The latest American Airlines employee podcast interviews Holly Hegeman. She talks about how she got involved covering the airline industry, doing consulting for Bob Crandall and doing the airline’s annual report with him.
I’m pretty sure I found Flyertalk.com in 2001 from a link on Holly’s PlaneBusiness website so in some sense I owe the start of my journey — which began reading Thomas Petzinger’s Hard Landing over 20 years ago and by traveling as a newly minted frequent flyer and that was accelerated through my association with Randy Petersen — to Holly.
She talks through American history and the time where it struggled, and concludes that American management today cares about building a better airline. Where I’d quibble is that they seem heavily focused on building a better airline for ConciergeKey members and international premium cabin customers in markets that get bigger planes than 767s.
Holly’s take that management wants to build a better airline, then is true — from a certain point of view.
I’d argue that these are American’s darkest days, most certainly for the customer. The airline is swimming in profit while expending enormous energy at every turn to make the flying experience worse for the public.
I have always assumed that the Bob Crandall days were the glory days of American Airlines. Can you be more specific about which period of time Holly Hegeman considers to be the dark days?
@Charlie the late 2000s. She would say the Crandall days were the glory days, she worked for Crandall