American used to be my favorite airline. Just to establish my bonafides, I recently hit the 2 million miles traveled mark with American, so I can assure you they have gotten a lot of my travel business. But a recent trip with AA reminded me how far they have slipped and why they are no longer my airline of choice (and that’s despite my just earned status as lifetime Platinum). The first little annoyance was the fact that AA now charges $2 per bag for curbside check-in. Not that two bucks breaks the bank but this made little sense to me. Curbside check-in is good for the consumer because it is often faster than standing in line at the counters and it is a lot more convenient since you don’t have to schlep your bags inside. Seems to me that curbside check-in is also good for the airline since it puts less demand on the ticket agents. The irony of charging two bucks is that now curbside check-in is even faster at AA (so maybe I should cut them some slack on this one). The next little annoyance is that American has joined some of the other “discount” airlines in charging for snacks and bottled water. Again, this is a petty thing, but it’s reflective of an airline scaling down its service and trimming down my loyalty. The next annoyance was when my wife and kids got back to LaGuardia (I headed west to Vegas for CES), they had to wait an hour for their luggage. Not that this was entirely AA’s fault, but again it was reflective of the airline going adrift.
Yesterday I learned of the soon to be legendary AA flight 1348 which evidently sat on the runway in Austin for 8 hours on New Year’s Eve, having been diverted from Dallas because of bad weather. A number of blogs have reported on this already. Evidently, AA didn’t make too many friends that day. This kind of situation could happen to any airline but an airline dedicated to service (versus trimming costs) would probably not find itself in that situation.
In contrast, I offer my recent experience with Continental traveling to Las Vegas. Continental checked my bag curb-side at no charge. That made me happy, especially since there was a really long line inside. When we were about to take off, the little video screens dropped down and the CEO of Continental, Frank Lorenzo, started talking about Continental’s commitment to service, and that while other airlines were cutting back, Continental was doing the opposite. Bravo! Soon the free snacks arrived. They weren’t fancy but the little turkey sandwich certainly tided me over. The in-flight movie played for free if you brought your own headset, which of course I had. We arrived within ten minutes of schedule and my bags came through in about 15 minutes. All in all, it was a reasonably satisfactory experience. Marketing for Good endorses the enhancement of products and services to gain competitive advantage. I realize that air travel is a tough business right now, but you’ve got to stand for something. Continental is certainly headed in the MFG direction while AA struggles to figure out who they want to be when they grow up. My question for AA: do you really want to be a no frills “cheapo” carrier?