American Eagle For Sale

[Hopeful]

Selling Eagle will eliminate SCOPE for good. If AMR spins AE off with an IPO they will still control the routes, a majority of the stock, and SCOPE IS DEAD

Then what is taking AMR so long? Do it already...

 

[eolesen]

What allows Jet Blue and one world to operate as "feeders" Or is their a different definition for jetblue type arrangements?

You've got feeders, codeshares, and interlining.

Feeders like Eagle & Connection are marketed *only* as AA, and their primary purpose is to feed other AA flights. They don't sell tickets under their own brand or flight numbers, their employees wear AA look-alike uniforms, and follow AA's policies and procedures for customer service. They typically get paid by the flight, regardless if there are any customers or not.

Codesharing is one step removed from feeders. Flights operated by other airlines, but sold and marketed by multiple airlines including the operator. The operating carrier keeps all the money for tickets sold under their brand, and the carrier marketing the flight gets a pro-rated cut for tickets they sell.

Interlining is nothing more than a commercial agreement to issue and honor tickets for each other's flights, and to allow customers ticketed on both carriers to check bags between each other's flights. AA has hundreds of interline agreements.

There's no revenue sharing, there's no reciprocity with AAdvantage.... If it were any other carrier, it would be a non-event. But it's Jetblue, someone AA tried to kill off and couldn't.

 

[JFK Fleet Service]

But it's Jetblue, someone AA tried to kill off and couldn't.

I was at JFK during their infancy and no one ever took them seriously.Crandall would have kept our foot on their necks until they stopped thrashing around but Arpey was busy spewing platitudes and ruining the brand equity American had built up in New York while they were in their formative years.

Fast forward a few years and Delta hubs JFK and LGA and Arpey again wrings his hands,cuts more flights and tells analysts on conference calls "We're hoping costs rise at other airlines".

The "Corner Post" that is NY is already being sawed through...

Hope isn't an investment strategy and it certainly shouldn't be a key element of the business plan at this airline.

E, you know Art Torno? He's been made "VP of New York" after the last guy fled to Delta with the AA NY sales master list.

 

[Hopeful]

I was at JFK during their infancy and no one ever took them seriously.Crandall would have kept our foot on their necks until they stopped thrashing around but Arpey was busy spewing platitudes and ruining the brand equity American had built up in New York while they were in their formative years.

How true, I didn't see any attempt by AA to "kill off" JetBlue at all. As we speak, AA in conceding more and more Caribbean destinations.

KILL OFF? Hardly..

 

[will fix for food]

Feeders like Eagle & Connection are marketed *only* as AA, and their primary purpose is to feed other AA flights. They don't sell tickets under their own brand or flight numbers, their employees wear AA look-alike uniforms, and follow AA's policies and procedures for customer service. They typically get paid by the flight, regardless if there are any customers or not.

I know Eagle will cancell a flight if it is delayed enough that a follow on flight to the same destination can accomodate everyone. It only makes sense from an AMR cost savings point of view. I also know that Chatauqua (Republic) will run an empty plane every time in order to get their money.

I've also seen Eagle hold flights for connecting pax. Would Chatauqua do that? They don't care about Americans pax. They get paid whether the planes are full or empty. All that would accomplish would be to screw up Chatauquas performance numbers.

Ironically enough Chatauquas performance numbers are compared to Eagles all the time. Eagle's numbers would probably be a lot better if they operated with the mindset Chatauqua does.

 

[eolesen]

How true, I didn't see any attempt by AA to "kill off" JetBlue at all. As we speak, AA in conceding more and more Caribbean destinations.

KILL OFF? Hardly..

The battle for AA to get slots at LGB was quite epic, albeit probably not visible to y'all in NYC.

But certainly you remember all those 757's running JFK-ONT/OAK/LGB/SNA with 30-50% load factors between 2002 and 2004.

There were a bunch of FF mileage promotions as well. It was weak, but there was still lots of money spent for very little gain.

That all started under Carty, BTW.

 

[Hopeful]

The battle for AA to get slots at LGB was quite epic, albeit probably not visible to y'all in NYC.

But certainly you remember all those 757's running JFK-ONT/OAK/LGB/SNA with 30-50% load factors between 2002 and 2004.

There were a bunch of FF mileage promotions as well. It was weak, but there was still lots of money spent for very little gain.

That all started under Carty, BTW.

I did not see the predator moves on JetBlue that we might have seen years ago.

I still believe there was a gentlemen's agreement between Crandall and Kelleher when AA abandoned ISP with their few flights and let SWA have it all.

 

[eolesen]

Uh, that's because predatory moves are technically illegal...

In 2002, AA was still under a bit of a microscope for what happened with Legend at Love Field, Vanguard at MCI, and even National at LAS. The federal case against AMR for predatory pricing was dismissed in April 2001, but still had enough potential to perhaps scare AMR straight for a couple years...

 

[Mach85ER]

E,

My "competitive response" would have been this: JFK is a notorious delay filled operation. I would have taken the fleet of useless piece of garbage, worthless 37 seat RJ's and dumped them into JFK based on some B.S. "on the Brand With Dan" "Connection to the World" where they operated (clogged) JFK during JB's peak operating times.
JB looks like a unreliable, delayed pig from the start, why would the general public switch from their usual unreliable pig (AA)? :blink:
Full contact marketing. It's usually practiced in most fields except with "On The Brand With Dan".

 

[eolesen]

Sounds great, Mach, except that JFK is slot controlled during those peak times.... even for RJ's if I'm not mistaken.

Jetblue did one thing that no other startup did --- they found a way to limit competitive backlash. Their two main airports at the time were slot controlled, and they simply cornered the market on slots.

At JFK, Uncle Chuck got them enough slots to be dominant, which more or less denied anyone else the ability to try and have parity with them.

Same thing at LGB --- the convinced enough of the LB city council to let them lock up all of the available slots in one fell swoop... They were less successful keeping those slots -- AA sued for some and won. But they didn't get enough to be meaningful competition.

We're getting way off topic here....

 

[Mach85ER]

Thanks E,

I forgot about the peak slot time. Damn instructions in my home chemistry set didn't mention that.

 

[eolesen]

What's ironic in your idea is that AA did almost the same thing to BN "back in the day" --- BN was over in 2W, and AA was still mostly in 2E/3E at DFW (I refuse to call them by their "new" names).

At one point in time, AA decided that the west side runways were preferable to the east side runways, and filed their flight plans accordingly... that moved all the congestion to BN's side of the airport. Silly it may be, but documented in John Nance's excellent recap of BN's implosion.