cmd320

Your first article mentions zero of the quoted airlines and I have no intention of subscribing to the WSJ to read your second article.

denCSA

Flew CLT-SJU and back on US today and the flights were fantastic. The aircraft was an A332 which was a plus to begin with, but the crew were awesome! PDB offered on the way down but not the return, I suspect due to door L1 being used for boarding in SJU. Going to SJU was a breakfast flight and choices were French toast soufflé or cheese omelette. Had the omelette and it was fine, nothing to write home about.

On the return was a dinner flight, choices were:

Penne pasta with marinara sauce

Or

Thai chile chicken with noodles

I chose the chicken and it turned out to be pretty good. A bit over salty but tasty nonetheless. Never seen this dish before but it turned out well, I was surprised. Wasn't the low-quality, grainy chicken of the past.



Desert was an apple pie thing, not great but not bad either.

SFO777

Don't bother. Both articles are over 2 years old and have absolutely zero relevance today, as much as OP wishes and hopes.

Longboater

Unless the Feds grant the four and five star carriers unlimited ninth freedom flights in this country, we will be stuck flying with this slop and a mediocre soft product. Could you imagine Emirates trying to open up a hub in Dallas or Etihad in Atlanta? That force some real enhancements.

TBD

Just fly foreign-flag carriers for all your int'l flights....

cmd320

It's seeming like some of the Caribbean meals are better than the domestic options these days (though that's not really a highly set bar).

F&B767

I agree with your post 100%, however, if you see the man in person and the way he responds to questions you would not feel the same. He may be doing a great job of towing the new management line but he is very arrogant in his tone and demeanor. They have all admitted there was a directive to cut X from the budget and that it back fired. After the reversal of the changes everyone at AA still complains but no changes are made. There is much song and dance that "we listen" but the follow up statement is change is hard and we understand but but people will get used to it. It will not change back to what it was. The new management believes AA's food service was a relic from days gone and the competition are not doing it so why should we. Hector said "the 80's are not coming back".

fly747first

If that were really true, they wouldn't have changed back the meals policy after receiving so many complaints while UA would have just ignored us and not move a finger to solve anything.

I cannot stand DP, but I do think that Hector is trying and before the merger, he was doing a great job with the enhanced Envoy meal service.

GotCalcio4

Envoy meals and presentation in the past were superior to the very average meals I just experienced flying in J ORD-NRT. The main course was served in the same casserole dishes as domestic, with paper tray liners for the second two meals. The entire experience from start to finish had me missing Envoy, especially the nice Mandarin Oriental tray linens.

fly747first

Fear not. When AA's idiotic Revenue Management team (seriously, in what world J is $10,000 and P is $892 one-way on a 3-class 772 domestic flight, haha) eventually realizes that premium cabin revenue is way down as Elites don't want to pay for 500 milers let alone premium fares, they will start crying to Papa DP who will then be forced to listen. Yes, we may get bad service for a while, but I doubt it will get as bad as UA's.

I didn't know Hector was that arrogant. Then again, the D+ pmUS management team was never customer friendly overall.

fly747first

Among some of the inadequate things he mentioned following the HP/US merger was that if anything, Chairman's Preferred members should be charged more fees than other Preferred members. This offended a lot of CPs (including yours truly) and we left US for good. Comments like such pretty much led US to have a small Preferred member pool as the inflight product for many years was terrible and US clearly didn't value customer loyalty any longer. Back then, I was giving US $20,000-$25,000 each year but I did not hesitate to dump them like a hot potato.

Envoy meals were incredibly basic and overall poor (in some years, the US-Europe flights didn't even offer dessert) for nearly a decade until they announced the enhancements to the Envoy service a couple years ago and I can honestly say that the new Envoy meals were terrific.

MrAndy1369

Wow. pmAA meal service was more like a relic from the late 2000s, not the 80s. I wasn't even old enough to walk in the mid-80s, but I'm sure midcon service on AA (and all airlines) consisted of printed menus, caviar, seatside carved steak, and sundaes/other dessert choices. In fact, I remember seeing an early-2001 scanned United printed menu for midcon F (SFO-ORD, IIRC). Sundaes were gone by then, but there was definitely much more effort being made.

I'd say AA midcon and transcon service was more of a relic from the 2000s, maybe early 2000s, but for sure not the 80s.

F&B767, are you saying we shouldn't expect to see any improvements moving forward? Are USdbaAA management really that arrogant and closed-minded? It just baffles me, especially as pmAA management was probably one of the most open to feedback and complaints, especially for F/J meal service. I was also told by a pmUS flight attendant (cannot disclose the name, sorry) here on FT that Hector was a very classy man and would definitely bring improvements to the table. Biased or not, I'm not sure, but that's the information I received.

AA777

Slow down there with your application of common sense. I mean the mere suggestion that the quality of the product would affect its buy rate? Don't let Parker here you mention such non-sense.


Cheers,
AA777

N830MH

Yummy!!! Chicken pasta? Delicious!!!! ^^^

BWISkyGuy

IMHO, if he did say the 80's aren't coming back could be a response to multiple things. Yes, (as much as I liked it) pmAA's domestic catering program was ready for a refresh... It hadn't gone through the New American rebranding the way International had, and was dated. But that quote -- especially context of the terms that the current management team thinks in -- can also mean that the budgets of the 80's aren't coming back. I know we like to pretend that if AA offers a great premium product then that will drive revenue to support it... And certainly in some markets it does. But what about the rest? What about all the pmUS markets where US has successfully competed against low fare carriers by offering a (sort of) full service product delivered cheaper?

pmAA and pre-HP US both did a good job of cutting and running from markets where revenue dried up, and that strategy becomes unsustainable at some point. Eventually, you realize that you have to adapt your costs to meet the revenue that you're realistically going to bring, and that you can't just strong-arm lower fare airlines out like the legacies did in the 80's and 90's. Americans are too used to no-frills flying at this point.

To me, what happened here was a cost mitigation move that backfired. pmUS meals were actually very good, but they were funded by the stingy window. Directly lowering the window to 1000 miles was probably unsustainable, given the revenue on the pmUS side, so some of the cost was offset in part by lowering quality. Lowering it to 900 miles again required more money, but again was offset in part by dropping afternoon meals (pmAA style) from some flights.

From everything I've seen in his time at US, I feel Hector is the king of the "cost neutral" improvements... He's pretty good at making a silk purse out of a sow's ear if given enough time to see where he can steal from to improve something else.

My experience tells me that they'll make improvements, including increasing his budget slightly (as PART of the formula to pay for improvements), as long as complaints continue. As soon as the complaints stop, then it's up to Hector to juggle within what he's got if he wants to make something happen...

So keep logging complaints with AA.