American AAdvantage Gets New Leadership: What Are The Implications?

AAdvantage is the only decent thing about the airline unfortunately. Even then, without the award chart and with worse OneWorld partner availability it has gotten worse. I say that as an ExP for the past ~10 years.

The airline needs a coherent strategy balancing making AAdvantage profitable versus the airline operation. That's from the airline and shareholder's standpoint.

AAdvantage can drive people to loyalty and spend a lot of credit cards. AAdvantage can also cause people to give up on American Airlines.

From the passenger's standpoint, the objective is the best and cheapest operation with the most generous AAdvantage but having a bottom line of nearly a non-profit organization.

(From the flight attendants union standpoint, it's to rip off junior FA and enrich the senior FAs)

AA has made it abundantly clear that they do not want passengers buying tickets. Instead, they want AA credit card holders charging up their credit cards. Those who do that are AA’s real customers. The poor saps that buy tickets and actually fly AA are the ones left holding the bag with AA’s indifferent employees, poor service recover, overly banked hubs not designed for the volume of traffic they receive, etc. And until the focus changes back to the passenger and not the credit card holders, then their new customer initiatives will just end up being another failed experiment by a once great airline.

Although a long-term member of AAdvantage, my redemptions have been exclusively for premium seats on international partners, rather than redemptions for US destinations on AA metal.
Up to now it's worked well for me with a reasonable balance between inventory and number of miles required.
Being outside the US there is next to zero opportunity to earn squillions on miles with credit card signups churn as most readers here can do. So, its buy-up of miles direct from AA. My only gripe there is that AAdvantage does not have meaningful sales of miles anymore, with so-so bonuses of 30-35% being there a lot of the time. Cash buyers of miles should be enticed if they want to see instant cash of their balance sheet.
Maybe this is something Scott Long could look at to score a few easy brownie points.

Credit Card spend is very profitable for them so keeping those customers happy is probably high on the list. I'd say most non corporate flyers probably just book the cheapest flight on various portals and aren't really the target audience in regard to aadvantage.

Simple message to the new guy: For all of the reasons AA management already knows . . . as they were knowing and intentional decisions . . . you lost me . . . a multi-year Concierge Key.

AAdvantage PP is no longer within my reach since the move to Loyalty Points. Since most of my destinations are to Europe and Asia, I'm banking my Oneworld miles with QR and the Avios alliance. At least I was able to get some good redemptions with the remaining AA miles I had. Hoping for one more JL F, then I'm completely done with the program.

AAdvantage is not a loyalty program.

It's a scheme to sell pre-paid travel and give a (small) part of this as a rebate on purchases.

I was contacted by American that I was no longer entitled to be a Concierge Key. My flying frequency had not decreased a bit, however they insinuated that I did not change enough on my AAdvantage card. It was a demonstration that rewarding people for being loyal and actually flying with them was not a priority. For years I felt special because I exclusively flew American for 20 years. I was seated next to a CK on a flight last week. He told me he flies American infrequently but he runs expenses to support his company on his card totalling a million dollars annually. He said he flies maybe 6 to 10 times a year and was shocked when they invited him to be a CK.

So...they put in a "bean counter" with not much in the way of sales/marketing (or customer relations) experience in charge of the supposed frequent flier program?? This clearly sends the message that AAdvantage is no longer a customer centric program, it is just another credit card revenue enhancement scheme.

I am paying off my Barclays Aviator and closing the account. If i get force transferred to a Citi card by American I would miss the signup bonus.

American’s current business class product is BROKE. Their inability to deliver the new product is a catastrophe. We haven’t been this low since the 772s with the old dinosaur configurations back in 2014 that were an embarrassment before refurbishment. Might as well fly bulkhead and stay in the main cabin or purchase business class tickets on BA to Europe.

I see even more focus on credit cards and tying "loyalty" to co-branded credit card use because that's where the profits come from. Not flying Mr. Business Man M-TH from Charlotte to Chicago.

THIS!!! Of course things will get worse. Mister cost-cutting bean-counter with zero experience with customers (you know, the human cargo) means all they will be doing is "enhancements". We can all be assured of that.

Let's hope he doesn't continue the devaluation of AAdvantage points. It's gotten progressively worse over the years and partner award availability has all but disappeared for business class. I don't need AA points for a coach ticket, I can buy those anytime.