Originally Posted by
wetrat0
And they'll never fly DL and UA either, because they both offer the same thing, with the same warnings and the same problems with OTAs. The CEO of Spirit is famous for mocking those who way they'll never fly airline X again. For better or for worse, American doesn't care about maintaining a good reputation among people who purchase tickets on Cheapoair. If you're on Cheapoair to begin with there's only one thing you care about and that is price. I seriously doubt Doug P. is losing any sleep in this case.
In all seriousness though, if you're an infrequent traveler and you don't want to deal with complicated products there is really only one option: just fly Southwest (and many of them do).
My take on it, is that people who are caught unaware and are yelled at by gate agents will walk away with a negative experience and badmouth AA. Even though the US3 are all offering BE now, that doesn't play into the narrative at an office happy hour. And once the customer is savvy to it, they might try Delta's version which allows a carry-on (even though that is with a 99% chance of it being gate checked). Or United's and be prepared. The end result is that there is no being yelled at, no surprises, and the psychological response is "Wow that was better than AA". Even though, from the outside looking in, we're seeing that if they had prepped for AA's BE fare it would be the same result.