Rapid Travel Chai

I hope American and United are saving on their marketing and consulting budgets by implementing management by aping Delta.

Here comes a good one. In June Delta rolled out free inflight entertainment on all its flights that have built-in entertainment or streaming on personal devices. That is essentially every flight except single-class regional aircraft. It also has pared back the once-intrusive ads.

American Airlines is back from summer holiday to announce the same. “Nearly 300 of American’s aircraft have seatback entertainment,” meaning less than 300. Actually, 280 from the fact sheet. Including streaming there are 800+ aircraft overall with in-flight entertainment. Compare to Delta’s ‘nearly 400’ with seatback and 1,000+ with streaming (many of course have both).

My AA flying is limited to occasional short-haul flights where they are significantly cheaper than Delta or United via Citi ThankYou awards, or where there is an elusive domestic saver award that I can use Avios. Only flight I have had where AA had seatback entertainment was a LAX-JFK transcon.

This is good news for AA flyers.

United, up next? The DirecTV thing presumably complicates matters for them.