While none of the consultants interviewed were surprised by Delta's continued reign, all noted the significantly improved rating for American, which began its turnaround last year, when its score increased by 0.60 points from 2024. That's an increase of 1.11 points in two years.
"American made a nice jump year over year," Partnership Travel Consulting chief strategy officer Bob Brindley said. "They definitely are trying to dig out of the hole they dug for themselves. And if they have a similar increase next year, they're right in the middle of things again with United and being a little bit below Delta."
While the NDC debacle from a few years ago is still in people's memories, American VP of global sales Neil Geurin doesn't think distribution has anything to do with the carrier's improved scores this year.
"The reason our scores are what they are and improving and will continue to improve is that we've made heavy, heavy investments across the board to actually make that happen," he said.
He's likely right, as American's second-highest category this year was "distribution channels" at 3.47, up 0.57 points.
Geurin listed several investment areas, including new aircraft, retrofit programs "that bring a lot more premium products and seats on our planes to customers," food and beverage, multiple new airport clubs, the announced Starlink deal for Wi-Fi and seatback entertainment returning. "As far as the network goes, we're leaning into even more business markets or more depth in the business markets that we fly," he added.
GoldSpring Consulting partner Neil Hammond added that the $4 billion investment American is making at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport "is very, very ambitious," he said. "With capacity the way it is, if you build a bigger airport for the future, you can't have a more fundamental driver than just expanding your airport and your slots. … That alone is going to position American very, very well and obviously drive more traffic to American."
One of the most-improved categories was "value of your relationship with account managers and sales reps," gaining 0.80 points.
KesselRun VP of program management Krissy Herman said that over the past 18 months, American has "brought back a strong sales and account management force that they were missing since their change in direction. The teams that they're putting in place today are getting back to the old American of looking to partner, looking to set those meetings, looking to stay engaged with what matters to clients."
Geurin concurred, citing that over the past year, American again has a fully staffed global sales organization "that includes teams on the ground in New York, Chicago, L.A., Miami and then places like London, Tokyo, Sydney," he said. "We've got that in place now, and the relationships between the account managers our accounts have continued to blossom over the course of the last year."
American also launched new corporate and agency portals, Geurin said. "We've relaunched our Flex Fund process where we give a lot of our partners the ability to self-serve without having to go through any hoops to even do that."
As of late October, according to an email sent to corporate clients that BTN reviewed, new features within the SalesLink Insights portal help clients manage unused ticket value, such as being able to create multiple UATP virtual cards and allocate transferred ticket value based on business travel needs. American also introduced a feature that provides direct insight into available funds without leaving the portal.
Geurin noted that American's situation the last few years has "given us a chance to build things from scratch," he said. "We had really strong portals available for agencies and corporations … that were very good five or six years ago, … but also maybe they'd be a little dated at this point."
The carrier asked corporate clients and agencies about the best-in-class features offered by their airline and hotel partners, then used that feedback to build the portals "not just for our partners, but with our partners," Geurin said. "It's come to a point where we've got incredible portals. [But,] they're going to be 10 times better next year."
Overall, "one of the things that's most exciting for us is these things are at their infancy," Geurin said, referring to all the changes discussed. "We're going to do even more of this as we get into '27, '28, '29."