American Airlines Says Squeezing More Seats Onto Planes Is 'Amazing'

For this post, I'll be blunt. The airline industry (in general) sucks these days!

First, they did away with in-flight meals except for international and (very few) domestic flights.

Then they started charging fees for check-in luggage and "extra" carry-on luggage. And, they charge extra for "overweight" luggage.

Next, they started cramming more seats in planes, thereby reducing legroom for passengers.

Some airlines are worse than others. American Airlines is one of the worst. Yet they say that it is amazing that they're able to add more seats and passengers "really" want this.

Inc. posted an incredible American Airlines video in which the company is just "tickled pink" for all of this. See what else they've done to make everyone's flying experience more miserable.

They wrote (in part):

There are two reasons why American says it makes money, in this era of relatively lowered fares (and elevated fees). [Senior VP of Network Planning] Vasu Raja explained:  

One, is that we have a much bigger network that enables us to collect more revenue. But just as big and arguably maybe even bigger than that are the number of seats that we have on the airplane.

Isn't there more to being a strong company than just being rigidly focused on revenue? 

It's worth asking, given that American's financial performance has actually been relatively poor when compared to its rivals. 

Yet watch this video and you get the impression that the company's ethos revolves around the revenue and almost not at all around human beings and their experience. 

Any executive who has the gall to tell you that stuffing more seats on a plane is amazing may not have a grasp of what an amazing brand truly is. 

Should you have not flown American lately, the airline inserted as many seats as it could into as many narrow-body planes as it could. It reduced the size of the bathrooms to an squirm-inducing squish, removed seatback screens and even reduced the legroom in First Class. 

As an old airline tagline used to say, "Is this any way to run an airline?" 

To read more and see the video, go here.

I just HAD to add this! Where we're headed: