Nat Pieper Is American Airlines’ Best Hope For A Turnaround: I’m Impressed

I’ve been critical of American Airlines management in recent years. It’s not because I have any sort of an axe to grind, or anything. I mean, I think the company’s results speak for themselves.

Instead, it’s because I think the top management at the airline has been failing the company for far too long, and the board seems checked out (or unwilling to admit their own mistakes). I fly American more than any other carrier, and there’s little I’d like more than for the airline to actually be good, and succeed. For that matter, I’d love to see the executives at Delta and United have to humble themselves a bit.

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Unfortunately in recent years, American has just fallen further and further behind. For so long, it just felt like there wasn’t actually any senior executive at the airline who had anything resembling a strategy. So just as I’ve been critical, I’d also like to be positive for a moment — I finally have a bit of hope in American management, and that’s all thanks to the carrier’s relatively new Chief Commercial Officer, Nat Pieper. Let me explain why, and then I’ll talk about whether any of this is actually enough to “save” the airline.

Basics of Nat Pieper, American’s Chief Commercial Officer

For a bit of background, one of my main gripes with American’s senior management has been how insulated they’ve been. Over the course of just over 20 years, we saw America West merge with US Airways, and then saw US Airways merge with American.

What’s incredible is the extent to which the old America West team really runs so much of the industry. Yes, United CEO Scott Kirby was also part of the America West gang, before he was fired and went to United. But in general, it’s just incredible how many senior executives at American started at America West.

Nothing against America West as such, but the issue is just how insulated American’s management team has been. American needed some fresh perspectives, because there’s just a certain groupthink that has existed at the airline for far too long.

In late 2025, we saw American hire Nat Pieper as Chief Commercial Officer, replacing Vasu Raja, who was previously in that role. Pieper is actually from outside of American, so it was quite the radical hire for the Fort Worth-based carrier. He’s a very experienced industry executive — he started his airline career in the late 1990s, spent over a decade at Northwest, then spent a decade at Delta, and then spent half a decade at Alaska, before moving to American.

I also appreciate the breadth of his experience, as he worked in finance, alliances, fleet strategy, and more.

I’m impressed by Nat Pieper’s leadership at American

Let me say that I have no hidden agenda here, and I’ve never even interacted with Pieper. However, I try to learn as much as I possibly can, listen to any interview I can, etc.

When Pieper started at American, I thought “okay, it’s a great step in the right direction that they’re hiring an outsider.” I didn’t necessarily know that much about Pieper beyond that, though, so reserved judgement until he had more time in his role.

But the more I’ve seen, the more impressed I am. I get the distinct impression that he’s really calling the shots at American nowadays, and that American CEO Robert Isom is relinquishing some control, including with decisions like installing seat back TVs on all narrow body planes. Honestly, I think Isom’s issue is that he has never really come across as an “ideas” guy — when Raja was in the same role, Isom gave him way too much power, in my opinion.

Pieper comes across as a genuinely nice guy, an outsider, and as someone who has a deep understanding of the industry, and is fully aware of how far behind American has fallen, and how much needs to be fixed. It’s such a contrast to Raja, who talked such an absurdly big game, with nothing to show for it.

I think the best thing that could happen for American is that Pieper replaces Isom imminently, because Isom has virtually no respect from employees, and has failed the company in terms of his leadership. The airline needs a fresh start. As I’ve said over and over, morale among American employees is low, and we’ve never seen a major airline have a morale turnaround under a CEO who is not popular with employees.

Is it too late to save American, though?

Guys, I’m just a dumb blogger who has never had a “real” job. I’m not going to pretend that I have the five-point plan that’s going to fix the mess that has been years in the making — after all, I’m not a first year analyst at McKinsey with all the answers. 😉 That being said, I follow this industry very closely, and I’ve also been a frequent flyer with American for close to two decades, so I’ve seen how everything has changed over time.

If you ask United’s CEO, you’d think that American is knocking on the door of bankruptcy. If you ask American’s CEO, he’d have you believe that everything is just dandy.

American is starting to move in the right direction, addressing many of the shortcomings that customers have had with the airline. Is that enough, though? The problem with all of American’s changes is that they’re simply intended to narrow the gap with Delta and United.

When you’ve already lost a huge amount of market share to competitors, how do you win those customers back? I mean, those of us in Charlotte or Dallas or Miami already fly American, because the carrier has those as fortress hubs — those aren’t markets where airlines are really “competing.” How are you going to tell someone in Chicago or Los Angeles or New York who has switched to another airline to return to American?

Like, United will have seat back TVs and Starlink Wi-Fi on all mainline planes by the end of 2027. American has only committed to installing Starlink on some planes starting in 2027, and seat back TVs will be retrofitted well into the 2030s.

Seriously, what’s American’s pitch here? “Hey, switch back to us, we’ll maybe be almost as good as United at some point in the 2030s, we just hope you don’t care about a global route network?” American executives spent years pursuing the wrong strategy, and it’s really hard to make up for that lost time, especially when your competitors used that period to innovate, and continue to widen the gap.

I don’t know where exactly all the fault lies of everything that has gone wrong, but here’s my take:

• American needs a new CEO from outside the ex-America West bubble, who can actually inspire employees, and send a clear message that the airline is turning around; from within American, I think Pieper is the only guy who could accomplish that, or otherwise (I know it’s a long shot), I’d love to see Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith poached, and turn American around, as he’s especially good with labor
• American needs to stop just making all of these little, incremental announcements, and instead needs to have a big, splashy American 2.0 announcement, about how everything is changing, and it’s up to all employees to be part of that transformation; Isom has spent the past several years arguing everything is fine, and when you take that kind of an approach, nothing actually changes
• American needs to find a way to invest in its improvements ASAP; there’s just no sense of urgency here, as it’s expected to take well over five years for all planes to get seat back TVs, and that’s just not going to inspire anyone
• American needs to figure out its international and global route network; the airline needs to either poach United’s Patrick Quayle or Air Canada’s Mark Galardo, or anyone who actually believes they can build a cohesive, global network, which goes beyond just Latin America, joint venture flying, and summer seasonal Europe routes

This is probably beyond any immediate changes we see, but I also believe that American’s best shot at once again becoming globally competitive is to merge with Alaska, so it has an actual transpacific hub that makes sense. But that’s probably a topic for another time…

Bottom line

It has been really hard to get excited about the state of American over the past many years. Things are slowly moving in the right direction, as executives at the airline realize the recent strategy has failed. That being said, it’s the same people still in charge, with one exception — Chief Customer Officer Nat Pieper.

Pieper strikes me as a good guy who has a ton of experience, and he’s also an outsider, which gives him a unique perspective. He’s clearly driving the commercial strategy, so I think American is in good hands. That being said, I sure don’t envy his job, because the state of American is quite something to be “thrust” into.

Let me of course mention that a turnaround at a company the size of American is a team effort, so I don’t want to diminish the contributions of others. That being said, a big part of a turnaround needs to be a leader clearly articulating goals and motivating employees, and that’s something that has definitely been missing at American.

Anyone else impressed by Pieper? Do you think he’d make a good CEO at American?