only1percent

This is the correct answer. AA sells business travel tickets for people coming TO the Bay Area for meetings, because Bay Area based business travelers are all United/Star Alliance

Nothing in this country is still closer to COVID depths than Bay Area meetings and conferences.

Bay Area-based companies are still 75%+ work from home and home ... and more like 90% work from home for key traveling staff like sales and mid-level-executives, with "home" becoming Utah, Idaho or Texas for a lot of people - result: meetings still overwhelmingly remote or at non-Bay Area customer/investor site.

Bay Area conference activities has had a very slow rebound. Lower Bay Area-based staffing (see above), crushingly high costs for a lot of things (hello "mandate" charges), and the tragic extent of the mentally-ill/drug addicted homeless problem around the Moscone Center and the big downtown hotels have all contributed to a much reduced conference schedule.

TravelLawyer

Based in ORD, and I've been flying a lot more UA lately. No difference in hard product or service, but much better schedules to everywhere I need to fly, especially midweek. I guess if you have top status at AA, it would be a difficult switch. But for me, I only have AA Gold and unlikely to get to Plat Pro or EXP without significantly changing my flying or spending.

D3Kingg

SFO is a terrible outstation for American. They need to serve all 9 hubs they inherited previously from America west , Us Airways , etc.

metallo

I’m a CK and have had to fly UA multiple times this year in and out of ORD when AA didn’t have flights, convenient times, or was already sold out in J.

We have to face the fact that no airline can really fly schedules similar to what they had in 2019, so if you really need to be somewhere on a particular day/time, you may have to shop around a bit. It certainly makes pure loyalty to one airline much tougher.

Also, on topic, it’s sad to see what has happened with AA in California… LAX has been gutted, and I’m not surprised at all about the decreased SFO frequencies. I’m still getting over the loss of the short AA SAN-LAX flight, which UA is also discontinuing in October. There's little doubt that a lot of this has to do with decreased TPAC travel (though the remote worker theory with the Bay Area, as well as many other places, makes sense also).

moondog

The main reason I became loyal to AA between 1998 and 2001 is that I was living in Palo Alto/Mountain View and their SJC hub was extremely efficient. SFO was only about 10 minutes further away but was not as nearly an enjoyable experience. Plus, getting upgrades on UA was much more difficult at the time. But, after AA jumped ship, I switched to UA for a few years before I stopped caring about FF status (something that we now get without even thinking about).

That having been said, the SJC hub was amazing. Maybe if AA had waited a few more years before killing it, it would stiff be viable? The internet boom had a serious pause in the early 2000s, but the big players rode it out. Why not AA?

PurpleMonkey

As an SFO flyer, AA suits most of my needs.

• Most places I can still go nonstop on AA/OW.
  • Domestically, I'm either flying to an AA hub (DFW, JFK) or Alaska has nonstops (eg, AUS, SEA). For most AS flights, I buy the AA codeshare, so earning the same LPs. I've flown JetBlue to LAX, but I don't really fly them often. I've noticed AA's lower frequencies on some routes, but it hasn't impacted me too much.
  • Internationally, my travel is a bit all over the place (eg, LHR, MAD, BER, EZE, HND, SYD, BKK, BLR), and I usually don't mind the routings. Post-pandemic, my travel has largely been to Europe, which means flying British Airways through/to Heathrow, which is meh. I wish there was better OW partners in Europe (AY and IB are only seasonal and rarely have good connections). Thankfully Qatar now flies to SFO, JAL has flights to NRT and HND, and Qantas is relaunching their SFO-SYD flights in October. Not sure what will happen to CX, but hopefully there's a comeback. A big pain point is getting to MEX, but I usually just end up flying Aeromexico. South America is a pain for every alliance, but connecting through DFW is about as good as IAH on United.
• Upgrades clear very frequently. My upgrades clear ~95% on American and ~100% on Alaska (when traveling without a companion). Also, AA does upgrades on award flights for EP.
• Admirals Club is never crowded.

My biggest gripe is with the move to the new Harvey Milk Terminal, you have to traverse the full length of the long terminal for every flight. I much preferred having AA and AS both in terminal 2.

kodalip

Anyone know how far out the SFO-ORD service has been cut down? Currently have an award ticket booked for end of December where the first leg is the 11:19AM SFO-ORD service

Kacee

I also really dislike the new terminal and particularly AA's outpost at the farthest end. It's 10 minutes plus from gate to curb, and I'm a very fast walker.

But the two most significant reasons I've most of my travel to UA/AS are the now terrible schedule SFO-PHX and AA's stone-age IT. I'm especially frustrated with how hard it is to find, let alone use, credits from cancelled flights. UA, and especially AS, make it so much easier.

neo_781

AA's decline in Chicago predates the pandemic. For example they've been scaling down their international operations for years and most routes except LHR have gone seasonal. SFO frequencies specifically were eliminated or went seasonal several years ago as well.

dhuey

Nice perk that you get lounge access with an F ticket on Alaska, even if a mileage award. Also nice to have access to the Delta lounge with the Amex Platinum card, when flying Delta. AA isn’t very compelling out of SFO, at least not for me.

FullFare

Called the Aairpass desk and told them that SFO-ORD was main route for my wife and me---for past 50 yrs,
Told them the dismal schedule they are coming out with now and refreshed their memory that even last year they had 5-6 non stops a day.
Agent kinda shrugged and said "I heard ya".
Didn't even take my name (bad sign).
Don't get me wrong. The crummy service on this route drove us to UA years ago, so at least we're both lifetime 1K on UA, Still would rather pay for a ticket using the pre-paid Aairpass miles rather than cough up $$ to UA.

WanderingGent

My experience / satisfaction largely parallels yours; for me, it helps that the vast majority of my flights ex-SFO are to JFK or LAX. Plus although the T1 walks are very long, I really don't mind them.

SFO_FT

I didn’t realize how much AA has cut back along the West Coast to/from ORD. They no longer serve PDX-ORD. SEA-ORD is, like SFO, horrible dep times (6am and 1145pm). SNA-ORD is at 3x/day. SNA has always been a decent money maker for AA given the pax base.

moondog

I mentioned SJC upthread, but why do you guys think they killed it? If they hadn't, they might have been able to land Apple?

alolewis

I read they started dehubbing (defocusing?) SJC right after Southwest started SJC service. Couldn't compete.