The best case scenario for AA is to merge with Alaska/Hawaiian after they complete their merger and invest a lot of $ into the product, that airline has a chance of competing with the other two. As a standalone carrier AA will always be a distant third.

The opposite—there’s not enough premium seats in the market.

The problem is the same management team for almost 10 years now has chased the schedule over profits. We have a much higher CASM compared to Delta and United because of our large RJ operation combined with lack of available premium seating—again when compared to DL/UA.

It’s not that difficult to see where this management team f*cked up. Delta started reducing their RJ fleet—both revenue and margins increased. United copy and pasted—revenue and margins increased.

more premium seats that cancel, delay, or lose your bags will not work for us.

AA was actually the first legacy to introduce a main cabin extra type product. Going from 31" pitch to 34" pitch in the 2000's. It was unsuccessful despite a full on marketing blitz. People just didn't pay for it. Then Spirit happened and that seemed to reinforce management's thoughts on that.

"premium" seating might be working now, will it hold up or will it be non-rev specials in the coming years? No real way to know. That being said I agree, AA's CASM-ex has always been the highest and our RASM barely covered it in the best of times save for 2016-2017. RJs haven't helped and in one year alone AA spent $600+ million on RJ pilot retention and bonuses.

Operationally speaking, we have to be better than we were pre-covid (2018-2019) but I don't have any statistics to back that up. I don't think that is our main issue anymore, but maybe it is.

A large part of UA’s executive team is ex-AA. Kirby, Nocella, Quayle, Gupta…

Vasu….

filler

So does that mean it's the structure of our airline that can't be fixed? If top management can leave one airline for another and take that airline from a rudderless ship to minting $3b a year in under a decade, what does that say about AA as a corporate entity? Seems like new management won't fix the underlying issues whatever they are - bad hubs, bad corporate culture, employees who think they work at the DMV, etc.

Idk I see it differently. Looks like he hand picked his team with the descent talent (previous AA managers) and left all the scrubs (current AA managers). They made Vasu the new water boy, so he doesn’t count.

yes. Structurally in 2026 (admittedly this has to do with a lot of bad decisions over the years) AA does not have the same hand to play that UAL/DAL does. Kirby could come back tomorrow and he’d probably be doing all the things AA management is doing now to try to start turning things around.