Late last year, American brought in Nat Pieper from, well, from right down the hallway where he was CEO of the oneworld alliance to come in and take over as Chief Commercial Officer. American had been (and still is) in a world of hurt. The airline is simply not generating the kind of revenue performance that anyone considers acceptable. The last permanent Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja was fired in May 2024. Steve Johnson stepped in to help steady the ship, and he did that, but now it’s Nat’s job to find a way to make the airline competitive again. He’s gonna need all the luck he can get.
They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Nat does not have an issue with that, telling me bluntly, “we’re number three from a global airline in the US perspective.” Like many people who have been around the industry for a long time, this seemed hard for him to fathom.
Nat started his career at Northwest in finance in 1997. He took over alliances in 2005, and he then made his way to Delta in the merger, handling alliances and fleet strategy at different times. After leaving for a nearly five-year stint at Alaska running fleet and alliances, he went to run oneworld until this job at American came up.
Looking back to the beginning of his career, he had the same sentiment many of us did. “American was the gold standard.”
Clearly, Nat thinks he can help return the airline to its glory days. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have taken the job. But it’s one thing to say that is possible, and it’s another thing to actually make it so.
It’s only been around 100 days since he stepped into his role at American, and that means it’s still on the early side, but he feels the urgency. Nat clearly digs deep from his previous experience, trotting out a so-called former Delta CEO “Richard Andersonism” that speed wins. He does not want to analyze everything to death. Sometimes you need to get enough information and then make a decision. You can’t wait forever to get the perfect answer.
Nat is someone who likes thinking about the issues deeply, and he likes to get into the weeds. Sure, he gives the usual platitudes from a high level about needing to have a product people want to book and fly, but in our conversation, we started talking hub by hub.
In New York, “we can perform and generate good returns…” especially thanks to the strategy shift where the airline started using bigger airplanes to bigger destinations from LaGuardia. In LA, American will hold its own and lean on partners to help make the airline more attractive to travelers.
And in Chicago? Nat says that making decisions that cost the airline gates there was “not a great move,” but he thinks American can still fix its issues and in the long term be profitable. For now, he seems to relish the idea that this skirmish can at least help rally the troops against a common enemy in United. Anything that he can seize on to help get momentum, he seems happy to take advantage of.
Beyond the hub issues, I asked Nat if he had specific ideas of what American needed to fix or if it was just everything. To that, he responded:
I would say everything needs to get better, but if you talk your way into that, you’ll never be able to prioritize and drive anything.
Indeed he’s right, so how is he prioritizing? His number one fix is technology, especially in irregular operations. I think we can all agree this is an area in which American is sorely lacking. And second? It is about the product and making sure that American has a premium product it can be proud of throughout its fleet, not just on new deliveries.
Throughout our conversation, Nat kept referring back to how things worked at Delta or what Richard Anderson would say. He is clearly tapping into his roots in this industry to find the right way forward, but he knows that doesn’t mean that what’s right for Delta will be right for American.
The first thing that popped into my mind to test that idea was in-seat video, something American very noticeably does not have on its domestic fleet but Delta swears by. Would American rethink that? There are no commitments now, but my sense was that no idea is completely off the table. He noted that the entertainment conversation now is different than just a few years ago thanks to the intertwining of advertising, in-seat video, and loyalty. With free wifi just starting at American for AAdvantage members, there is more data and more work to be reviewed. I took this as a broader suggestion that there are no sacred cows, and everything can be revisited because it may now make sense when it didn’t before.
Nat likes to lean on his experience, so fleet and alliances certainly bubble up most easily. He has big ideas for partnerships and hopes that American can deepen its joint venture relationships, not necessarily add more of them. After all, Nat comes from the Northwest/KLM world which set the standard for joint ventures. I don’t doubt there’s work to be done, and he comes in clear-eyed with a refreshing perspective.
American I think from a heritage perspective was always the biggest in those [joint business] partnerships and that put in some kind of superiority mindset that maybe isn’t the best and most conducive
On fleet, Nat wants to keep upgauging. Does that mean finding older aircraft the way he did at Delta? Maybe, maybe not, but he knows first-hand the good work that can be done with older aircraft. He half-jokingly added, “if I could figure out a way to get 200 757s, I’d do that. That’s a great airplane.”
Nat preaches cooperation in every way. Sure there are airline partners and, of course, loyalty partners, but he also spoke internally about how important it is to make sure American is putting together a schedule and network that the operation can actually fly. Bridging that gap further sounds like a priority, and he says American is willing to spend money because that’s the only way to really generate more premium demand.
With the 100-day mark passing, look for Nat to start doing more to make the team his own. He doesn’t have the network and revenue management background that might help him in core areas, but he has alliances, fleet, and he emphasized that he spent a great deal of time working around loyalty especially during the pandemic. He has plenty of ideas, has the motivation, and he understands just how difficult the task ahead will be. He doesn’t run the airline, of course, so we will how effective he can be. If he isn’t, it certainly won’t be for lack of effort.
