Childhood Lost

I just turned 21 last Tuesday. Certainly one of those "end of an era" moments when you begin to realize that your childhood is in the past. But it wasnt until today that I realized my childhood was in fact over. Why today? American Airlines filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. American has been a part of my life from day one. I got into my first fight on an American flight when I was a year old and a flight attendant woke me from a deep sleep. I learned to walk climbing up and down the stairs at the San Juan Admirals Club. I had multiple birthday parties inside Terminal 3 at O'Hare, running around the Admirals Club playing hide and seek. To be honestly, no where on earth can you find a better glass of sprite than in the original concourse H/K club at O'Hare. I feel in a big way that American in part raised me. It inspired me to dream of a life of business travel, to dream of being the next (and I guess the first non-fictional) Ryan Bingham. And I feel let down. I have drifted away from my parental airline slowly over the past several years. In fact, Southwest has become a mentor to me, showing me how air travel can in fact work in the post-9/11 era where birthday parties in the Admirals Club are no longer a possibility. But I still considered myself a loyal customer of American and made sure to skip out on Southwest whenever American was convenient and whenever I wasnt checking bags (I refuse to pay for bags, period). I couldnt wait until the day I got my first job that involved travel and set out on a life of AAdvantage miles and Admirals Club membership. Now I dont know what to think. My airline has let me down and I feel like a piece of me has declared bankruptcy right alongside AMR. It is a sad day, the end of a childhood I really did enjoy. But now it is time for me to refocus on my life moving forward, just like I know American will refocus itself on emerging from bankruptcy a better airline. Right now, they arent ready for the big time. They are too big, too impersonal, and too caught up in their own bureaucracy to be a functioning business, one dependent on customer service no less. I hope they can recover their sense of what air travel means, their sense of what it takes to make a customer happy and to make money in the process. American needs to change and I hope they do so that all of those fond memories I have of a childhood spent at the airport arent tempered by a reality in which American is simply a terrible airline to deal with. I need them to do my childhood justice. Anyway, no pressure, just do better.