Fresh on the heels of naming a new Chief Customer Officer, American Airlines has named a new head of the AAdvantage frequent flyer program.
Scott Long moves over from investor relations to become Senior Vice President of AAdvantage.
According to an announcement by American Airlines Vice Chair and Chief Strategy Officer Steve Johnson,
With our new exclusive partnership with Citi on the horizon, our cobrand partnership will be more important than ever in helping increase engagement with the AAdvantage® program, drawing more customers to the world’s largest and most valuable travel rewards ecosystem, and driving profitability.
Going forward, both the AAdvantage® program and our cobrand card portfolio will be the responsibility of Scott Long, who I’m delighted to announce will join Commercial as our new Senior Vice President, AAdvantage®. Scott has distinguished himself in several roles across the company – most recently his very successful leadership of Investor Relations.
Scott is the perfect person to lead the continued development of the world’s best travel rewards ecosystem and ensure the successful launch of our innovative card partnership with Citi.
Since the very short tenure of Julie Rath in the role, American Airlines hasn’t had a unified head of the AAdvantage frequent flyer program.
They’ve split responsibilities into different teams – one for selling miles (partnerships) and another for running the program experience for members.
And there hasn’t been a senior leader for earning, redemption, and elite experience.
As with naming the head of regional airlines and cargo – and previously the Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis – as the new Chief Customer Officer – this seems from the outside a non-traditional pick.
Fifteen years ago Long did spend a year as a Senior Analyst in program strategy at AAdvantage, back when the program was run under Maya Leibman.
Since then he’s been in corporate planning, financial analysis and planning, regional airlines and investor relations.
Most recently he’s served as Managing Director and then Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development.
The announcement of Scott Long focuses on driving revenue from Citibank, not loyalty marketing or directly on customer engagement. American’s CEO Doug Parker used to refer to AAdvantage as “the card program.”
Hopefully Long will come to see the connection between customer engagement through AAdvantage with program success with Citi – that investing in customer efforts drives that success; that without delivering awards and upgrades and benefits there’s far less appetite for the miles that Citi would buy.
I have a vested interest here, of course, rounding my way towards 4 million lifetime elite miles in the program and with several million redeemable miles in my account. Hopefully the program is in good hands.
There’s a lot of work to engage customers, and marketing engine of American Airlines is the perfect place to do it.
- American Airlines charges more for inflight wifi than anybody else. Delta uses wifi to drive loyalty program signups, in order to convert those to credit cards.
- American has better domestic hubs for connecting than anybody else, but doesn’t allow passengers to use that advantage when confirming flight changes or standing by for other flights. Elite – or even all program members – should receive the same confirmed change flexibility that United gives to its flyers.
- Elites, who don’t pay checked bag fees anyway, should be able to through-check bags on separate tickets when traveling with American and its partners (on terms similar to what United offers). A major driver of the restriction was not wanting to split checked bag fees across airlines, but those aren’t at issue here.
- No program benefit is cherished by elites more than upgrades, and by members generally than award tickets. In order for the program to drive ticket sales, and mileage sales to partners, it needs to deliver on promises to customers. That means the head of the program needs to fight – and frequently win – battles with revenue management. The program head must deliver awards and upgrades to customers at reasonable cost.
- They need to be relevant to customers in markets where they want to succeed. And if credit card spend is going to be paramount, they need a strategy in New York, Chicago, and the Bay Area. Scott Long won’t be in a position to drive this, but advocating for including cobrand revenue when calculating the profitability of markets matters. This is something that American finally got under one roof with Vasu Raja.
When American Airlines signed its deal with Citibank and Barclays nearly a decade ago, it pushed more spending onto co-brand credit cards than any other airline.
Delta is now number one, and when American Airlines held its Investor Day last year it revealed that it had fallen to number three.
The goals of driving revenue from Citibank and driving value to customers are actually aligned. The problem is that for several years that hasn’t been seen clearly enough at the airline.
Long’s job, should he choose to accept it, is to make executives see how these can work together in tandem (and help put passengers onto airplanes in the process, as well).
