American Airlines Comes Last in Rankings (and Its Pilots Pile On)

MikeD said:
I fly AA regularly for both business and pleasure, and the flight/cabin crews and service......both in the air and at the gates/ticket counter, etc......have always been pleasant and efficient. Never had a bad experience.
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I've flown a fair amount on United, Delta, AA, and Alaska this past year.

My take aways? They're all pretty interchangeable with small differences.

1) Free booze in economy comfort on Delta.
2) A plane is a plane. A new 737 is the same no matter what the paint says, and a ratty 757 sucks no matter if it's United or Delta.
3) Domestic air travel absolutely sucks.
 
I am writing to you now from an American Airlines 'Flagship' lounge for their International First Class customers. I'm flying on a partner, but thought this would be a great opportunity to compare American with, for my amusement, British Airways. BA has 'The Concorde Room'. All the nationalist pride at operating the pinnacle of civil aeronautics, is now condensed into a jolly nice room at the airport. But it is a nice room. Fine Dining, $100/bottle Champagne and JW Blue served in a suitably pretentious manner. The American 'Flagship' has Gloria Ferrer and a buffet breakfast that would leave a Holiday Inn Express ashamed of itself. Also, the WiFi doesn't work, so I'm on a hotspot. It is also a nice comfortable room, but let down by basically everything else.

That's my American Airlines experience. Nice comfortable seat on the plane, but everything else, particularly the service and the absence of amenities, is a complete let down. And no one seems to care.
 
NickH said:
I am writing to you now from an American Airlines 'Flagship' lounge for their International First Class customers. I'm flying on a partner, but thought this would be a great opportunity to compare American with, for my amusement, British Airways. BA has 'The Concorde Room'. All the nationalist pride at operating the pinnacle of civil aeronautics, is now condensed into a jolly nice room at the airport. But it is a nice room. Fine Dining, $100/bottle Champagne and JW Blue served in a suitably pretentious manner. The American 'Flagship' has Gloria Ferrer and a buffet breakfast that would leave a Holiday Inn Express ashamed of itself. Also, the WiFi doesn't work, so I'm on a hotspot. It is also a nice comfortable room, but let down by basically everything else.

That's my American Airlines experience. Nice comfortable seat on the plane, but everything else, particularly the service and the absence of amenities, is a complete let down. And no one seems to care.
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Why do you continue to fly AA then? Serious question
 
learhawkerbe400 said:
Why do you continue to fly AA then? Serious question
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I'm on a partner airline today. I flew AA last time because I booked before the aadvantage devaluation. I blew through about 500k in a week, booking flights for the next yeat, and that was my last 100k.
 
MikeD said:
I fly AA regularly for both business and pleasure, and the flight/cabin crews and service......both in the air and at the gates/ticket counter, etc......have always been pleasant and efficient. Never had a bad experience.
Click to expand...
my city pairs for the commute to my reserve job have AA and Southwest as the preferred carrier. I hold my breathe every time hoping i get Southwest.
 
I think I've really only flown on AA a couple of times in the past decade, so I really don't know. My issue here is with the unions tactics (and what I thought the thread was about) of make the airline worse to force positive contract gains. Never works that way.
 
Kingairer said:
My issue here is with the unions tactics (and what I thought the thread was about) of make the airline worse to force positive contract gains. Never works that way.
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If that's what's going on, that would be the grand epitome of stupidity. For any union to do.

That's akin to a kid deliberately getting D'a and F's in school, in an attempt to get more allowance money from his parents.
 
MikeD said:
If that's what's going on, that would be the grand epitome of stupidity. For any union to do.

That's akin to a kid deliberately getting D'a and F's in school, in an attempt to get more allowance money from his parents.
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This is pretty much every airlines union tactic is when they have no negotiating capital. Do the bare minimum to force them back to negotiate.
 
MikeD said:
I fly AA regularly for both business and pleasure, and the flight/cabin crews and service......both in the air and at the gates/ticket counter, etc......have always been pleasant and efficient. Never had a bad experience.
Click to expand...

Likewise.

I’m a bit of a captive audience living here in PHX, but I’ve been all over in the world on AA and haven’t had a terrible experience that I couldn’t have had anywhere else. They get me where I need to go in a timely and efficient manner and I regularly get upgraded.

