Originally published in American Airlines' 2023 Sustainability Report
NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / October 28, 2024 / No matter the destination, American's customers look to us to provide them with a world-class travel experience. We fly to more than 350 cities and continually look for new opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction begins with reliability. That includes getting customers to their destinations safely, on schedule and with their baggage. In 2023, we made real strides in reliability, devoting significant resources across all these areas and developing proprietary tools and technologies to support our efforts. Our customers have further benefited from improved functionality on our digital platforms, expanded entertainment options and faster connectivity. And across everything we do, we have strived to treat our customers fairly and communicate with them honestly. We have also gone to great lengths to implement cybersecurity measures and protect their privacy.
Delivering record operational performance
American's operation is more reliable, resilient and adaptable to outside forces than ever before. Our goal is operational excellence no matter the circumstances so that we can provide the best possible experience for our customers. In 2023, we recorded the best completion factor - meaning the fewest canceled flights - in American's history and our strongest on-time departure and arrivals performance since 2017. And we accomplished these results even as passenger totals rose by 5.7% compared with 2022.
We delivered for American's customers during every single one of the peak holiday travel periods - from spring break through the winter holidays. That included an outstanding summer travel season despite persistent record-breaking heat across the United States and an August that included Hurricanes Hilary, Franklin and Idalia, as well as the devastating wildfires in Maui. Our exceptional results extended to Labor Day weekend, when we posted a company-best completion factor, on-time departure percentage and on-time arrival percentage for the period. Our strong performance over the winter holidays was reflected in a near-perfect 99.9% completion factor, and that included a six-day streak where we didn't cancel a single mainline flight.
Focusing operations on 3 key pillars
American's operational focus is on planning, executing and recovering.
Planning. This includes the work we do to make our airline resilient to any conditions we expect to face. We want our supply chains to be reliable, our staffing to be appropriate and to have the right facilities and equipment in place. For example, we invested in three additional flight simulators in 2023 and have modernized the way we plan and schedule pilot training. Through our partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration, American also helped expand the use of additional airspace routes to relieve congestion during days with high traffic volume.
We have also invested in the infrastructure of our largest hub, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), to support a busier schedule. In 2023, we opened our new DFW catering kitchen, a state-of-the-art facility to help address our growing catering needs. (Read more about this facility on page 28.) We followed that with a new DFW Central Fulfillment Facility for aircraft parts, relocating a significant portion of our inventory from Tulsa.
Executing. This comprises our focus on investing in people, processes and technology to deliver for our customers consistently. In 2023, we focused on improving the tools our team can use to manage issues that might otherwise disrupt our operations.
Our Smart Gating tool, for one, reduces situations where arriving aircraft must wait for an available gate. Developed in-house by American's Information Technology (IT) and Operations teams, Smart Gating uses real-time flight information and other data points to automatically assign arriving aircraft to the nearest available gate with the shortest taxi time. That allows customers to spend less time waiting on the tarmac and have more time to make their connections.
Initially rolled out in 2022 at DFW, Smart Gating has helped shorten aircraft taxi times by an average of 20%. By the end of 2023, we had expanded this tool to our hubs at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Miami International Airport (MIA), Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) and Chicago O'Hare International Airport.
Across the system, Smart Gating has shortened taxi times by 17 hours per day. Moreover, it is designed to address each airport's unique needs. For example, at DCA, where ramp space is limited, Smart Gating has reduced by 70% instances where an aircraft must wait at the gate due to another aircraft blocking the ramp. At CLT, it has decreased aircraft taxi time by nearly a minute per flight and eliminated 11% of on-the-ground gate changes. Smart Gating yields important environmental benefits as well, and you can read about them on page 13.
American has also made meaningful progress at improving our baggage handling, and in 2023 we reduced our mishandled baggage ratio by nearly 15%. One of the systemwide enhancements we made during the year included an initiative that helps us prioritize the bags of customers with tight connections. We now print a 1, 2 or 3 on bag tags based on connection time. Bags with shorter connection times are loaded last onto aircraft at spoke airports so they can be unloaded first upon arrival at hubs and quickly transferred to connecting flights.
