I would only take that post with a grain of salt IMHO. Doesn’t sound like he spoke with people at AA for this particular blog post and his stint with AA was many moons ago.

I sincerely doubt AA intends to bolster flights to regional markets in the NE. O/D traffic is minimal to JFK from these markets except for maybe BOS since its easier to go to Long Island by flying to JFK than taking Amtrak then LIRR.

I’d love to be wrong though.

One of the surprising things to me about this thread is lack of conversations about corporate contracts. Presumably, existing corporate contracts or sales' desire to win specific future corporate contracts should influence specific flights to specific markets, a la the United twice daily service from the Bay Area to Shanghai for Apple.

I would think corporate contracts out of NYC very intensely priced given the amount of competition. At PHL there's far less price competition with AA commanding the airport. True, it might be lower volume but more profitable volume.

I thought rebanking (ie moving from more banks to fewer larger ones or moving from a rolling hub to a banked hub) generally drives up costs because you have to staff for the peak and then pay employees to be idle between banks. It's going for revenue because customers (including me) as well as, eg, Google Flights's "best flights" algorithm often sort by (or at least consider) total travel time when searching for flights, so efficient connections win. Those shorter connections and congestion certainly introduce operational challenges, and reducing those can be a cost savings, but I don't think the operational cost savings outweigh the staffing cost increases.

AA hasn't been doing very well with NYC corporate contracts.....in fact I think it was Credit Suisse (or some other bank) that dumped AA in favor for Delta which is why AA dropped JFK-ZRH and moved it to PHL as one example. AA shot themselves in the foot with that route using an unreliable 763 with a terrible in-flight product compared with Delta's 763 with in-seat IFE good dispatch reliability etc and now I think DL is even running A332's on the route.

Seems to be a chicken and egg type deal though, AA needs to have good reliable service to get the contracts, but doesn't want to start the service without the contracts. :-(

Like a lot of things today it probably looks good on an Excel Spreadsheet which can't take into account variables. The unseasoned flyer (not to mention even some seasoned flyers) probably thinks an hour is more than sufficient for a one hour connection to SA. The only such connection of the night. Then they miss the flight and either paying for a hotel room or sleep in the airport. MIA at night looks like a hotel because of all the flyers stranded for which AA can claim "not our responsibility you missed your connection." I assume being able to get another flight out of each a/c outweighs the additional labor costs. As far as the paxs, let's say they're not the consideration they once were.

Parker never showed much interest in NYC when it was USAirways and he's continued that practice now with AA. To be fair the NYC exodus began pre Parker when B6 came to town. AA just doesn't seem to want to slug it out with DL.

Might this have something to do with it https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/j...he-summer.html

If yes, it would suggest AA will restore at least some of the service at the end of 2019.

You are right - I had it backwards :o

Apologies if this question is slightly off topic: are there ever business saver awards from NYC available on AA's own metal? I have been checking for a few weeks and nothing has come up. Is it even worth buying expertflyer to get - possibly hypothetical - alerts? Thanks

I just got sAAver availability last week in J on JFK-LHR-MXP on AA/BA metal for a flight in June. 57.5k + $29 in taxes.

FWIW, there is lots of upgrade availability -- roughly 35-45% of flights have C>0 on JFK-LHR and back over the next two weeks. Including a good amount of C4-C7. (But no U or Z availability in that timeframe; that said my experience is the saver awards do pop up periodically. They're less likely to show close-in even on lightly-booked flights, as AA wants you to redeem AAnytime.)

The runway reconstruction has conveniently allowed AA to drop JFK flights during the summer without fear of losing those slots; interesting to note that both B6 and DL have not reduced any JFK flights for the summer despite the runway issue. And the capacity AA is restoring in November post-runway-reconstruction period are either hub flights (PHX, MIA, ORD, etc.) or short cheaper-to-operate flights (PHL, PIT, BOS) - the latter basically being slot-squatter flights until AA can figure out what to do with those JFK slots...

Long TPG interview with Vasu Raja that touches a lot on NYC strategy.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/talkin...ing-vasu-raja/

In other words NYC is focused on O&D and heavy emphasis on attracting the NYC premium traveler. Mostly everything else we're funnel through other hubs.

It sounds like AA@JFK won't be doing a whole lot more diversifying of its international route network out of JFK anytime soon, especially as AA seems to do anything but expand its domestic feed into JFK for onward international trips and seems to want to send feed elsewhere, particularly PHL.

I wonder if DL thinks of JFK the same way as AA thinks of JFK. DL seems to be much more about a diversified international route network out of JFK than AA, and yet I would say that DL seems to have beat AA in NYC for O&D and that DL has a heavy emphasis on attracting the NYC premium traveler.

