Free Beer When Flying Between NYC and Chicago on AA
Free Beer When Flying Between NYC and Chicago on AAAmerican Airlines announced today that they will be having hourly shuttles between Chicago and New York City starting in April. They also promise free beer and wine in economy on these flights starting in April.
American Airlines Increases Flights Between NYC and Chicago
American Airlines is trying to capitalize on a very busy route filled to the brim with business travelers. They plan on flying between the two cities 15 times per day.
The route will fly back and forth from LaGuardia Airport (LGA) and Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (ORD), both American Airline hubs.
American Airlines didn’t think offering the most flights on the route was enough. To really entice business travelers American Airlines will be giving out free beer and wine, even in economy.
Conclusion
This is a bold move by American Airlines. They are obviously trying to become the go to airline for that very busy route. Offering free beer and wine is an interesting tactic. The question is whether or not it will stay around long term. Is just a teaser that American will pull a few months down the line? It will be interesting to see.
I also wonder if this will lead to more leisure travelers using them for the route instead of the desired business traveler. Most likely a combination of both. May lead to some interesting sale pitches in the near future :)!
Would you fly American over your preferred airline in order to get free beer and wine? Let me know in the comments!
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[…] [48:04] Free Beer When Flying Between NYC and Chicago on AA […]
I flew AA from ORD to LGA yesterday on a 737-800. I switched from a later flight to the 3:30 PM departure so I lost my MCE seat. It was jammed and uncomfortable and I was in a row with two normal sized people. There were three large guys behind me who were in agony. I felt bad for them. I can’t wait for the 737 MAX with 30 inch pitch! I bet one or two of those flights will convince most people to fly UA or DL. I might even fly on UA which would be a rare occurrence.
I guess they are hoping people will take a free $5 beer and a lesser product 🙂
ummm …. you *do* know that AA has already been running 15x daily on LGA-ORD for as long as I can remember ? They used to have scheduling flexibility of those 15 flights and can properly allocate them across a day according to time-of-day demand.
The only difference is that now they’ve surrendered that flexibility by forcing themselves to run more flights at slower times to fit their “hourly” promise and at the same time tying their own hands during peak banks and leaving money on the table. And seriously, what businessmen remotely worth their salt today won’t check-in from their phone app already ?
The whole notion of “exactly hourly flights” is such a bygone relic from the old days when there’s no cell phone or internet, so this arrangement made it easy for the businessmen to know when their flights are instead of having to physically locate the timetable book or call their travel agent.
See this fare data page on LGA-ORD : https://flightaware.com/insight/airline/KLGA/KORD/SKW
For simplicity sake, you can allocate most of that “Republic” and “Shuttle America” to DL. Despite their smaller planes, and even lower load-factors in the low-70s compared to AA 83% and UA 92%, the fare data aspect doesn’t conclusively indicate DL was able to command any sort of fare premium despite their shuttle branding on ORD-LGA.
Excellent info – thanks for the comment Henry!
And the biggest irony is that the actual frequency leader on this route is the one who doesn’t brand themselves as “shuttle” :
LGA-ORD only, not counting any other NYC-CHI airport pairs :
DL 14x peak daily
AA 15x
UA 17x