Originally Posted by Blumie

These, of course, are critical assumptions. The reason many (most?) of us continue to fly AA is because we are not paying full F fares and the AAdvantage program does matter. When I travel to LHR, I get to pay a J fare and sit in F and I earn a boat load of AA miles. In general, the food is not as good as BA, the amenity kit is not as good as BA, and the service is not as good as BA. But ultimately being able to sit in AA's excellent F seat and earn the relatively valuable AA miles and status is far more important to me than better quality airline slop or an extra tube of toothpaste that I'm just going to discard anyways. So while I would love for AA to offer a more competitive product, they're still getting my revenue on this route. Of course, when I travel to Asia on a RTW F fare, you bet I'm going CX rather than AA; my gf looks mighty cute in those CX jammies I bring home to her!