American Airlines: Company Culture, Strategy, Structure

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American Airlines
American Airline is the world’s largest airline in terms of size and the number of passengers it services per day. Its headquarters are in Fort Worth, Texas in the Dallas Fort Worth Metro complex. The airline works hand in hand with its partners to produce 6,800 flights per day to around 350 destinations in more than 50 countries. Additionally American Airline is also a founding member of One World Alliance which is the third largest airline alliance in the world. Its regional services are operated by subsidiaries under the name of American Eagle. The company annually handles more than 200 million passengers with an average passenger count of 500 people on a daily basis.
Functional Areas
American Airlines announced in 2019 that it aims at improving time performance. This is because the company has been fighting with engineers for most of 2019 with the grounding of BOIENG 727 MAX and the bad weather conditions that are affecting most hubs. However, the data collected at the beginning of November 2019 suggests that the airline’s time management efforts are starting to pay off. To add on that, the airline finished November tied in the second place with South airlines on the on-time arrival derby (CNBC News). Both airlines got 84% of their flight to the departure gate on time in November. An airline considers a flight to be on time if it arrives within 15 minutes of its scheduled time. For the American Airline, this feat was an improvement of October’s performance. American Airline’s senior vice president further stated that the airline operated better in November than it had in any previous months. He also stated that there were fewer out of service aircrafts and only twenty three cancellations in the whole period of November. In 2020, Coronavirus turned things upside down. Faced with the worst airline crisis, American Airlines changed its flight schedule to make ‘some recovery demand’ as the vice president of Network planning Brian Znotins stated. Soon, the airline hubs were overcrowded with passengers and there were several complaints about overcrowded flights. However, even with the number of Corona Virus patients going down, the airline has predicted it might fly about 40% of what it flew last year.
Company Culture
Company culture is essential to employees because workers are more likely to work diligently when their needs and values are consistent with those of the employers. American Airlines has had an employee base of 130, 000 since it’s merge with US Airways five years ago. With this huge employee base, trust between workers becomes an importance factor in order to ensure the success of the company. According to Mark Mitchell, the company’s HR manager, the company’s Single Advantage program created an operation program to help establish the efficiency they were looking for (CNBC News). The success of the program allowed Mitchell to create a people centric culture. The American Airlines promotes a people centric culture by: First and foremost, the workers demonstrate caring in everything they do. The airline brings together people with different cultures and by introducing trust, caring and collective r...