AAdvantage President Bridget Blaise-Shamai Leaves; Whither AAdvantage?
 

Well here’s one that really matters and this probably even warrants its own thread... Bridget Blaise-Shamai is leaving. RIP AAdvantage.

https://viewfromthewing.com/american...g-the-airline/

Bridget leaving is a really odd one to me... seems like they still need someone to run AAdvantage and do market research.

Hopefully the things that make AA unique don't go away to follow UA and DL... I'm thinking of things like having a published award chart (despite web saver awards making that less relevant) that charges 60k miles for a US to Japan J ticket when DL is charging 80k and UA is charging 88k.

Wow! No real surprise!

I guess he is no longer work for AA. Hopefully they will find someone who can help us to restore old AAdvantage program. They can bring it back 100% mileage and eliminate dollar requirements.

Bummer :(

Unfortunately, given the near future for airlines, I don’t see this happening. I could be wrong, of course.

Well, the first shoe has dropped
 

Bridget Blaise-Shamai, head o oAAdvantage, is leaving AA after 25 years.

Why on earth would they do that? Nearly all loyalty programs are migrating towards approaches that reward their higher spending and/or more profitable customers, rather than the customers who take the most circuitous routes between point A and B. And I can't think of a single good reason why they shouldn't be.

Maybe AA can lead the way, so others airlines might follow instead of AA following them back to the older program. Miles based.
. I can see for at the the time being.. travel patterns will be very different. AA needs to stay in business, just like every other business... offering status based on miles, might attract new customers, from other airline

Wonder who will replace her.

Im not sure if it is Parker, Isom or her driving a lot of the AAdvantage changes, but her tenure has been forgettable, at best.

I guess they didn't need a highly paid executive to read Delta's website and cut and paste

Yes, but that was a different world and we are in a new normal that doesn't resemble this world in any way. I say to entice flyers AA should resort to their old program, nix the tier/spend thresholds.

Hard to see a scenario where AA changes their program with incentives to entice people to travel lots of miles while spending relatively few dollars. Seems like with massively reduced flight schedules they'd want the opposite.

Right, but this scenario can't last forever. No way.

I am always leary of when oldtimers leave. Newcomers are more prone to trying stupid new ideas that kill value to the customer and bring short term revenue gains to the shareholders,.

But as far as the system goes,

-- (to the comment above) the published awards chart doesn't really exist in practice anymore. Mileage redemptions are all over the map, and for plain domestic coach tickets the redemptions are pretty steep already.
-- A simpler qualification system would be nice. Tracking mileage, legs, and dollars is annoying ($s I think makes the most sense but then again, why doesn't it include paid seats, upgrades, fees, etc that make up a good deal of AA's revenue) . Anyways, with simplification people will declare that some unfairness comes out of it --- No system is perfectly fair, perfectly calibrated, and the entire purpose is to drive revenue to AA.
-- Speaking of that last point, driving revenue to AA, I think there is a missed opportunity in that programs have zero features to entice people who fly with family. During the good times to travel, I buy 15-30 round trip tickets in a given year between me and the family and spend $8-15K in revenue to AA (6-10K of that completely discretionary personal spending) -- From that, I may qualify for gold based on the bit of extra business travel to push me over the top (Gold being relatively worthless) and the wife and kid usually come up short of anything. AAdvantage (and no program I know of for that matter) offers anything to help drive families to pay any premium to buy AA tickets for their trips. If I have other airlines at my local airport, I would have zero reason to stick with any of them vs just finding the lowest fares. Having some system where you can get some credit for spending on (a limited number of) family members when you fly together on the same PNR could bring value to AA.

if AA want to follow someone , why not follow what BA does with family membershiop