An Airline’s Inner Thoughts Get Unintended Exposure
An internal American Airlines Web site, briefly open to the public last week, casts a light on the airline's efforts to save money and its concerns about competition from a low-cost rival, Southwest Airlines.
The Web site, intended only for the airline's employees, noted how much revenue increased after American tightened its excess baggage allowance last November. The carrier now requires passengers to pay a $25 surcharge for bags heavier than 50 pounds (previously, the maximum free weight had been 70 pounds).
"For the month of December 2005 we collected $264,000 in excess, overweight and oversized bag charges," a newsletter addressed to a ground crew at one airport announced. "This is a 7 percent increase over December 2004!" It called the fees an "an important ingredient" to its success.
"Ka-ching!" it added.
A back door to the Web site, AAflightservice.com, was briefly left open last week. It has since been locked again.
"It was a treasure trove of documents," said Ben Edelman, a graduate student at Harvard University who discovered the security flaw in the site.
As an American Airlines platinum-level frequent flier, he said he was drawn to the site because it offered answers to questions no one at the airline could definitively answer like whether customers are entitled to a second helping of a meal, if it is available? (They are.)
Mr. Edelman, who found a similar security glitch on Buy.com six years ago, said he promptly shared the information on Flyertalk.com, an online discussion forum for frequent travelers.
Although Flyertalk eventually removed the information at the request of American Airlines, a copy online, indicating that it was stored on a search engine, indicates that several participants may have downloaded documents from the American Airlines site, including Mr. Edelman.
Billy Sanez, a spokesman for the airline, described the breach as an "oversight" in the company's security and said that steps had been taken to repair it.
American is also investigating how many outsiders had access to the data and for how long. Although he said most of the material was "just work-related information," including internal newsletters, memos and news clips, he said there were concerns that more sensitive information might have been released.
In one newsletter from the site, under the heading "catering corner," the airline details its efforts to sell more meals to economy-class passengers and to cut costs in first class, where food is still served at no charge.
"The lobster on the pre-plated appetizer has been replaced with grilled shrimp, in a further attempt to lower our costs to compete," it said. "Where the lobster appeared as an appetizer, it has been replaced with another seafood protein."
The site also reflected American's concerns about competition from Southwest Airlines and, in particular, its worries about the outcome of current efforts to weaken the Wright Amendment. That law limits the states that airlines can serve from Dallas Love Field. Love Field is Southwest's base of operations, and the 1979 law was intended to assist Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, which was then new. In March, American began offering 16 daily flights from Love Field.
In one document, titled Q & A Basics, American, a unit of the AMR Corporation, goes to the unusual step of outlining talking points, presumably for flight attendants who are quizzed by passengers about the move to Love Field. It notes that the presence at Love Field, "may even convert a few of their customers to AAdvantage members." (AAdvantage is American's frequent-flier program.)
"Won't we lose money and damage our hub" in Dallas-Fort Worth? it asked.
This is the answer: "We can't sit back and do nothing while Southwest works to increase its 97 percent monopoly at Love Field. It would be far more costly not to compete with Southwest and abandon the customers we've worked so hard to keep."
"Is American no longer supporting the Wright Amendment by choosing to fly from Love Field?" it asked.
Answer: "No. American and American Eagle continue our support of the Wright Amendment and will continue to enlist support of our employees and the community to keep the Wright Amendment in place and prevent further erosion of the amendment."
The internal Web site also sheds new light on passengers' views of American.
One such poll, the Global Airline Performance survey, which focuses on comparing airline performance in the trans-Atlantic market, found that American was among the lowest rated of the airlines.
American is in the process of trying to make improvements. Last year, it announced that it had upgraded its premium-class menu and this year it is installing new business-class seats on some aircraft.
Survey America, another customer poll that tracks attitudes toward United States carriers on domestic routes, was only slightly more encouraging. "We moved from 10th place out of 11 carriers in January 2006 to 7th place in February," a regional managing director wrote.