These technological advancements were paired with advances in training, compliance and accountability across all internal and external partners in our operation. In 2023, in partnership with our frontline leaders, we rolled out individualized performance dashboards for some of our airport team members. Focusing on safety, compliance and performance, these dashboards give team members greater visibility into their performance and opportunities to improve. The dashboards have been well received, and we will explore expanding them to other workgroups.
Recovering. This encompasses our work to recover from irregular operations more swiftly and efficiently than in the past. Although we can't control the weather, we can control our response. That means getting our crews, aircraft and customers back on track as quickly and safely as possible. We have invested more expertise, time and technology in irregular operations management and recovery, including development of a suite of tools to support our efforts.
Our proprietary Hub Efficiency Analytics Tool (HEAT) is just one example. HEAT dynamically adjusts flight schedules to keep customers, crews and aircraft moving and to avoid cancellations when severe weather and other extraordinary situations threaten to disrupt our schedule. Using an advanced algorithm, HEAT weighs a variety of factors such as fullness of flights, customer connections and gate availability - as well as air traffic control and crew constraints - to adjust departure and arrival times on multiple flights in a coordinated manner. We deployed HEAT 28 times in 2023 - at CLT, DCA, DFW and MIA. Since its initial deployment in 2022, we have used it to prevent nearly 1,000 flight cancellations.
We never want to cancel flights, but sometimes operating conditions make this inevitable. When this happens, we strive to accommodate customers in advance or as quickly as possible. In 2023, we rolled out a more effective re-accommodation tool that resulted in a 19% improvement in the volume of customers who fly the rebooked solution and a 21% reduction in delay-to-destination hours.
Modernizing the digital experience for customers
We continued our efforts to modernize the travel experience in 2023. Our research has shown that customers prefer to handle the easiest aspects of travel on their own, so we put more power in their hands by enhancing the user experience and travel management options on both aa.com and the American Airlines mobile app.
At the start of 2023, our website and mobile app allowed customers to address some of their ticket-related needs, such as rescheduling a trip, viewing and applying a travel credit to a trip, or adding special service requests during travel. Over the course of the year, we modernized our technology and expanded functionality, allowing for the majority of customer travel needs to be completed on a digital channel. Among our enhancements, customers who book travel with American through a travel partner or another third party can now, in most cases, use the app or aa.com to make changes. Customers also have more digital control over their re-accommodation options if irregular operations impact their scheduled flight. We have made it easier for customers to notify us if they have special service needs as well, such as traveling with wheelchairs or pets or if they are booking a flight that involves an unaccompanied minor. These and other improvements helped make ours the most downloaded airline app of 2023 and among the year's top 10 most downloaded travel apps. And we are working to further improve our website and mobile app in 2024.
Greater online and app functionality also frees up team members in our customer call centers to work with customers who have complex travel issues that require personal assistance. We continually work to improve these personal interactions, and we follow up with Voice of the Customer surveys by phone or written channels to elicit feedback on our success. For example, approximately 94% of survey responses related to domestic and international reservations for 2023 indicated that our customers were completely satisfied with the service they received. Our satisfaction scores from AAdvantage® members are even higher.
Providing speedier airport kiosks and streamlining credit redemptions
American implemented other improvements during the year beyond our digital channels. For example, we rolled out new software across all our airport kiosks to make them faster and easier to use and installed entirely new ones in our largest hubs. These updates help streamline travel for our customers by leading to shorter lines before security.
In 2023, we also simplified the management and redemption of travel credits. That included streamlining the types of credits available into trip credits, flight credits and travel vouchers, with the goal of consolidating to one in the long term. We also made it possible for customers on domestic flights to store trip credits and flight credits in their mobile wallets rather than in emails or in the form of a paper voucher.
Delivering our inflight entertainment faster and with more diverse offerings
We make many television series and movie offerings available at no cost on most of our flights, and our narrow-body aircraft offer our wireless inflight entertainment platform for personal devices. Our offerings include a wide range of content that appeals to diverse preferences. Most of our films include optional subtitles and are dubbed in many languages. We offer 10 to 20 selections to celebrate heritage months throughout the year, such as Black History Month, Women's History Month and Pride Month. We have also partnered with the American Black Film Festival to feature the work of Black filmmakers. In fact, our efforts at improving the travel experience for Black customers yielded American an Essence Best In Black Travel Award in 2023.
