Originally Posted by
Cledaybuck
Heck, they could start with the 737/max. How many of their "best customers" are stuck sitting in a 30" pitch Y seat because they only have 1/2 as many Y+ seats as UA?
Exactly why it's hard to take AA's "premium" talk seriously. Almost everything the last year has been standard/routine evolution of existing product and approaches, rebranded under this aura of "premium". It's hard to call the XLR for example premium with the tight J and two rows of MCE (both of which are exit rows); it's a standard new AA aircraft for mid/long haul missions with new J seats and PE. PHL FL was already under construction for years. The price of wifi was woefully uncompetitive today and something needed to change. Etc. I guess drinkable coffee will be a legit "improvement" but at the AC, it was AA just 1 year ago that terminated La Colombe, so it's more just a vendor change. IMO the execs are just hawking "premium" because the market says they should be talking about it, but not really doing it.
Originally Posted by
KDCAflyer
Delta got its cult status pre-COVID by being the airline described by the average flyer as: "my flight was on time, I had a cool touch screen, and the FA smiled when they handed me the Biscoff."
A few years ago, when AA went all-in on OTP above anything else, they *still* were a step behind DL and at-par with UA. There were a couple of months or quarters where they were on top but those were blips. Now it's not the singular goal anymore (which is fine) but performance has tanked. Bottom line is that AA has failed to consistently at least match competitors' ops performance since at least the mid 2010s.