American Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja laid out a new vision for the carrier, as part of the announcement of a new senior leadership team that comes with Doug Parker’s stepping down as CEO and Robert Isom taking that position at the end of March.
It’s a customer-focused vision which isn’t something we’ve seen clearly articulated at American Airlines since US Airways took over. (“Caring for people on life’s journey” is too non-specific and milquetoast to count.)
Here’s the note in full, via aviation watchdog JonNYC
The nod to densifying aircraft as a positive and to international flight growth at a time they’re paring schedules due to lack of aircraft (after retiring widebodies during the pandemic) seem odd. But there’s absolutely a ton in here to like, especially his “it’s easy to confuse a customer and a transaction to the point that we can treat a person differently whether they fly for business or leisure, or in one commercial program versus another.”
Business travelers are leisure travelers and valuable high yield long haul business class customers for work may fly the cheapest fare on the weekend with their family. Indeed it’s often as or more important how you treat that customer when they’re on a trip with their family as when they’re paying the highest ticket cost on their own.
And while Raja has talked as though the schedule alone is the product here he starts with the basics of flying people reliably where they need to go, he emphasizes delivering the hard product (“lounges, configuration, entertainment”) “that is valuable to customers and profitable for us” and delivered in a way that is “seamless and consistent for the customer, by any means necessary.”
The customer focus comes continues throughout, “We need to ensure that all of our commercial activities produce more value for our customers.” Too often American’s great failing has been focusing on what competitors are doing (and copying it, but a little bit less) rather than focusing on what customers want.
American Airlines doesn’t have a mission statement to use to make decisions against, but this letter could serve as that. It’s really not far off from the vision I wrote American could adopt although much better articulated.
If American delivers the schedules, reliability, product, and policies that customers want that will put them on a strong path. It’s not the whole story, of course. Their product is delivered by people and their people have often been confused about what’s expected of them. Are they trying to be an ultra low cost carrier, or are they supposed to be trying to deliver a premium service? Flight attendants frequently don’t even know the service standards the airline expects of them, and learn they job by rumor, galley chatter, and online forums. That means an inconsistent experience and is something that’s difficult to change.
Nonetheless, changing the policies and aligning the product would certainly be a good start.
SOURCE : viewfromtheing
