American Airlines took the decision not to return to a number of seasonal summer destinations
in Europe this year. Instead, it focused on deploying its widebodies into the domestic market.
Speaking with Simple Flying, American Airlines’ Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja
explained why this was such a great decision. Let’s find out why...
The widebodies that American Airlines would usually have been flying to Europe and
other long-haul destinations had a very different mission this summer.
While the airline maintained its connections to some major points in the international market,
many of its widebody aircraft were instead deployed onto domestic routes.
This gave the airline higher gauge while international travel remained tricky.
This strategy saw American not making a return to several seasonal summer destinations – Croatia,
Hungary, Poland, for example – even though many of its competitors did. Nevertheless, Vasu Raja,
American Airlines’ Chief Revenue Officer, believes it was a good choice, telling Simple Flying…
“For this summer, we didn’t do things like Croatia or any number of things.
And we debated it a lot. But major credit to our network planning team who stood by the decision
that they made, which was to go and take those widebodies and deploy them into short haul.
And as we look back at it, that was probably one of the best decisions that we have made.”
For American, moving its widebodies onto domestic services saw its profitability soar. In the second
quarter of the year, it was operating almost as many domestic widebody flights as its competitors
were operating internationally. The validation came when the airline compared its revenue per
available seat mile (RASM) with its competitors, “As we looked at everybody’s Q2 results …
the RASM we were generating was 200 to 300% of what they were generating on their long-haul
services. We were filling those airplanes with customers. Those just turned out to be
really great decisions. There is a world where,
in our system, having bigger gauge airplanes is absolutely of a paramount importance for us.”
American Airlines has historically allowed a proportion of its long-haul
operations to be fairly experimental. The airline would take aircraft like the Boeing 767 or the 757
and fly it into smaller markets in Europe for the peak summer season. During the winter,
they could point them to the Caribbean or bolster domestic services – it was a model that worked
well for those old, inexpensive aircraft. But the pandemic saw American wave goodbye
to these cheap aircraft. The 767, 757 and older A330s are all either out or well on their way out,
and that could change the way American plans its international operations in the future.
“The way we really envision our international system coming back is we want to have
widebodies that can go work hard throughout the year … we want to get
much better utilization on the new airframes that we have and deploy them really wisely.”
American is thinking hard about its passenger experience too. With the
inconsistencies of the cabin products on those older airframes now gone, it has an opportunity
to really consider if the configuration is right for the market it wants to serve.
Raja noted that, with the range of airframes it will have at its disposal in the coming years,
it will have even more chances to get this balance right. Peak season Europe might be served
by a widebody, but when the demand drops off, aircraft like the A321XLR can pick up the slack,
letting the widebody to be redeployed into stronger markets like South America.
Overall, although the pandemic has reshaped American Airlines forever,
while also giving it a chance to hit reset on the way it was doing things. Many retired jets were
not AA’s choice of planes, having been acquired through mergers with other airlines. Now, it has
the opportunity to thoughtfully and deliberately rebuild its international network in a way that
will be better for the airline and its customers. Did you fly on an American Airlines widebody
domestically in the past year? Let us know in the comments.