During a fourth-quarter earnings call this week, American Airlines again reiterated its desire to have 100 percent bookings online.
Preferably sooner rather than later.
Agency Internet bookings are through the New Distribution Capability (NDC).
"We sell our product through the internet. That's what our customers demand," American chief commercial officer Vasu Raja said. "That's how we can give them the best content at the lowest expenses to them and the best servicing...As we go forward, we're going to lean further into this. We need to make it easy for our customers to consume our content through the internet."
But a spokesperson for the airline said two months ago the carrier has no plans to discontinue its current operations.
Nonetheless, American derived 80 percent of its fourth-quarter bookings from the Internet. That’s up 11 percent from the same quarter in 2022 and at that rate, it will be no time before American achieves its goal.
"Strategically, we're going to distribute through the internet. At some point, the number becomes 100 [percent]," CEO Robert Isom said. "And the real issue in 2024 is, we want to just continue to transition as many of our retailing partners to use the internet with us."
"We're up 15 percent in revenue," compared with 2019, Raja said, adding "we are down 8 to 9 percent in selling expenses."
He added that American will eventually start pulling some of its non-internet-based fares off of traditional channels. The airline will also make it advantageous for customers to use the internet by enticing them with more loyalty program points.
"More than ever, our revenue growth is fueled by a growing number of AAdvantage customers who acquired our co-brand credit cards in record numbers in 2023. AAdvantage customers represent both our greatest source of value and greatest opportunity going forward," Isom said.
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