What Are The Weaknesses Of American Airlines

According to MBASkool (2015), a SWOT analysis has been completed to show some of the opportunities and threats that American Airlines faces. They are listed as follows:

Two of the largest competing airlines in America may seem to have a lot in common to a consumer’s eye: big commercial planes, friendly staff, one free carry-on bag, complimentary snacks. Maybe the biggest comparison of them all is how much of the airline market these two companies take up. But for every similarity, there must be a difference. Beyond contrasting ticket prices, there are many fronts on which to compare Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. To begin when the companies began, American Airlines was established approximately 40 years sooner than Southwest Airlines as a result of a merger. In terms of people, Southwest Airlines currently has just about half the number of employees that American does. However, to truly compare the two companies, the organization itself must be researched and analyzed. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines appear to be very different to this day in terms of organizational culture, team dynamics, and conflict and negotiation.

Poor communication between management – when the management didn’t communication with their employees it cause then to have low motivation, low loyalty, and high turnover because most of the employees didn’t know what to do or how to do it.

American airlines is a corporation that exhibits all of the characteristics of a firm in an industry where good tactical management is the key to success. This company and its regional airline partner American eagle serve almost 250 cities around the world and operate more than 3600 daily flights. Its goal is to provide safe, dependable and friendly air transportation along with related services, making a great effort to transform any experience into a positive one. All of the services that this company has and the image that they are trying to keep in every day activities make each day an inevitable challenge for its employees.

Instability of the management, laying more stress on general leadership experience, and "fitness program" led to inefficiency and low moral/accountability among staff.

Small business customers and leisure travelers were the ones benefited the most from American’s new fare structure. Previously, small business customers who does not have the power and volume to negotiate with airline companies for discounted deals had to pay higher rates for first-class or coach tickets. American’s new cost structure reduced the full coach fares which allowed small business customers to purchase flight tickets at cheaper prices more conveniently. Leisure travelers, unlike business travelers, have more flexibility in terms of travel dates, thus allowing them to take advantage of the advance-purchase discounts and Saturday-night stay discounts under the new fare system.

American airline industry is steadily growing at an extremely strong rate. This growth comes with a number economic and social advantage. This contributes a great deal to the international inventory. The US airline industry is a major economic aspect in both the outcome on other related industries like tourism and manufacturing of aircraft and its own terms of operation. The airline industry is receiving massive media attention unlike other industries through participating and making of government policies. As Hoffman and Bateson (2011) show the major competitors include Southwest Airlines, Delta Airline, and United Airline.

The Primary marketing objective is to achieve a 4-7% increase in fares per route flown by the increase of ticketing prices even with fewer seats on the aircraft. Status matching will be offered to competing airline frequent flyers to encourage them to travel more with American than their current choose airline. Airlines represents a $783 billion a year industry (Fact Sheet: Industry Statistics, 2014). Being able to expand the market to the high-end segment would create an attraction to a unique service not offered by other major US airlines. Break even cost would be the first year goal while there would be an increase in cost to retrofit aircraft.

After watching the CNBC special about American Airlines and a week inside their business I noticed several interesting things. Though it was dated few years ago many of the issues are still the same. They had several Revenue drivers; Cargo income, excess baggage fees, last minute departure fees, Postal cartage, and miscellaneous charges for meals, drinks, and accessories. These are not needed but sometimes are needed on certain longer flights. They provide an extra income that may just keep a transcontinental flight from losing money.

The domestic US airline industry has been intensely competitive since it was deregulated in 1978. In a regulated environment, most of the cost increases were passed along to consumers under a fixed rate-of-return based pricing scheme. This allowed labor unions to acquire a lot of power and workers at the major incumbent carriers were overpaid. After deregulation, the incumbent carriers felt the most pain, and the floodgates had opened for newer more nimble carriers with lower cost structures to compete head-on with the established airlines. There were several bankruptcies followed by a wave of consolidation with the fittest carriers surviving and the rest being

With the majority of American Airlines competitors in domestic industry, it is crucial for them to keep up to date with the latest business strategies their competitors are integrating in to their businesses. Depending on what strategy American Airlines Company decides on, it needs to be differentiated compared to their competitors in order to succeed in this airline industry.

The airline industry has always been a fiercely competitive sector. Since the invention of low-cost carriers, also known as no-frills or

Being the largest airline in the world comes with some significant advantages, one of the most important is a physical presence in the locations that passengers want to travel. As part of the anti-trust settlement, American Airlines agreed to sell approximately 15% of their takeoff and landing slots in Washington D.C. and New York . Even with this sale of slots, American Airlines is still able to offer flights to over 250 destinations daily. Just by their sheer size, American Airlines should be capturing a significant share of the market.

The company’s total capacity increased to 22.4 billion (1.3%) available seats. Paired with the decline in passenger traffic, load factors fell to 80.4 percent compared to 81.6 percent a year ago.

Low-cost carriers pose a serious threat to traditional "full service" airlines, since the high cost structure of full-service carriers prevents them from competing