American Airlines announced it will add seatback screens and bigger first class seats because Delta and United already did this five years ago. The company is racing to catch up, which is what you call it when you're dead last and moving at the speed of a government contractor.
This is premium innovation. Install a screen that plays the same twelve movies on a loop. Charge $400 more per ticket. Call it an upgrade.
The technical chart on AAL shows a pattern called "doing the thing your competitors did when Obama was president." It's bullish if you squint and pretend the last decade didn't happen. The moving average crossed over the sadness indicator last Tuesday. Volume spiked among investors who think airlines compete on anything other than which one crashes less.
Delta installed seatback screens in 2019. United followed six months later. American watched from the tarmac, ran the numbers, held seventeen committee meetings, and decided in 2026 that screens might be good actually. This is the kind of strategic thinking that makes you want to invest your retirement savings in a company that needs five years to figure out passengers like watching things.
The bigger first class seats will fit one additional inch of legroom. Retail traders will tweet about how this proves American is undervalued. They will buy calls expiring Friday. They will lose money by Monday. The pattern holds.
American says it's adding more premium seating, which means removing regular seats and charging triple to sit where a regular seat used to be. The stock popped 2% on the news. Analysts called it a transformation. The transformation is noticing that Delta makes money and deciding to copy them half a decade late.
By 2031, American will add WiFi that works.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment