This week’s featured link:
British Airways CEO Interview: How to Bring a Low-Cost Mindset to a Legacy Airline – Skift
This is a good, long interview with the current CEO of British Airways Alex Cruz. Alex came from Vueling before this, and he’s brought a lot of that mindset to BA. But it’s what he says about pricing that’s most interesting (or frightening, depending upon who you are). His vision is the pricing holy grail: finding the maximum amount each traveler is willing to pay and charge that. And robots will help him get there.
Two for the road:
American Airlines is 2017 ATW Airline of the Year – ATW
I’m guessing anyone who saw this headline was scratching their heads a little. Is this possible? You can read why ATW thinks it’s deserved in this article. I do think American has done a fantastic job with the merger so far, but I still had to pause when I saw this. (Though I know employees are happy. To celebrate, they each got 2 confirmed tickets to use on the airline.)
British Airways Struggles To Launch Buy-On-Board Food And Drinks – Forbes
In that BA interview above, Alex talked a bit about selling food and drinks onboard. Apparently the roll-out has been a bit rocky. They’ll figure it out.