American Airlines Tells Flight Attendants To “Speak Up”—So Nearby Passengers Hear The Credit Card Pitch

American Airlines is teaching flight attendants to answer credit card questions loudly enough that nearby passengers hear the pitch, and to use stories about family, friends and other cardmembers to sell the benefits. A slide from recent flight attendant sales training lays out six tips. The most revealing one is “Speak up.” When one passenger asks about the card, American wants the answer to attract the attention of everyone around them. You may have declined the brochure, but the next row’s question is another chance to sell you. The slide presents these as best practices from fellow flight attendants: Share specific examples or stories. Use anecdotes from cardmembers, family or friends to explain how the card can help. Know your facts. Review the brochure and become comfortable discussing the benefits. Speak up. Answer questions at a volume that lets neighboring passengers hear. The slide says projecting your voice will attract their interest and curiosity. Take initiative. Coordinate with the other flight attendants about who makes the announcement and who walks the aisle. The cabin lights must remain on. Consider the timing of the flight and avoid making the announcement when the lights are off. Treat customer information confidentially. Never share, copy, photograph or retain personal information encountered on an application or screen. Knowing the product and protecting personal information are basic requirements. Coordinating the crew’s efforts means one announcement and brochures for passengers who want them. The stories, volume and lights are where this gets interesting. American Has More Riding On Its Citi Partnership Onboard credit card sales have been around for years. Under American’s old arrangement, Barclays had the inflight acquisition channel while Citi had other ways to acquire customers. The expanded Citi agreement brings those channels together under an exclusive U.S. card issuer. I’ve reported that the new relationship has been described to me as a joint venture. American’s stake goes beyond supplying miles and benefits to a bank. They’re more closely tied to the performance of the card business itself. A bank collects interchange, annual fees and interest, and pays for funding, credit losses, rewards and acquiring customers. Sharing in the economics of that business gives American more reason to care about who applies, who keeps the card, and who actually uses it. Getting another application on a flight is the beginning of that relationship. American also needs passengers to like the airline enough to keep it in their wallets. The sales push has been building. In May, I covered top inflight card sellers receiving a Clearwater, Florida getaway. Card approvals have also become accelerators in American’s flight attendant performance scoring. In August, I wrote about the push to get flight attendants more excited about selling. American was emphasizing both how much crew could earn and how providing better service would make passengers more receptive. The airline has a good audience for its card: people already buying its flights. Scott Kirby brought onboard pitches to United, which made them mandatory in 2018. These pitches work. Whether making them longer, louder or more frequent works well enough to justify annoying everyone else is a different calculation. Flight Attendants Object To Being Required To Train For Voluntary Sales On October 15, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants objected to American putting a 15-minute card sales module into mandatory fourth quarter training. According to the union, management first tried to include it in third quarter training, backed off after objections, then inserted it in the fourth quarter package. Completing the module qualifies flight attendants for the program and makes them eligible for a $25 qualification reward. Selling remains voluntary. The union’s objection is that employees who haven’t chosen to sell are being required to take the sales training anyway, and that required training should focus on safety, security and performing their jobs. Some flight attendants welcome commissions on approved applications. Others resent being drawn into selling financial products. Read The Script, Tell Stories, And Make Sure Other Rows Hear American’s announcement guidance requires the approved script to be read verbatim. It should take about a minute and be delivered once per flight segment. That’s in tension with telling flight attendants to share cardmember stories. Adding an anecdote to the announcement would depart from the script. And then there’s the direction to speak loudly enough that neighboring passengers hear. An individual conversation becomes an unscripted sales pitch to several rows. I’ve criticized onboard claims about bonuses covering two roundtrips to Hawaii when that wasn’t generally realistic. “Know your facts” is good advice. But familiarity with a brochure doesn’t necessarily equip someone to explain award availability or the restrictions on a benefit. Encouraging personal stories, delivered so that other passengers overhear, brings regulatory risk into the sales process. Lights On Shouldn’t Become A Reason To Keep Passengers Awake The slide says, “The cabin lights must remain on,” followed by an instruction to consider flight timing and avoid announcements when the lights are off. Read together, that means choosing an already illuminated part of the flight. It doesn’t tell flight attendants to turn on the lights and wake everyone for a pitch. American’s separate guidance says to make the announcement at cruise, before descent, between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. It excludes late night and redeye flights and tells crew to refrain during delays, diversions and other disruptions. Having the lights on doesn’t erase those restrictions. I covered similar limits in 2019, when American told me they were existing training rather than new rules. Topics on this page