Had a lengthy and pleasant catch up on a recent AA flight with cabin crew AND senior AA person seated next to me.

Had a lengthy and pleasant catch up on a recent AA flight with cabin crew AND senior AA person seated next to me. It's apparently consensus that AA new 787s/350s being acquired in 2015/ 2016 will be used on LAX - SYD, MIA - JNB, [TBD] - [new asia destination]. From a QF perspective, given how heavily loaded QF metal is with AA FF's, what will this do to the already limping QF Int'l division?!? Comment away folks...

OMG, the chance to use System Wide Upgrades across the Pacific!!!!!

By the way did anyone read about the way the new AA management has dealt with their cabin crew? How very enlightened! Doug Parker, you impress me!

Will have to wait and see... but it works both ways, QF puts feed into AA particulary at DFW.  I would have thought AKL would be better for AA in SW pacific...Plus more focus on Asia and Europe. There must be some pressure on yield with the continual increases in capacity to US.

TRB,  whilst I have not read about the new AA management, Im sure there are many stories of staff being screwed over by US Air Carriers undergoing bankruptcy restructures. 

On a personal level, I have little excitement for any extra US carriers here. I find the service pretty average and tend to think they are LCC dressed up as a full service airline. 

Hutch,

The story was not about staff being screwed over. In fact it was completely the opposite. The new combined aa and us cabin crew agreement provided for some guaranteed income increases, which staff voted down (inspite of their union's advise against it) in favour of arbitration. Arbitration returned a less that welcoming package, with lower amounts of guaranteed increases that management had offered. Staff were sucking eggs, when it was put forward to the new AA management to ignore the arbitration results and to reinstate the better package that was offered the first time round. I would say that is enlightened and would generate much goodwill among staff. 

I grant you though that I have not corroborated the story above with any other sources but have retold it from what was published on onemileatatime.

On the note of service, I would disagree that all US carrier has poor LCC type service. However if a sizeable number of people feel that way, then they will certainly fill a niche, which would significantly up the chances of their EXPs being able to redeem SWUs (system wide upgrades). Although I doubt that would occur. Much like traffic across the Atlantic, I would imagine AA code sharing with QF to increaseoverall capacitytrafficbetween across the Atkantic 

Thanks TRB.... I personally think having AA back on AUS shores would be wonderful; SWU's for EXP's would certainly see me booking my flights with AA, on AA metal instead of QF, irrespective of any JBA's between the two carriers- I suspect I wouldn't be the only one employing that strategy, especially given AA's 77W business class product (In my opinion, far better than QF's; at least from a seating perspective). AA/QF JBA aside, I don't see how increasing capacity on this route, and AA FF'ers migrating back to AA metal could result in ANY positive outcomes for QF... In addition, as the AUD/USD rate increasingly favours the USD, you should see increasingly more US to AUS bound traffic, not the other way around, presumably favouring AA metal...

Positives could include:

- Being more attractive to US-based travellers who might have multiple FF loyalties and chose to fly United/Delta over Qantas.

- Being able to utilise AA's lower cost base to increase margins and improve profitability.

Don't get too excited about what you hear on "Galley FM". 

I agree with tronixstuff - take that rumour with a massive grain of salt. Galley FM is rife in the airline industry and there are always those sorts of rumours flying around. I can't see this happening at all. Qantas provide a far superior product and service on SYD-LAX than AA could/would and passengers would rather fly QF over AA for the longer sector to the US.

Not to mention that the SYD-LAX route is already crowded: Qantas, Virgin, Delta, United plus connections on Air Canada, United (via SFO) and Hawaiian. I agree with a comment above that AA would most likely target Auckland if they were even considering the South Pacific as there is a huge gap in that market in terms of lack of competition...

I recently had a discussion with the AA regional manager for California and he maintained AA had no interest in flying their own metal to australia as they have a strong relationship with Qantas.