WHBM

American has a long tradition of high end travel between New York and LA for the media businesses, it goes back to how TWA long held this down (gosh, more than 20 years since the merger), and that in turn went way back to when Howard Hughes was a key influence in both TWA and Hollywood - in mainstream TWA days it was key triangle traffic for them on LA-New York-London-LA. They had a notable number of marketing execs at these points dedicated to keeping them in front with this substantial high-revenue traffic from the studios, the networks, etc, and have pretty much pulled it off long term. The specially configured A321s were just the latest, and quite notable, incarnation of all this.

That's a bit disappointing coming from a supposedly competent major corporate Vice-President. One would expect them to know the numbers, the forecasts, the past trends, the actuals against budget, the return on investment and the reason for AA to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in such a project and market niche, instead of just sounding off that it 'wouldn't last' like something from a high school business studies class essay.

Antarius

LUS management are cost cutters. They don't understand yield premiums that can be gained by better quality product and it shows in their fiscal performance.

The problem is that when you have wildly different philosophies collide, you end up with a hodgepodge directionless product like the a321T on one end and the LUS a320s on the other. History has shown that this mix doesn't work. See airBerlin and Jet Airways for 2 recent examples.

PES_B1

Doug Parker's "Much Better" philosophy!

Don't know how Doug parker stayed for so long, what did he ever achieve except lie to investors that their stocks are going to $60+(While he sold a majority of his stock at the $53 high point)?

ryanbriar

And now you can enjoy the A side of a 175 for the next few months.

I’d tend to agree with this, and I believe they are sometimes set to go onward to LAX (the late JFK-BOS would typically be used for the 6 am BOS-LAX). The JFK-BOS route had been a mix of 321Ts and 175s for a while, and now just 175s through November.

Disappointing to hear that the 321Ts may be departing. The 321T in J / F is far and away the best way to get from NY / Boston to the West Coast IMO.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is where we see the business plus fares (or whatever they’re called) for FFD and perhaps Five Star type ground handling.

lightbulbs

Seems like it would be better to apply their early deliveries to run on some of the new routes enabled by the XLR in an out and back strategy and not replace the 321T with the XLR until they really have enough frames to swap in for the transcon routes. If they could manage the schedule to not rotate frames between LAX-JFK and other routes maybe they could “downgrade” the other transcon routes to the new bird before actually doing so on LAX-JFK where F seems to still sell pretty well.

I wonder if JFK-SNA and LAX-BOS premium transcon service survives if and when the new birds take over transcon routes. Anyone know how well those routes are doing for paid premium loads?

it’d be interesting to see if eventually because the XLR supports more seats in Y whether they could make an XLR lie-flat J configuration yield better dollars on other semi-premium routes (eg MIA-LAX, LAX-ORD, JFK-MIA, MIA-SFO, etc)

A321T

Given the 6-hour flight, I hope they continue to offer complimentary upgrades into a lie-flat. Delta finally followed, but it was a big differentiator for a while and still something United doesn't offer. This plane is the reason I fly AA (see username ).

We haven't seen Premium Economy domestically outside of Hawaii, and domestic upgrades to J where Premium Economy is involved have been... complicated. Though maybe they'll keep it simple and just make it MCE, like they do for JFK-BOS.

NickRivas

This seems likely, the business plus fares or whatever they're called will be the only fare-class way to get FFD and perks, and it wouldn't surprise me if AA completely eliminates the terrible F seats on the 77Ws in the next few years..

PES_B1

But if the plane was severly delayed during the turn, those waiting transcon would need to wait, unless they wanna fly an A320 with recliners. CZ used to dump all their 77W for long-haul to SFO,LAX,YYZ,JFK and all of the short-haul 77W was the down-time of Long-haul, if the plane is delayed in PEK/SHA for example, those flying long-haul will wait to hell unless they wanna fly an ancient 772ER

ty97

DL and UA both use internationally configured / lie flat planes on their transcons to LAX and SFO (rather than a dedicated transcon subfleet) and seem to make it work. AA wouldn't be inventing this approach, they'd be a latecomer to it in fact.

Of course, it wouldn't work well when AA only has 2 or 3 XLR, but when the fleet grows it seems tenable that this would work.

(On the flip side, part of DL's 321neo fleet is apparently going to be a transcon subfleet so maybe they find that their current system doesn't work so well after all! Or they finally realized that the J cabin in the 763s is very very tired)

ryanbriar

If this is the neo fleet with the new recliner first class seats, I am scheduled to be on one of those next Saturday from Boston to SF (can’t beet a $120 economy fare with an RUC upgrade). It’s not a DL One flight, though. I think Delta occasionally runs 76Ws from JFK, which is nice as it has the “suites”.

tomj888

From the articles I've read, its all about reducing the number of sub-fleet variants in their product line. In addition, 2x2 business class in today's aisle access business class is archaic. Yes F is nice but this plane and 773's are the only planes that offer first. Why not have a great evolutionary business class product that will take them into the next ten years? If they can monetize it and offer a better business class product why should i ..... or complain.

Antarius

Not surprising as it's again the LCC mindset pushing through. This is exactly the way a WN and Ryanair operate - and for good reason for an LCC, it simplifies operations.

For a non LCC (whether or not AA is becoming one aside), this subfleet fixation is overrated, IMO. Retiring 5 year old a332s that AA is still paying for was straight up moronic. Now they're standing with their schlong in their hands without adequate aircraft and are complaining.

There are plenty of successful non-LCC carriers that have subfleets and manage to make them work very well.

The challenge is that AA hasn't ever managed a top notch evolutionary business class product. Other than the a321T and the 77W (both post bankruptcy LAA and the amazing Cirrus seats were a function of luck and timing), they've rolled out

• Some .......ized version of the current a321T J seat on the 752s
• The Thompson Aero on the 767s
• The Zodiac concept D rocking chairs
• Project Oasis

the BE Aerospace seats on the 789 are super mediocre also, IMO, but it understand that some people like them more than I do.

​​​​​​​I'm not sold that they'll put anything better in.

enviroian

Curious did you get TOD upgrade offers on the app?

PHL

I thought the idea of moving from the 767 to the A321T was to increase profit margins. They had a ton of 757's at the time they transitioned to the 321T that they could have refurb'd and used, but those are also costly to operate and would have been even bigger of a cost to create a transcontinental subfleet. UA tried and failed doing this with the exJFK PE flights on the 752, as well. Back when AA was running the aging 762s, there was a news piece about that route (I think on CNBC) that said they made an average profit of like $200 per flight because of the expensive operating costs and additional crew. So, it would seem the A321T probably gave a nice bump in profit margins - even when F was not filled with revenue passengers. Forbes did a piece in 2018 that showed AA was earning $698M in revenue on LAX-JFK annually, or $13,800 per flight hour in the 2017-2018 period measured. Business Insider did another piece for 2018-2019 that was similar, but about $90M less in revenue and $700 less per hour. That's still pretty good for only flying 102 seats, and no other JFK-LAX route made the top 10 revenue producers.

But I like the idea of XLRs on the premium transcons. Would it be wishing too much for them to treat PE seats as MCE when flying domestically? As a Plat, it's always nice to snag those at time of booking on wide body transcons....

JetAirways77W

I booked a first award, not business - since there was MileSAAver award first (Z) space available I just booked that through Etihad. It's quite possible that J pax got TOD offers though.