The hard product is competitive, especially in the 777-300, but the cabin crew leaves something to be desired. I try to be as nice and courteous to them as possible, but I still occasionally get some eye rolling or some out and out snark when I ask them to do something within their job description. It’s not going to kill you to pull a can of beer out of the cart and run my credit card, sorry. The old US crews seem to be worse about this than the ex-AA crews.
 
I have been fortunate enough to work for both (Legacy AA and DAL). On the AA side, morale was poor, equipment was old (improving with new orders) and the contract was terrible. I was shocked at the lack of work rules and things old AA guys accepted as ok. AA crew scheduling was atrocious.

DAL on the other hand has motivated employees for the most part (large part due to profit sharing). Our CEO whether he truly believe it or not constantly praises the work force in public. I was at AA when Doug made his famous faux paux..it hit the line folks instantly and really ruined the mood even further. DL has continuously put money back into the system as evidence by new interiors, sky clubs etc ( AA has also tried to do this). The thing that has surprised me the most is how reliable our network system is. We have delays like the others, but the planes always get there typically without a cancellation. It may have been delayed for 19 hours but it gets there :) Ground folks being high speed/airport staff/ getting final weight & balance numbers just comes so much faster and more consistently than it did at AAL. Crew scheduling is a night and day difference..pretty predictable for the most part even on reserve.

I think AAL will get there eventually but its going to take awhile to weed out all the worn out exhausted employees and culture that dominated there for so long.
 
The AA problem is trying to do too much with too little and not enough technology with management brought in externally with good industry experience but not enough company experience.

The reservation and flight operation/planning system are state of the art 1960s technology. While there are some advantages to the old technology, more modern systems can increase the speed and efficiency at which things are accomplished. What modern tools that we do have are operationally pretty disjointed and not really suitable for the merged airline.

The staffing for customer service, ramp, dispatch, load planning, crew scheduling, maintenance, pilots and flight attendants is bare bones and tries to do too much with too little. When everything is perfect, it can barely work. When there are any problems, it simply falls apart. When it falls apart, you have every work group blaming all the other work groups. You get the attitudes that you do from overworked employees. You have work groups working extra hard to make up for the airline scheduling its aircraft and crews on too tight of a schedule and putting too many planes on routes they are not suited for. With everything being run on such a tight ship, the recovery takes longer than it really should.

Much of the management structure comes from outside the airline. From middle management up to upper management, there is not enough internal AA experience. While these managers have a lot of industry experience and can be very knowledgeable, it is really vital to have some experience in your management team that knows how the airline operates from experience at that airline instead of basing it off how they did at at other airlines. Some of this goes to the Doug Parker level in that the airline wants more internal experience in management but is not willing to make it more lucrative to do so. There is a lot of experience that stays away from management because the pay, schedule and work rules are better in union positions than management. I as a dispatcher make more than many of my managers and have better job security as well as a better schedule. Its been decades since a dispatcher has applied to move into management.

Even with older technology and management issues, solve the staffing issues and major improvement will be made across the board.
 
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Screaming_Emu said:
I've flown a fair amount on United, Delta, AA, and Alaska this past year.

My take aways? They're all pretty interchangeable with small differences.

1) Free booze in economy comfort on Delta.
2) A plane is a plane. A new 737 is the same no matter what the paint says, and a ratty 757 sucks no matter if it's United or Delta.
3) Domestic air travel absolutely sucks.
Click to expand...

Disagree. The best ride in the sky is a 717. Nothing else rides like it in the back other than a 727.

Super quiet and the seats ride like they're bolted to the hangar floor.

Oh, and 2 x 3 seating for the win.

And there's no one else flying them in the US.

But don't listen to me...I might be a bit biased...

Richman
 
Richman said:
Disagree. The best ride in the sky is a 717. Nothing else rides like it in the back other than a 727.

Super quiet and the seats ride like they're bolted to the hangar floor.

Oh, and 2 x 3 seating for the win.

And there's no one else flying them in the US.

But don't listen to me...I might be a bit biased...

Richman
Click to expand...

I view it just as an RJ with a middle seat. :)
 
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