In 1 Astonishing Sentence, American Airlines CEO Reveals Whether He Thinks Customer Service Is the Priority (Clue: Not Really)

In 1 Astonishing Sentence, American Airlines CEO Reveals Whether He Thinks Customer Service Is the Priority (Clue: Not Really)This is a curious attitude toward customers, one that the airline’s staff worry about.

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I worry about American Airlines.

Not so much that I lose sleep, you understand, but I’m concerned about the airline’s level of happiness.

you, I’m an aerospace engineer. But I’m leaving my job at NASA,

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And, by extension, American Airlines customers’ level of happiness.

Consistently, the airline has become a symbol of too many things that are wrong with air travel.

It’s managed to put itself in a We Don’t Care About Passengers corner.

It seems to find it hard to emerge from that.

Why, American Airlines’ pleasingly forthright CEO Doug Parker recently managed to offer another statement of the airline’s priorities and how it sees passengers.

In a conversation with employees reported by View From The Wing’s Gary Leff, an American pilot told Parker that there seems to be a reluctance to offer customer service to passengers, even when the flight won’t be leaving on time.

He told the story of a connecting customer who said they’d left their phone and laptop on a flight and no American employee wanted to help.

They’re all told, you see, that the priority is the so-called D0, the determination to push back on time to the detriment, some might say, of customer service.

You know, those little things like the pre-flight drinks the more exalted customers adore.

Parker offered these extremely honest and revealing words:

The most important thing to customers is that we deliver on our commitment to leave on time and get them to the destination as they have scheduled.

But isn’t pushing back on time just one aspect of a greater good? The customer should feel good about your airline and want to come back.

This, it strikes me, has been America’s singular difficulty of late.

When I flew on the airline last year, in First Class, I encountered a harassed and disinterested Flight Attendant.

I can’t remember whether the flight was pushed back on time. I do remember, however, her strained and abject attempts to provide the minimum customer service she could.

The consequence, for me at least, has been to avoid America and choose other airlines.

Am I alone in reacting this way?

I used to fly American a lot. I used to actively choose it because it flew bigger planes from San Francisco to New York and seemed a good enough airline.