American Airlines has gone to war with United in Chicago, and United is fighting back. It’s a war where United clearly has the advantage.
- They’re bigger in Chicago
- They have more gates, and American can’t really grow. American just lost 3 gates to United.
- They’re based in Chicago and have the city and governor on their site
- They’re profitable, so in a better position to stem losses that go along with excess capacity from ‘strategic’ flying.
United actually announced a big ramp up in Chicago the morning of American’s earnings call in order to guarantee that financial analysts would pressure American on its strategy in fighting for the city in a way likely to generate losses.
Still, I love to see airlines to head to head. And I especially love to see American – which for years has eschewed direct competition of almost any kind – having some fight left in them.
But what’s funny is that part of United’s playbook isn’t just playing analysts and dumping capacity. It’s also trolling. Whenever they get into a fight with another airline they take out billboard ads, and sometimes social media ads. They did it with Southwest in Denver. They did it against American in Chicago a little bit a year ago.
Here are United’s latest, which I hadn’t seen:
“AAdvantage, United” feels a bit too on the nose to me, since United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby was directly responsible for much of the devaluation in the AAdvantage program during his time as President of American Airlines. It came at his direction, or that of United’s current Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella.
The AAdvantage team didn’t want to copy Delta and United with revenue-based points-earning. They preferred premium fare bonuses, but were overruled. The AAdvantage team didn’t like the name ‘Platinum Pro’ for their new 75K elite tier (believing the name sounded too much like an employee of a Nevada whorehouse) but Kirby stuck them with it. On April 8, 2014 AAdvantage eliminated double miles standard awards, taking away last seat award availability at reasonable prices, and eliminated distance-based awards altogether – without any advance notice. Members felt massacred. That came from top levels of former US Airways management, too.
So to the extent there’s an AAdvantage, United today it’s because Kirby did damage to American before he wound up helping to revitalize United.
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