American Moves Customer Roles Away From Chief Customer Officer
In the airline’s latest restructuring, American has decided to shift several key customer roles away from Alison Taylor — the airline’s Chief Customer Officer — and into Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja’s team.
Most notably, the airline’s AAdvantage loyalty program will now report to American’s VP of Revenue Management, Scott Chandler. This makes official what everyone has known for years — AAdvantage is not about customer loyalty. It’s about revenue generation.
Marketing will now report into the Communications team, and the Customer Experience group will also no longer fall under the Chief Customer Officer.
When asked about the rationale for these moves, American said it didn’t have any. Instead, it just told everyone to pick any desk in the new mammoth headquarters building and then randomly picked which floor would report to which executive.
Canada Jetlines Set to Fly
The long-planned Canadian ultra-low-cost carrier Canada Jetlines has officially received its air operating certificate (AOC) from the Canadian government, clearing its path to begin flying by the end of this month.
The launch of Jetlines has been in the works for nearly a decade, but with the final hurdle cleared it can officially begin service on August 29. The airline will begin flying its lone Airbus A320 from its Toronto/Pearson base to the bustling metropolises of Moncton and Winnipeg.
Jetlines joins an increasingly crowded Canadian low cost market which includes Flair, Lynx, OWG, and a handful of loosely-affiliated bush pilots who will take you anywhere you want to go for a couple of Loonies.
Qantas Says Acquistion of Alliance Doesn’t Hurt Competition
Shortly after the ACCC, Australian’s competition review committee, gave its preliminary assessment that Qantas’s acquisition of Alliance would hurt competition, Qantas came out with the shock release saying that… it definitely would not hurt competition at all.
According to Qantas, in the three years it has owned a minority stake in Alliance, the government has found nothing to suggest competition has been reduced. Besides, when it acquired that stake, it said it wanted to eventually fully acquire the airline. It seems Qantas has opted for the Chewbacca Defense to simply try to confuse the regulators into giving approval.
Alliance is currently the largest provider of charter services in Australia with 30% of the market. That is followed by Qantas at 23%, Virgin Australia at 22%, and a very enterprising young koala at 3%.
- Air France will stop transporting research monkeys… taking away one of the last options for monkeys wanting to vacation in Paris.
- Air Niugini is finally getting around to replacing its old Fokkers.
- Allegiant did some refinancing.
- Arajet will start flying in September.
- Brazil will no longer require masks on airplanes.
- easyJet is adding 12 new destinations from Lisbon thanks to a gift from the European Commission.
- Emirates can’t get its money out of Nigeria, so it’s leaving.
- Qantas is flying to Tonga.
I asked a flight attendant to change my seat because of a crying baby next to me.
It turns out you can’t do that if the baby is yours.