757FO

While as a captain, I do what I can to motivate the troops, the purser is really the one who should set the tone for the cabin experience. I've seen awesome ones, and sadly, plenty of bad ones, too....

JDiver

If it really worked like that. But it doesn’t. If this was the Navy and crew and officers were assigned for a period of time, that’d be a good analogy.

Inspired leadership teams can turn companies around. I’ve been part of successful efforts to change corporate culture. The current leadership team seems concerned with cost cutting measures - eliminate hard IFE, because it can cost $5k + ongoing maintenance per chair; density (Oasis); D0 for the stats; court pilots and FAs for the merger, everyone else will come around (wrong! they’ll feel cheated and left out!) ; reduce meal quality, diversity, hours; cut, cut, cut. I’ve been flying AA since the 1940s, and this year it’s the worst I’ve seen it.

If leadership doesn’t care about the self-loading freight, why would the passenger facing or background employees care? They’ll merely reflect their personal values on the job, which is why we have some excellent employees - but there’s no corporate values or culture to instruct the rest. Lead and enthuse our employee teams? Huh? What’s that about?

I dropped from EP this February, and have lifetime Platinum. This yeAAr has been punctuated by high prices, BE service and lack of fare transparency, operational failures, mechanical and “mechanical” delays, highly reliable 787s AA apparently can’t fly reliably, Flagship flights with terrible on-time stats, nasty hub weather (beyond AA control, admittedly), often cranky or even surly, lackadaisical or/and untrained ground staff (I assure you I’m seeing this on other venues than FT), cancelled flights from the 3M8 groundings, etc. How much am I likely to fly AA the second half of 2019? As much as I’ve flown the first half. Nada. Zero. Bupkis. AA undoubtedly doesn’t care about me - but there are more than a few high value flyers out there eschewing AA, and booking CX, JL, QR etc. if it’s at all close in convenience.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

Most flights still go without a hitch and there are plenty of employees at AA that love their job and their paxs. However, operationally AA has fallen behind and it shows in KPIs and financial metrics. They've got double the revenues of WN but about the same operating income. Parker is too much of a numbers guy and he likely shoves difficult scenarios onto employees. Clearly some of the hubs can't effectively deal with banked flights. FAs are now dealing with even tighter quarters which leads to in flight stress and their morale being depressed.

Ultimately the BOD will be forced to act. Parker can't justify the lousy financial performance, setting aside some of the bad press. Will AA get someone with vision and willing to spend $$$ on the brand? That I might doubt. Ben Baldanza might be available.

DCP2016

Wow, lots of Fort Worth HQ employees posting in this thread today. This isn't a flight crew or even ground crew problem, this is a leadership problem that starts at the top. Dougie boy needs to start prepping his resume because he isn't long for the position.

robertablake

Had a great purser on my last flight back from Tokyo and the crew in J was very good. Had so many bad ones on these flights to and from Tokyo, it was refreshing to get a solid crew - the purser, I believe, really set the tone.

JDiver

In my opinion, that was more because of personal power, because in AA Pursers have no actual titular power. They get a few extra bucks for taking charge of certain paperwork.

Unlike some other airlines, there is no lead or supervisory cabin crew position onboard. BA, Cathay, etc. OTOH do have customer service manager type positions on board longhaul flights, AFAIK.

Spanish

I wish the airline would pay attention to this. It sure has caused lots of issues for me.

Dallas49er

And will end just as quickly in failure when whoever comes in and has to deal with AA's UNIONS, and their unenlightened, greedy, toxic self interest.

I just can see the FA picket lines outside Terminal D in DFW, chanting,"No givebacks! No PDBs! No givebacks! No service standards!".

metallo

nall

The man seems to have a penchant for arranging mergers. Now that he can't anymore, he's out of his element.

ReinaDeLaSelva

!Muchachos! Cuidado! I think I understand your meaning. But maybe he has a DAUGHTER or GRANDDAUGHTER who can do such an excellent job no??!

Dallas49er

Finance/Management? HOW ABOUT, wait for it..... wait for it....

A SALES GUY/GAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Todays Millenials, GenXers, etc. with their fancy Harvard, Wharton, and heaven forbid(!) stanford MBA's are truly & totally lost, and clueless, if they can't spreadsheet/Excell the unspreadsheetable. Sales.

Point 1. The definition of a salesman used to be a guy/gal who could tell you to go to hell, and you would look forward to the trip!

Point 2. Throughout history, Soldiers/Employees have followed GENERALS into battle. Followed. Not one great corporate leader, IMHO, has come out of accounting, legal, route planning, purchasing, or the cesspool known as HR.

Dallas49er

You are so right! I have amended my last post! Thank you!

fotographer

I think that most of us on this board can see where problems are with AA, from the management down.. but once again we are only probably less then .5% of the passengers who fly AA
Their planes are running full, and unfortunately most passengers dont have the time to submit a note for bad service or lack of service,probably because they dont fly AA enough times?
I myself, having been using other OW airlines to get to where I need to be.. on the whole been very happy, got a TATL flight on AA in a few weeks, (my first of this year) lets see

Antarius

I disagree - they may be full, but AA is lagging the industry in financial metrics too. So it isn't like they are making money hand -over-fist to justify their poor OTP and other issues.

Price stuff cheap enough, people will fly. But if you dont care about anything else you chase off high value customers. See UA/CO in 2012.