We also add approximately 10 foreign films each month in their original languages to our widebody, seatback-equipped fleets, with an average of 50 to choose from at any given time.
To support our inflight entertainment strategy and improve the overall travel experience, American offers high-speed Wi-Fi on more mainline aircraft than any other carrier. We want our regional customers to enjoy a similar experience. Over the next two years, we will begin providing high-speed Wi-Fi on the more than 500 dual-class regional aircraft operated on our behalf. These planes will be equipped with Intelsat's unique electronically steered array multi-orbit antennae, which are designed to deliver fast, reliable connectivity for texting, browsing and streaming.
For our improvements in customer service, American was recognized for the sixth consecutive year in 2023 by the APEX Official Airline Ratings - Global Airline category. American received a prestigious Five Star rating based on verified customer feedback on the overall travel experience.
Identifying opportunities for greater inclusion
American's approach to customer engagement continues to reflect our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. In 2023, we looked to the guidance of the Community Council we formed in 2020 to provide objective and candid insights on company initiatives, particularly those focused on improving the customer travel experience and meeting the needs of underrepresented customer groups, and we continued to help team members build cultural competency to further support this work.
One example is our work partnering with local organizations and airport colleagues to make the travel process less of a mystery for children on the autism spectrum. Through It's Cool to Fly American (ICTFA), we offer these children and their families a mock travel experience that replicates the hustle and bustle of air travel. In an experience that lasts about three and a half hours, they park, check in, wait at the gate, board, taxi, return to the gate and retrieve their luggage without actually taking off. Since its inception in 2014, ICTFA has served more than 8,000 participants and 4,500 families.
Posting record passenger satisfaction scores
American rigorously gathers customer satisfaction data through passenger surveys, using the results to enhance our operations. Based on a sampling of approximately 3 million customer surveys, our Likelihood to Recommend (LTR) score rose to a company-best 76.6 for 2023. Our fourth-quarter score of 79.7 was the highest of any quarter in our history. These results reflect the significant investments that we've made to improve both check-in and boarding as well as baggage handling, trip credit redemptions and the ability to manage an upcoming travel reservation at aa.com or through our mobile app. In fact, customers who used our app at least once before or during their trip consistently rated their experience higher than did nonusers.
LTR measures customer levels based on recent trips on a scale of 1 to 100 points, and our methodology incorporates balanced feedback from both AAdvantage® loyalty program members and nonmembers. It has been a valuable tool in helping us set priorities. That said, we are always looking for ways to better identify areas where we excel or need improvement. That includes tracking our Net Promoter Score (NPS), which helps measure customer brand loyalty and satisfaction using a scale of -100 to +100. In contrast to LTR, which is based on an average of customer responses, NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Our NPS has risen by 11 points since 2019. Going forward, we expect to make NPS our core customer satisfaction metric. Among its benefits, NPS is a more commonly used industry standard that will allow us to benchmark American's performance against other carriers and companies.
In 2023, we also began receiving survey data from customers whose journeys include one of our 12 oneworld® partners along with American. We will use this data to identify ways to further enhance the customer experience.
Treating our customers fairly and communicating honestly
We are in business to provide safe, dependable and comfortable air transportation to our customers, and we work hard to make their experience a positive one. At the same time, managing an average of more than 6,000 departures per day is a complex undertaking. Inevitably, some of our flights are affected by adverse circumstances - some within our control and others not. When that happens, our customer service plan outlines the policies and processes we have put in place to treat our customers fairly and provide them with the assistance they need.
Our customer service plan also outlines our approach to family seating. Letting families sit together at no additional cost has long been American's policy. We seat children 14 and under adjacent to an accompanying adult, assuming they are booked in the same reservation and meet other conditions. In the event that we cannot seat an adult family member and child together, we will rebook their flight at no extra cost or provide a refund if they choose not to travel.
