I have a theory about airport and hotel lounges. They want the food to be good enough to attract and satisfy customers but not so good that it leads to increased costs (unless the increased costs less to a corresponding increase in revenue) or to decreased revenue.

At hotels that also operate a restaurant (as opposed to simply leasing the restaurant to a third party), they don’t want to lose restaurant revenue. I’ve been in many Ritz Carlton lounges, for example, which offer free food and booze all day long. But they still want you to eat at their restaurants. So the lounge food is pretty good, but in my experience not so good to lead many to conclude that it’s better than, or even as good as, what’s available in the restaurant.

It’s slightly different for airlines, but still they want to attract you to buy seats on their flights without having to overspend on the lounges (or on other amenities). It’s a fine line, of course. I’ve been in AA, DL and UA domestic lounges in the past month, and AA’s were the least good. In my case, there’s zero chance that will impact which airline I chose to fly, but perhaps others will make a different decision. My guess — and this is only a guess — is that AA knows its lounges aren’t as good as the others, but their goal isn’t necessarily to be the best. Of course I imagine that they want to be the best, but they have to constantly estimate what the cost to improve the lounges would be relative to the expected increase in passenger revenue. Similarly they have to consider the risk whether not improving the lounges will lead to decreased passenger revenue. We all think we’d be better at running an airline than AA management, but my guess — again, only a guess — is that most of us would fail at that analysis. AA has real data; we all just make it up in our heads!