Originally Posted by
hillrider
The head of a constantly crappy 2-star airline (JD Powers) publicly nitpicking on a less-crappy 3-star operation (clearly already on its way up) is very poor form.
Way to build camaraderie within the AA + US joint workforce.
This PR was so vague as to be completely meaningless except as a reminder and highlight of the fact that they are still severely behind the times.
Both concepts picked up and expanded by bloggers:
The first blogger expands on this quite nicely, pointing out that:
US Airways management came into American thinking that most of the things the larger airline was doing were ludicrous. As they’ve gotten to know things from the inside, they’ve seen there actually were reasons behind some of the decisions they questioned from the outside. In other words, there are fewer opportunities than they thought, at least less low hanging fruit than they assumed.
He points out that Parker ripped power ports from US aircraft and viscerally hated IFE, yet he's now putting them in both fleets.
Parker also thought that premium cabin investments were ludicrous, and yet he's announcing new premium cabin improvements. And let's not even talk about what he thought was the "folly" of 3-class F on transcons, yet it's still there (at least for now) -- heck, the team is even
getting kudos for it at investors conferences (I am sure Horton and Vahidi don't appreciate the irony).
Same skepticism with Asia flying, yet Parker is expanding it -- from AA hubs.
And the food cuts -- he's rolling them back on the plane, and adding more food to the lounges to match DL/UA.
At least he seems to be a fast learner. ^