Originally Posted by
rjw242
And what would be the purpose of deliberately biasing these stats?
Seems like it'd be a far more positive story if AA could say that some huge fraction of their passengers are repeat, loyal customers. If that were the case, would they falsely claim the opposite?
It's possible that they're not doing it deliberately but that they're idiots.
That's what I'd assume if the 87% number were actually based on a sample from the day after Thanksgiving. I think it's more likely that the 500K number is a bit of spin to make the passenger numbers as high as possible (average daily number is actually about 400K), and the 87% number is actually based on a look over an entire year. But this isn't entirely clear, and I've seen people do all sorts of dumb modeling/sampling in the past so it's at least possible they're just being really dumb.