American is also committed to accuracy in our communications and marketing. To help customers make informed decisions, we provide information about the benefits of flying with American and strive to represent truthfully the social or environmental benefits of our activities. We endeavor not to mislead vulnerable market segments, such as children, about our services.
Addressing customer concerns
Every day, American's dedicated team members strive to go above and beyond to handle customer concerns promptly and efficiently. In addition to traditional customer service channels, we also offer convenient options that keep customers informed throughout their travel journey, such as in-app chat functions, automated callback features and immediate automated digital notifications.
When it comes to navigating the most complex of customer concerns, American has a highly trained, specialized team that works to handle these escalations promptly and appropriately. These team members work with stakeholders throughout the company to handle all escalations and follow-up from across American's global operation.
Prioritizing cybersecurity and data privacy
Cybersecurity and data privacy are key priorities at American. In February 2024, we published our new SEC Form 10-K Item 1C disclosure related to cybersecurity risk management, strategy and governance. In addition, in 2023, we updated our Cybersecurity Policy Statement and Privacy Policy.
American has developed and implemented a cybersecurity risk management program intended to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of our systems and information. Our program is aligned with various National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity standards, guidelines and best practices.1 It includes policies, standards and a variety of technical security solutions to prevent and respond to cybersecurity issues, and it is evaluated annually by a global cybersecurity firm.
Our Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is responsible for implementing our cybersecurity risk management program and reports to our Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO). The CDIO, in turn, is a member of our Senior Leadership Team and reports to the CEO.
Our cybersecurity risk management program is overseen by our Executive Cybersecurity Risk Group (ECRG), which comprises our CDIO, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Legal Officer. Working with our CISO, the ECRG assists the Board of Directors and our Senior Leadership Team in fulfilling their responsibilities for cybersecurity governance. Our Board oversees our work on cybersecurity, with the Audit Committee regularly reviewing cyber- and data privacy-risks and receiving briefings from senior leaders on these matters at least quarterly. The full Board also receives periodic briefings from management on our cyber-risk management program.
American also has a formal cybersecurity training and awareness program focused on educating our team members about cybersecurity risk and our internal policies and procedures related to cybersecurity, privacy and compliance. Certain trainings, such as basic data security awareness, are conducted annually, and all team members and contractors are expected to complete them.
A number of team members undergo additional cybersecurity and data privacy training depending on their roles and responsibilities. We also review the cybersecurity profile of critical IT service providers, suppliers and vendors as part of our risk management strategy and engage certain third parties on their practices.
American's privacy program, which is audited from time to time by our internal audit function, is led by our Chief Privacy and Data Protection Officer and staffed with certified privacy professionals. We also have a Privacy Council composed of more than 30 senior leaders who meet quarterly to discuss privacy issues, challenges and proposed solutions. The council is supported by more than 100 privacy liaisons across our business and IT.
The privacy program is guided by key privacy principles that inform how American handles and protects the personal information in our care, such as responsibility, transparency, security and choice. Our Privacy Office regularly conducts privacy impact assessments of business processes and supporting IT systems that process personal data. The primary role of these assessments is to identify and remediate associated privacy risks.
Information obtained from privacy impact assessments is used to populate our personal data inventory, which details what personal data our company stores, how it is used, where it is stored, with whom it is shared and for how long it is retained. We supplement these efforts by coordinating with our IT department to incorporate privacy design requirements into the architecture and operation of our systems that store and process personal data. We also use these processes to fulfill our legal requirements for handling data rights requests and data disclosures via our internal and external privacy policies and statements.
Our team members are required to take privacy training courses annually, and the Privacy Office conducts individual training sessions with different business units each year that address a variety of privacy issues. We also coordinate closely with our Procurement and Corporate Legal functions, which provide input on privacy terms and provisions in agreements with our business partners and vendors so that privacy issues are appropriately addressed. Contractors are required to take a course on global data privacy and protection annually or as they sign on.
For detailed operational performance data, see page 71.
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1 This does not imply that we meet any particular technical standards, specifications or requirements, only that we use various NIST security standards, guidelines and best practices to identify, assess and manage cybersecurity risks relevant to our business.
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