American Airlines mulling no-frills, low-cost flying approach

American Airlines is ready to bring good news for commuters who love spending less for their air travel. Media reports have indicated that the airline is planning to adopt a no-frills, low-fare approach, which has already significantly increased profit margins of many discount carriers currently in business.

Scott Kirby, president of American Airlines Group, said, “There’s dire need to tackle the challenges thrown by low-cost carriers such as Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines. These fast-growing carriers are renowned for offering cheap fares. The LCCs also charge extra fees as well, which the customers pay only according to their travel needs thus overall keeping the fares low. We need to aggressively fight back against these LCCs, which are eating into the revenues.”

Kirby also added that the airline has many frequent fliers who don’t mind paying more for getting premium service. However, nearly 87 percent of the customers fly only once a year, and also purchase flight tickets based on price. This accounts for half of the airline’s revenue. And, therefore there’s need to devise another approach by offering no-frills, low-cost fares on the similar lines of the LCCs.

Meanwhile, American Airlines is also planning to expand its in-flight offerings. According to media reports, the airline recently hinted about its expanded, complimentary in-flight seatback entertainment to be offered to coach class passengers starting from the month of February 2016.

The new offerings by the airline started being provided to the customers from February 1 this year. The range of complimentary audio and video content has been increased dramatically. The new content now includes 60 TV shows, full-feature films and hundreds of music albums ranging from U2 to Chuck Berry. The recently released films would be however available in the Main Cabin for a fee. The airline had earlier been offering a basic spectrum of in-flight radio, ABCMouse educational content, NBC Universal shows and the occasional Fox TV show. The domestic seatback entertainment are being currently offered on Airbus A319 and A321 aircrafts flying on transcontinental routes, and also on next-generation Boeing 737 aircrafts.