Anyone Else Seeing Conflict in US and AA Public Image?

Jester

Veteran
Sep 12, 2007
1,475
475
Formerly PHry Town
"New York-Los Angeles is both the busiest long-haul U.S. route, with about 3.2 million passengers a year, and the most lucrative, with $1.43 billion in annual sales, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A premium-cabin ticket can cost 10 times more than one in coach—but passengers do get plenty of pampering. At American, concierge employees greet first-class fliers at curbside and whisk them to a special transcontinental check-in room. They’re then taken to the front of the security line and the Flagship Lounge, a private facility within American’s Admirals Clubs." http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-30/airlines-fight-for-first-and-business-class-passengers
 
Yes , I think there's for sure going to be a culture clash in this area ....US Airways is proud of the fact that we are taking over AA , and we can't wait to show them how we do things ,but we should be mindfull of the fact that AA has been around for some time and that there's a lot that we can learn from them ...

Hopefully better first class service is one of those things.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
"New York-Los Angeles is both the busiest long-haul U.S. route, with about 3.2 million passengers a year, and the most lucrative, with $1.43 billion in annual sales, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A premium-cabin ticket can cost 10 times more than one in coach—but passengers do get plenty of pampering. At American, concierge employees greet first-class fliers at curbside and whisk them to a special transcontinental check-in room. They’re then taken to the front of the security line and the Flagship Lounge, a private facility within American’s Admirals Clubs." http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-30/airlines-fight-for-first-and-business-class-passengers

The important thing is that we do what will be profitable in the long run. Virgin has the best service out there and they can't turn a profit. I hope the profitable thing to do is to raise our game/service up to their (American's) level. I don't know though, that's for the really smart people to figure out.

Bean
 
Parker has already said the right things to placate the doubters, like the Shares v Sabre decision - it is easier to train the smaller airline's staff (US) on the AA way of doing things, and that runs a smaller risk of another Shares debacle (see US in merger with HP and the UA March 3 Shares meltdown). So a smaller group of US agents will have to relearn Sabre but the larger airline's agents won't have to immediately learn Shares.

Parker didn't engineer the takeover of AA so that he could downgrade AA to HP standards (the way he tried, initially, with US). One notable area where US standards already exceed AA are the A330 Envoy suites - some evidence that Parker already gets it.

New AA will continue to build on the AA strengths in premium travel. For some US employees, it may be difficult to imagine that US standards will be brought up to AA standards, but that's what will happen. Obviously, there may be some rationalization in some hubs (PHX may be at some risk), but new AA will try to build on its lower costs against UA and DL.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people