A conversation about building a global network

A conversation about building a global network

[Music] hi I’m Jeff Delon and the alliances Airline organization we manage to negotiate all of our deals with our Airline partner carriers hi everyone my name is maros greywall I’m the manager of international Long Haul planning team so basically any of the destinations that American airlines flies to that are really really far away from the United States is what my team manages so mayor Taj you know we our organizations work work really closely together why don’t you tell everybody why we’re here today hey Jeff as you mentioned our organizations are like really really close together I mean we sit pretty much close like within a airshot of one another um but I don’t think a lot of people just know exactly how closely we really do work together so I mean I think it’s just a quick conversation of just explaining a little bit of just what we kind of do on a day-to-day basis with each other absolutely absolutely so we take pride in being a global airline in order to do that we need to have a Global Network so to do that we can grow one of two ways we can grow organically or we can grow inorganically the alliances organization helps really support from an inorganic perspective but Network planning is the organization that makes it happen from an organic perspective so why don’t you talk a little bit about that yeah I mean you mentioned like there are ways that we grow organically I mean one quick example I can think of is we have a destination that we’ve already served that’s tried and trude so something like Philadelphia to Venice where we’ve served it for many many years and this upcoming summer we’re going to be adding Chicago to the mix why would we do that why would we add a second uh route like to somewhere like Venice yeah so I mean it’s no secret Philadelphia is our primary transatlantic Gateway it only serves so many destinations in the United States and something like Chicago will just unlock even more One Stop offerings for some of these customers in places like Rochester Minnesota that they didn’t have that offering to Philly but now they can connect it to Chicago to get there sure I we’re also going to be uh launching some new summer seasonal routes to Europe can you talk a little bit about what the thought processes and doing something like that yeah as you touched on Jeff I mean we’re we got some really cool things coming up this summer where we’re going to be launching our first ever service to Naples nce and Copenhagen all from our Philadelphia Hub um and part of the thought process that I went into this was just figuring out where people want to go and like where do people want to go on vacation and it’s no secret uh people like going to Europe in the summertime so we wanted to make sure we could just increase our offerings and our unique offerings to just give customers more choice to some of these places now talk about like the winter season what what what in turn would we do with that aircraft during the winter yeah so in the winter time um when places like South America or Australia New Zealand are also really nice to visit we try to take customers where they want to go which is they want to go to these places in the winter time so somewhere like Auckland New Zealand we only serve during the winter period because that’s when customers just tend to visit um so we that’s where you see our Ela Auckland or even our Dallas Auckland flights where they’re just there for the winter um but also coming in the winter time is uh our brand new flight to Brisbane which is our never before served flight from American Airlines um which was actually truly enabled by our partnership with quanas so I mean why don’t you go on to talk about how that was enabled on your side absolutely so like I said the alliances organization sees ourselves as an extension of our Network and we’re there to support the Long Haul routes that that our Network planning team puts into place so a market like Brisbane we have a a joint venture partnership like quanis on the other side who can really help in a couple of different ways they can help be an extension of our network from there so customers that may want to travel Beyond Brisbane uh but also from a selling power and from an international point of sale that can really be there to help and sell and support that flight as well so we have strategic Partnerships like that like you mentioned in Australia we have it across the Atlantic with British Airway Iberia we have it across the Pacific with Japan Airlines um so yeah that that’s really there to help really facilitate a lot of our Long Haul flying yeah and look you make my job a lot easier with all these Partnerships because I have really good relationships with folks uh in like British Airways and Ja where again having those uh hubs like London and Tokyo we’re able to that’s also why we fly to some of these destinations as much as we do because of the Partnerships that you enabl there um we also have other Partnerships in like South America right like that we don’t necessarily have like that like that they’re not necess part of one world but like we still have like a pretty good uh Cooper ation with some of these Airlines right absolutely absolutely so we like like I said we like to look at where we’re flying Long Haul and how we can help really facilitate that so whether that’s a carrier like jetsmart who is based in in Santiago and is really helped supporting our flying into South uh Spanish speaking South America or go who’s based in Brazil and really helps our Long Haul flying into Brazil you have Qatar who’s in Doha and really help can help uh there their one world carrier of course but then they help support our flying into uh the Middle East into India as well yeah and look I mean I appreciate all these Partnerships cuz I mean for example like in South America in sou Paulo like we wouldn’t be flying as much sou Paulo or Rio as we do today without this partnership with go because we’re not just when we serve these destinations a lot of times we’re not just serving the cities of Rio and sa Paulo we’re serving a lot of these One-Stop destinations in Brazil that I don’t think I would actually want to fly to uh with the big plane but having that connecting option and the inorganic Network that we do in Brazil really helps make some of these flights possible and like really increases the offering more competitively with these customers absolutely absolutely so you know we mentioned those strategic Partnerships we also have other Partnerships that are really there more from a loyalty play right we’ve got a advantaged customers who want to fly to Tahiti and that may be a market where it doesn’t necessarily have the demand that should justify us putting our aircraft into Tahiti yep but we will go out and and and Implement a partnership with Air Tahiti Nei so that our customers can use their miles and go to the places they want to go globally around around the world so why don’t we wrap it up and and tell everybody about what’s uh what’s going on in the future coming in network yeah definitely I mean look we got some cool new planes coming online um we’re going to have to try to find some homes for these places and I know you’re going to make you make my job a lot easier by enabling some of these Partnerships so maybe it’s going to be increasing some of these offerings to places where our partners can support us or there’s also going to be trying to find some of these destinations where maybe we’re not strong between us or our partners but we want to make sure we’re competitive and offer a very competitor offering for our customers so I would just say let’s watch the space and let’s see see what cool things happen [Music]

How does American Airlines build a comprehensive global network? Alliances and Network Planning work together day in and day out to find new ways to connect our customers to the places they want to visit. From supporting a new flight to Australia or Japan to building new partnerships in South America, the teams constantly look for new and unique ways to provide customers seamless travel to global destinations.

Jeff DeLeon, Senior Manager of Strategic Partnerships, sits down with Mehartaaj Grewal, Manager of International Long-Haul Network Planning, to discuss their teams work together to add new flights to destinations our customers can’t wait to visit.