Originally Posted by
Kacee
Table stakes. Then they can start talking about a "premium" product.
UA is having a phenomenal run of success based on operational excellence. UA's recent success is certainly not based on their soft product. And people tend to forget that before Delta became known as a "premium" airline it developed a reputation for unsurpassed operational excellence. Again, this is table stakes. AA cannot move meaningfully forward without developing operational reliability.
There was a podcast with Parker last month where he said (paraphrasing) "improvements in hard/soft product don't translate to improvements in share of revenue because your competitors will duplicate the improvement" and then said DL found a way to operate reliably which competitors couldn't match and used that to grow share of revenue.