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Curated by: Michael Girdley (121 videos)
Open Your Relay Account Today: https://relay.yt.link/HLNA7Ap Relay is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC. @bankwithrelay #RelayPartner Today’s hat sponsor is my company, Bedrock. If you’re buying a business and want quality of earnings work and financial due diligence to make sure the seller’s books actually hold up, check out Bedrock here: https://links.girdley.com/bedrock-yt Why does everybody hate American Airlines? In this video, I break down how American helped invent modern air travel, built one of the most powerful positions in the airline industry, and then slowly squandered it through bad incentives, debt, labor damage, and strategic mistakes. Get the 2-minute cheat sheet for this video → https://girdley.com/youtube 👇 SUBSCRIBE for more business breakdowns https://www.youtube.com/@Michael-Girdley?sub_confirmation=1 ------------------------------------------------------------------ ► Get my weekly letter to business owners: essential insights to run, grow, and stay ahead in your business → https://links.girdley.com/newsletter-yt ► For sponsorships or inquiries please reach out to: Contact@girdley.com ► Do you have a hat I should wear in a video? Send it to us: Contact@girdley.com ► Free events on all things small business: https://links.girdley.com/lectures-yt ► Deep dives on businesses for sale: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast ► Follow me on Twitter/X: https://x.com/girdley ------------------------------------------------------------------ American Airlines used to be one of the most important innovators in the business. It helped define passenger air travel, built the Sabre reservation system, pioneered frequent flyer loyalty with AAdvantage, and used scale better than almost anybody in the industry. For a long time, that made American dominant. In this breakdown, I walk through how that advantage got wasted. I get into the leadership era that made American powerful, the labor decisions that poisoned trust inside the company, the decision to spin off key assets, and the years where competitors used bankruptcy and consolidation to reset while American tried to avoid the pain and fell behind anyway. A big part of this story is that American got stuck in the middle. Delta pushed harder into premium travel, low-cost carriers kept pressure on price, and American ended up carrying too much debt without improving the customer experience enough to justify it. That left the airline weaker in key hubs, weaker with corporate travelers, and increasingly dependent on its loyalty program to support the business. I also get into why the flying experience feels so bad now, why the culture seems broken, and how decades of short-term decisions created the version of American Airlines people complain about today. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to American Airlines or why so many travelers avoid it now, that’s what this video is about.