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.
This company has 69 years in the industry. It is one of the airlines that have played an important part in the history of air transportation in the United States. Starting as a mail company called “Aviation Airways”, which carried bags of mail from Chicago to St Louis is how this company began to rise. In 1934 American airways became American Airlines, Inc. A few years later it became the nation’s number one domestic air carrier in terms of revenue passenger miles.
At the end of the World War II series of new aircrafts filled the expand need of air transportation, these new acquisitions made AA the only airline in the US with a completely post war fleet of pressurized passenger airplanes. Eight years later AA pioneered non-stop transcontinental service in both directions across the US. Due to American Airlines incredible growth, they teamed up with IBM introducing the largest data processing system called SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment). This new reservation system opened many doors in the industry. Most of the travel Agencies started using the system as well as the advantages of discount fares that they could find in this system.
In between other revolutionary marketing programs, in 1981, American introduced the AADVANTAGE travel awards program to reward frequent flyers. On May 19, 1982, the company had a reorganization plan and a new holding company called AMR Corporation, which became the parent company of American Airlines. This reorganization brought to the company new frontiers. A year after AMR Services was formed as a subsidiary to provide aviation services to the other airlines, and AMR Consulting group which would provide consulting services in airline related business. Since 1990 American airlines has conquered most of its objectives, some of them are: the expansion of its routes all over the planet, the creation of a world wide web site for the convenience of its passengers and formed a customer-driven global alliance named “one world” with other airlines designing a raised standard of global air travel.
In the past three years the airline industry has faced an unparalleled list of challenges and American Airlines has certainly had more than the others. Year by year AA has tried to recover with a great deal of effort to turn the company around. The strategies they are applying to counteract the status are : Lower costs to compete, give to the customers the service they are expecting without expanding to much the costs and working together knowing that it is a hard job but with great hopes of recovering. Cost control and combined revenue improvements have enabled the company to rebuild market confidence for the benefit of its liquidity.
American Airlines is a company that has being in a hard situation the past few years, is a company with more than one source of income. Some of these sources are: technology (SABRE), Networking, marketing (customer services), cargo area, and others sources are what make this company a recognized competitor. Compared to the other airlines, the prices of its services are in the medium range, depending on the season AA could be the best choice in some flights because of its special discounts. As a customer, I would say American Airlines does not have the best service but is a company in which you can rely on.
