American Airlines Offers Mea Culpa at Agency Conference

“It’s American. They gotta do whatever they can to get back in your good favor,” Peter Viltas, executive vice president, partner relations for Internova Travel Group, told an audience of some 500 advisors on the last day of Nexion Travel’s annual CoNexion conference in New Orleans.

Viltas was speaking of Jay Creech, American Airlines’ director of airline retailing, and Jeff Gnade, principle, global agencies at American, who came dancing onto stage to Eminem’s “Without Me.”

The comment earned roaring laughter and sheepish grins from the two AA executives.

“We are fortunate that we’re at the stage that American Airlines did a mea culpa, and they have reached out their hand in partnership and support back to the travel agency community,” Viltas added, once the laughter died down.

“Thank you to all the travel advisors out there who stuck with us when I know it was not easy over the last year and a half,” Creech said. “The travel advisor community books some of our highest-value customers and we recognize that. Maybe we forgot that for a little bit, but we’re absolutely back… We want to get to a point where you feel supported by us again.”

Steps that American has already taken to earn back trust, Creech said, include adding back content and not differentiating when miles are or are not earned. Additionally, American is planning to grow the sales team back up, as well as the service and support team.

Creech added that American is “going down the path of saying yes.”

“Over the past year and a half the number one feedback I would get when talking to agencies, was ‘You don’t support us. You say no to everything. You can’t help us.’ And it was painful for us.”

Creech also put in a word about NDC, saying it is the future. “But, we recognize that we’re not going to bludgeon you over the head to move. We’re going to move with you.”

Ultimately, Creech added, American wants to be looking forward, not backwards. “We want to be partners moving forward,” he said.