If AA's international flying out of JFK hasn't been that much of a useful money-maker for AA, how come DL seems to have found a way to make JFK work for it?

So the NYC premium traveler only ever takes flights to London, LA & SF, I guess?

Don't we ever go to the Caribbean for a holiday......places in FL other than Miami etc. The pulldown in routes makes me book elsewhere like on Delta. Then you see that Delta actually operates on-time, and wow the people are so nice, the App experience is so much better. This then makes me want to fly Delta more.......it's a downward spiral AA is creating for themselves in NYC.

The frequent-flying, masochistic premium travelers must just love the idea of flying AA to LHR to connect to premium traveler destinations on BA. Sounds bloody awful, because it is LHR and BA.

I just want to comment that there is absolutely nothing remotely premium about the e140s that makes up a substantial chunk of AA’s NYC operation.

Chairman Parker prefers to be the biggest player in the arena and not compete. PMUS de-hubbed PIT for part of that reason. NYC is a difficult market and using it as a hub is not cheap and has a load of competition. IF PMAA used the "Four Corners Strategy" post-merger AA uses the "Fortress Hub Strategy" with the main fortresses being DFW and CLT.

Should also note that the old AA did not use JFK as a true hub either. For example, CLT itself, many upstate NY locations, most of the Carolinas (other than RDU) had no nonstops into JFK. Current AA management also is clearly not interested in making JFK a true hub for better or worse.

Safe Travels

Wasn't the pre-Parker US heavily banked into PHL and CLT as transit hubs for US's international service, with NYC on its backburner but for the exception of the US Shuttle and some domestic service to NYC/LGA? And yet US seemed to go from being financially on the path of the dodo to being on the path of the dodo to being on the path of the dodo using a strategy that Parker's AA seems to have bought into hook, line and sinker. The difference this time is that the AA has the benefit of being one of the US3 cartel industry kingpins in what is a much more oligopolistic market than before. But for how much longer can that work to the advantage of AA management?

Perhaps Parker read too much about how it's not worth being in a market if you can't be number 1 or 2 (or perhaps not even 3)? Given what he's done to ORD too, it seems he doesn't want to even suffer being number 2. And yet his airline is probably not deserving of more than a 3rd place finish when placed against DL and UA.

What I took from Raja's interview is what we've known all along - the strategy at JFK is for premium passenger O&D. That's great for NYC based fliers who want to go to a handful of OW destinations. Anyone else in the country can funnel through PHL and CLT where there aren't expensive slot restrictions that drags down the bottom line.

I've said this over and over, and I guess I'll say it again: JFK is a crappy place, geographically, to make a domestic connection to/from most of the eastern US, and that seriously impacts its usefulness as a place to make international connections. People who are flying between coastal cities, or between coastal and near-midwest cities, simply are not going to want a connection in JFK because it's too far out of their way. And that impacts the availability of inbound and outbound domestic flights connecting to/from international, because running a bunch of half-empty planes in and out of JFK just to make it a "real" connecting TATL hub is not a smart move. So JFK is focused O&D, which means a different pattern and amount of traffic; CLT is the east-coast domestic connecting hub, and PHL is the TATL connecting hub, and they are much better suited to those roles than JFK ever could be.

(DL has to make a go of it at JFK because they don't have a lot of other options -- cue the "you can get there, but you have to connect in Atlanta" jokes; UA has a sizable operation at EWR, but also has IAD as a more conveniently-placed east-coast hub)

They want to set your expectations if you're connecting onto one of those 777s in Y (seat width on those are terrible)

Regarding another poster's comment, I really doubt most flyers consider how far out of the way a connecting airport is, or not at least with PHL vs JFK. It's not like JFK was losing connecting pax to PHL. Or at least not that I'm aware of. It was a purposeful move by leadership to keep JFK more Premium O&D oriented. Something flyers and AA do consider is price. Specifically for AA, it's not just about profitability, its about where they can make the *most* money flying a certain aircraft. It appears like they have found that JFK is too competitive and too expensive and PHL is just better for connecting TATL pax.

Edit: If ubernostrum was referring to all the ATC/weather delays that come from geography, then yes, JFK is terrible.

Agreed on this. I'm primarily O&D in NYC now, but given air congestion, weather, etc. would much rather connect in PHL/DFW/MIA vs. JFK if originating from other east coast locations. CLT would make sense, but hate that airport.

On my personal list, would like AA to serve YVR, DEN, SCL, which I think would have enough "premium" demand, but doubt that'll happen.

Can't agree more. I would actively avoid CLT more than JFK... such poor design and always feels overly crowded.

