Partnerships don’t always put customer first, says American

Bloomberg

American Airlines group Inc’s top commercial officer said the airline hadn’t focused on customers in creating its earlier corporate partnerships, validating the suspicions of many disgruntled air travellers.
Testifying with unusual candour during Justice Department’s antitrust trial seeking to block American’s partnership with JetBlue, American’s chief commercial officer, Vasu Raja, said customers were an afterthought compared to business and logistics of airline tie-ups.
, such as its trans-Atlantic partnership with British Airways Plc.
“We hadn’t positioned it from the point of view of the customer,” Raja told a federal court in Boston, continuing his testimony from last week. “If you check in on British Airways and it’s an AA flight and you want to pick your seat, that can’t be done” from British Air’s own website, he said.
Raja said he was “embarrassed to admit” American’s customers cannot get boarding passes from a partner airline’s website or app if they are flying on American. He also said his airline and British Air alternated their flights from New York airports, a move that “looks great on paper,” but effectively means that customers can’t easily switch flights if they show up early at the airport.
“There are longstanding technological issues we have to work through,” he said, describing eliminating these issues as American’s “top IT project.”