Originally Posted by
saunders111
But I strongly suspect that they _do_ remember that they had an unpleasant experience while flying AA. So when they book their next flight, they won't go out of their way to avoid RJs, but they will go out of their way to avoid flying the airline that treated them badly last time. It takes an effort to avoid booking a ticket on an RJ, but it takes no effort at all to avoid booking a ticket on a particular airline. So it seems likely that AA is driving away even non-FF customers, over the long haul, by offering them a substandard customer experience, including by using RJs for very long flights.
There are no "very long" AA RJ flights out of DEN. DEN-LAX may be at the outer edge of what I'd prefer to fly on a CR7 (in coach; in F, longer is no problem) given a range of options
on my preferred airlines but I certainly don't consider it a very long flight.
If someone is going to go out of their way to avoid airlines that treated them badly (as defined by making them fly on a large RJ for 2 - 2 1/2 hours), they're going to rapidly run out of options that aren't Southwest! AA, DL and even hub carrier UA all have significant RJ service out of DEN.
(Although overall I think you overstate passengers' propensity to dump carriers that "treat them badly." For the leisure traveler, price is king. The infrequent traveler is simply not going to pay more to avoid being "treated badly.")
I don't think the customers that (want to) bolt for WN at the first sight of a CR7 on the ramp are the ones AA depends upon to make its network profitable.