Originally Posted by
AJNEDC
And I think a relief to others as well. I do find this whole thing quite irrational. Especially when I read of people doing tier runs or mileage runs or whatever they are called.
I stick with AA for business travel, because I have no choice. For personal, it's last resort. I go by which carrier I think has the best product that will get me there in the comfort I desire. AA's fare has to be substantially cheaper for me to consider it, if it is the metal being flown.
Unless your home airport is a fortress hub of AA, most people will either choose based on price or product. AA has sometimes competed on price, but the product is a hot mess compared to DL and UA. The quickest way to compete would be on the soft product, as the new hard product (321XLR has gotten horrible reviews so far) is fine, but not game changing.
This mess was a decade in the making, and it won't be turned around quickly. Isom and mgmt may not be the right team to turn it around but a change for the sake of change is pointless. AA is being forced to go premium because they handed out labor contracts that drove cost levels above their competition. That's bad news for an airline that has never been premium before and has no appetite to spend the money it takes to become premium.