Part of these pullbacks feels like one industry cartel kingpin being nice to another industry cartel kingpin so as to more nicely divide the country into clearer sectors amongst themselves, all while trying to minimize stepping on each other's toes hard enough to spark a consumer-benefiting competitive engagement in the commercial equivalent of total war of all against all.

As much as it may be cheaper for AA to pullback from NYC -- and from ORD for that matter -- and to instead try to route international traffic via PHL and CLT, for long-haul, international flyers such diversion to PHL and CLT can be costly in regards to what happens to service recovery levels especially during misconnects/IRROPs. Misconnect/IRROPs recovery out of PHL or CLT can be more of a costly flop for passengers than misconnect/IRROPs recovery out of the NYC area. There have been more than a few instances where I would rather fly or even drive to JFK or EWR and get on my flying way than to risk a failed connection at PHL/CLT/ORD and end up losing way more of my time at the very least than using the JFK/EWR options -- all while keeping in mind the possibilities for a JFK/EWR connection flop too.

If AA's slashing of the ability of customers to get value out of the AA loyalty program weren't bad enough to get me to cut back on using AA, AA's JFK route cutbacks and AA's hyper-reliance on BA and LHR became enough to push my business away from AA and more back toward DL. If I'm going to get "stranded" overnight on an international connection and not be flown out on a long-haul flight for at least 12+ hours, then I would rather it be time in NYC than in PHL or CLT. But that's just me. I'm sure AA thinks that this stuff doesn't really matter to most customers -- probably because it doesn't due to the nature of the market.

If you are NYC-based, or close enough, then sure, "oops, you're spending the night in NYC" is OK.

If you are not NYC-based, then there really is not an advantage to "stranded overnight in NYC" versus "stranded overnight in PHL".

If you are NYC-based, JFK offers some TATL flights. Like I've said about a million times, it's an O&D focused hub, not a connection-focused hub, and for a variety of sensible reasons.

Also: "You can fly anywhere you want in Europe as long as you want to do it on BA metal" was pmAA's policy. Post-merge, I'm pretty sure you can reach more cities on AA metal than you could pre-merge, because pmUS couldn't just shrug and say "eh, we got you to LHR, that's good enough", so they had the routes. And many of them have been kept.

Even when not NYC-based, it's an advantage to me to be stranded overnight in NYC vs PHL. The next day's same-day arrival in Europe possibilities are but one advantage, and it's not the only advantage.

JFK and EWR together tend to provide more TATL options than PHL when things go wrong on TATL trips.


I was very familliar with pmAA's TATL route network and also with pmUS's TATL route network, and yet I don't know what point is trying to me made from the following jumble:

The Raja interview actually made me more encouraged about AA's presence in New York longer term. As discussed, it doesn't make sense for AA to maintain a large connecting hub at JFK. That ship has already sailed, and I don't really care about that as an NYC based passenger. What I was more worried about was more drastic cutbacks, both domestic and international, at both JFK and LGA as part of a general pullback from New York. Raja is talking about having a premium terminal at LGA once that is done, they seem to be fortifying Terminal 8 with BA moving in, etc. Given my domestic flight patterns, it makes sense for me to fly a lot of Delta, but AA continues to offer good pricing, good upgrade opportunities and a decent experience for a number of routes. It seems like they will continue to just tinker with routes and such instead of a sale of LGA/JFK slots to Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, whoever.

For NYC O&D, United seems to offer the most comprehensive option for passengers if you can stomach Newark. Delta is close, but notably behind.

One's preference for UA of of NYC depends on routes flown. DL actually has more flights, and far more flights with premium cabins (fewer CR2s/E145s) than UA does out of the NYC airports. DL isn't far behind in NYC passenger count, either, for the 12 months ending 2/19:

UA, 32.6 million
DL, 31.1 million
B6, 17.9 million
AA, 16.9 million
WN, 4.3 million
AS, 2.7 million

http://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-t...G_FEB_2019.pdf

Schedules 7/15/19 across JFK/LGA/EWR:

DL, 555 flights of which 37 are CR2s
UA, 473 flights of which 128 are E145s or CR2s.

Count compiled by FSDan on a.net.

Largely agree, but his reference to BNA, TYS and CHO as huge markets for AA that are poorly served "outside of American Airlines" displayed an ignorance (perhaps willful) of what the competition has been up to.

I don't trust him or any of the management. Of course he's going to make light of any negatives/reduction in service.

Raja's comments about NYC sound similar to what Delta and United said about MEM and CLE respectively. We all know how it worked out for MEM and CLE.

I don't find that actually and certainly no worse than LGA.

MEM and CLE are about 1/10 and 1/8 the size of NYC, resprectively, with even smaller fractions of "premium" demand, so I don't think those are that comparable. Also, MEM was primarily a connecting hub acquired from Northwest that had no purpose with ATL nearby, from what I can remember.