American Airlines’ Culture Problem: From Awful To Amazing In 20 Minutes

American Airlines is trying to become more premium in order to improve its financial performance. I appreciate all the changes the airline is making, but as I see it, the carrier has one biggest problem — the massive inconsistency when it comes to service from frontline employees.

The problem isn’t the actual employees, but instead, it’s management. The company has provided no real consistent direction as to what kind of airline American wants to be, and as a result, employees just don’t understand the vision, and aren’t really invested in the company’s success, in the same way you’ll find at Delta and United. Many employees don’t understand that one reason that customers choose an airline is because of customer service.

Admittedly part of the Delta and United formula is just making a whole lot of absurd claims, like United CEO Scott Kirby saying that United is the best airline in the history of the world. But you know what? It’s probably a pretty smart strategy.

Anyway, enough of all that. I’d like to share a recent experience I had when flying American out of Philadelphia Airport (PHL), which so clearly demonstrates the highs and lows of service at American.

Could this American employee be any ruder?

Ford, Miles, and I were flying from Philadelphia to Miami, though I booked them on an earlier flight than me (since I wanted to stick around for a bit and review the American Flagship Lounge and Chase Sapphire Lounge).

Long story short, their flight ended up being delayed by quite a bit just before arriving at the airport, so we went to the American priority check-in counter, where I tried to help get them rebooked onto a different flight. Here’s how that conversation went:

Me: “Hi, good morning…”
Agent: *stares*
Me: “So they’re booked on flight XXXX, and it just posted a delay of a couple of hours…”
Agent: “And what do you want me to do about that?”
Me: “I saw there was also availability on flight XXXX, so I was hoping we could get them rebooked on that…”
Agent: *types in silence*

In fairness, in the end she did help get us rebooked (in line with American’s policy), but the point is that I don’t understand how anyone working in a customer service role — let alone what’s ostensibly supposed to be “premium” service — thinks this is the appropriate way to interact with a customer. Employees like this really make you feel like a massive inconvenience…

As we were walking through the terminal, I also couldn’t help but notice the aggression with which some gate agents were making announcements. Just walking past a random gate, I heard a gate agent rudely yelling on the PA “I said groups one and two, not groups three and four.” With the tone, you’d think this person was defending their home from invaders, rather than, you know, assisting paying customers.

Could this American employee be any nicer?

Here’s what drives me nuts about flying American. I then visited the A-West Admirals Club (waiting for the Flagship Lounge to open), and had the pleasure of interacting with Roseann at the customer service desk inside the lounge.

She acknowledged every passenger who passed her desk — “welcome in, I hope you enjoy the lounge,” or “thank you for visiting us, have a happy holiday.” And she did so with such sincerity and warmth that you couldn’t help but want to invite this woman over to your Thanksgiving dinner.

Funny enough, I actually wanted to take an earlier flight, but there was no saver level first class award availability at the time that I booked. However, the airline had just issued a general travel waiver due to weather, so I went to her to ask if she could help me rebook.

I was on a partner award ticket, which can complicate things a bit, but Roseann couldn’t have been lovelier in how she handled it. Just everything about the way she interacted with passengers exemplified perfect service:

• She addressed me by name with each interaction
• I explained how the ticket being issued through Alaska might complicate things, and she said “I always say if you don’t ask, you don’t get, so let’s see what we can do”
• When the system first gave her problems, she said “when one system doesn’t give you what you want, there’s always another way to try things”
• When her system kept giving her issues with rebooking me, she said “this doesn’t sit right with me, we should be able to take care of you, let me make a phone call”

What impressed me wasn’t that she managed to rebook me, but the competency, positivity, and kindness with which she did so. Rather than finding reasons to say no, she found reasons to say yes. Rather than making me feel like an annoyance, she made me feel valued.

This is what I find so frustrating about service at American. There are so many phenomenal employees from the Eastern and TWA days who are still at the airline, and who go above and beyond to take care of customers. They represent the highest level of professionalism that you’ll find at US airlines, and they’re often at the customer service desks in lounges.

The issue is that they work for the same airlines as some of the people I talked about above, who literally treat customers like human trash, and don’t care.

I always like to acknowledge great employees, so I mentioned to Roseann how much I appreciated her professionalism, and the extent to which she went above and beyond. I explained that not just in terms of her helping me directly, but also in terms of how she greeted each passenger, and made them feel like more than just a number. Her response was along the lines of “of course, taking care of passengers is my job.”

I explained to her that the level of service she’s providing at American is the exception rather than the norm, and I told her that American is lucky to have her, and that she should be working in a role where she’s training other employees in customer service. She told me that she did that in the past, and would love to do something like that again at some point, but either way, her goal is to take care of people and make them smile.

Bottom line

Service at American Airlines is consistently inconsistent, and ultimately that’s because the company has for years lacked a vision as to what it is. When an airline spends years making the passenger experience worse, while claiming that “the schedule is the product,” of course many employees aren’t actually going to care that much.

As American tries to pivot back to premium, I’d argue the single most important change needs to be an update to the service culture, and an actual vision that employees can get behind. They need to understand how they fit into American’s vision of being premium.

Nowhere was the service inconsistency more evident than during a recent trip through Philadelphia, where I witnessed some of the rudest and most indifferent American employees I’ve ever seen, only to then meet Roseann a short while later, one of the loveliest American employees I’ve ever interacted with.

I just honestly can’t think of any company in any industry where service is as inconsistent as at American.