American Airlines finally realizes they need to offer a more premium product to generate more revenue. For years they focused on competing with Spirit and Frontier, and thought that their schedule alone was the product and all they needed to do was operate on-time. That turned out to be table stakes.
Planes don’t make money when they’re on the ground, so airlines want to schedule as little time between flights as possible. so cleaners board while passengers are getting off the planes and begin boarding the next flight as soon as passengers from the last one are off, “Agents should not wait for a call from the cleaners to begin the boarding process.” And cleaners are supposed to “get off the aircraft once they…see passengers starting to board.”
American’s approach has been D0 – or departing exactly on-time – yet prioritizing this over everything else hasn’t made them more on-time. However the D in D0 has also stood for dirty.
Part of the ‘premium pivot’ means paying attention to cabin maintenance and appearance, but that will entail a huge culture shift. One commenter explains just how much the airline is up against if they are to make this shift. This American Airlines employee says they were offered therapy for their insistence on getting aircraft clean between flights.
Currently work for AA at a small station, I complained that I wasn’t being given enough time to clean the planes, and was told to skip steps. I said I just wanted to do a good job, but the “no delays” mentality meant I had to do what I consider a subpar job. Was told to “not take it so personally” and that they had therapy services available. I wish I was joking.
American is adding business class suites with doors to new delivery Boeing 787-9s and retrofitting their Boeing 777-300ERs with these as well. Narrowbody A321XLRs will have suites also. But there are no announced plans to retrofit any of the rest of their fleet, which will remain a hodgepodge of different premium seats. And this decision long predates any shift to premium.
Credit: American Airlines
They are adding high speed wifi to regional jets, but they’re forced into the position because of the deprecation of the old air to ground network. They are finally building their business class lounge in Philadelphia, but Flagship lounges lag United Polaris lounges and Delta One lounges in experience.
Credit: American Airlines
So far there’s been a ‘me too, but less’ philosophy and that’s deeply engrained in the culture. They rolled out new amenity kits where much of the contents are the same in first, business and premium economy classes but it was still an improvement over cardboard boxes.
@AmericanAir come on! Really? pic.twitter.com/f1NClr1l8w
— NC Man (@NCMan2020) January 14, 2024
New lounge food similarly reflects the idea that they need to show some increased investment, but not as much as competitors.
And perhaps they’re making this pivot right as the economy becomes less able to support it, although Delta says they’ve seen no degradation in premium demand. We’ll see just how real the shift at American Airlines is, and whether they can execute and generate financial returns closer to peers.