Originally Posted by
jerseytom
On a recent podcast, Vasu Raja seemed pretty clear that there would be an emphasis on the domestic network feeding into a handover with OW partners at their major hubs, e.g. BA in London or JL in Tokyo. Leaves things pretty thin in South America.
In a podcast earlier this year, one of AA's network planning guys spoke to the utilization of new widebodies. I recall a point of emphasis being that new aircraft acquisitions would be something like a summer Europe route paired with a winter South American route or MX cycle.
Seems reasonable to expect that outside of the currently served major, year-round markets, over the next few years with the 787's and 321XLR's those would be on some seasonal Europe/South America alternating schedule.
I guess that's as clear an indication as any that they've abandoned any effort to be a flagship carrier or to cultivate a first-tier international network. Which I guess is just as well, as their service quality on international flights just isn't competitive with that of most international airlines. Actually, maybe that's part of the same strategic decision - if they abandon most of the international network, then they don't even have to make any effort at providing a quality service at all?
Here's another question to throw out there - why does AA choose to maintain flights to those South American destinations that it hasn't abandoned? I mean, I guess GRU, SCL, and EZE are large cities with big international business hubs, but Guayaquil? Cartagena? Most of the secondary cities AA flies to on the continent seem to be tourist destinations and/or places that migrants come from - not necessarily destinations that would see a heavy skew toward premium travelers. On top of which, a lot of those destinations are also served by Spirit, which presumably would eat into margins at the low end of the pricing scale.
It just seems very bizarre that they'd keep flying to small cities where they face lots of competition and abandon places like Bolivia and provincial Brazil, where they could have monopoly power and presumably charge more for the convenience factor of a nonstop to the US. I assume people at the company who know far more about how these things work than I do looked at the numbers and determined these routing decisions made sense, but I just don't get it.