PR for American Airlines

David Kiley of BusinessWeek has some advice for Weber-Shandwick, the PR counsel for American Airlines.

He thinks the airline desperately needs PR help and offers this:

Dear Client: Instead of instituting a fee for checked bags, which will be a lightning rod of bad publicity, please consider burying the cost of rising fuel in across-the-board ticket price increases. Consumers understand that many consumer prices are rising because of increasing fuel costs. What they don’t like, or understand, is when companies begin charging for items they have previously gotten for free—a single checked bag, a soda, a bag of chips, a WiFi connection, etc. The best solution to this problem is to stay out of the news, not to lean into it and ask for a pie in the face.

We agree with Kiley and add this: Airline prices come off as completely arbitrary and random to consumers anyway, just tweak your prices a bit. We'd never know.