways at LAX and 2 weeks later one jetway crash down injuring the Jetway Driver but luckily not killing the ramp agent below.).
I loved how your Staff Pre-Payed the US Gov Loan with the Loan Funds. .
I’m beginning to think Tim Dunn is just one of Gary’s alter egos on this here blog. After all, having a colorful cast of commenters is merely table stakes to having a good blog.
Unlimited Piper-Heidsieck in Flagship lounge ORD & MIA helps ease the trauma of the AA gate, onboard , and carousel experience.
The seed were sown with the last President. Everyone is on their own….in AA world.
Either your with the in crowd, or your not.
Some make MILLIONS while others make peanuts.
I’m curious what AA’s leadership thinks their value proposition is these days