Fortune 500

After instituting a booking policy that rubbed many passengers the wrong way, American Airlines has seen a dive in profits. bit.ly/4c17XwZ “I want to first acknowledge that our current revenue performance is not where we want it to be,” Robert D. Isom, American Airlines CEO, president, and director, said on Thursday. Attributing some of its issues to American’s former sales strategy, the CEO said, “we know we can do better, and we will rise to meet this challenge.” The strategy Isom referred to is one where the airline made customers buy tickets directly, as opposed to having the freedom to book from other agencies. The choice alienated corporate customers and led to complaints. Read more: bit.ly/4c17XwZ

After instituting a booking policy that rubbed many passengers the wrong way, American Airlines has seen a dive in profits. bit.ly/4c17XwZ “I want to first acknowledge that our current revenue performance is not where we want it to be,” Robert D. Isom, American Airlines CEO, president, and director, said on Thursday. Attributing some of its issues to American’s former sales strategy, the CEO said, “we know we can do better, and we will rise to meet this challenge.” The strategy Isom referred to is one where the airline made customers buy tickets directly, as opposed to having the freedom to book from other agencies. The choice alienated corporate customers and led to complaints. Read more: bit.ly/4c17XwZ

Chipotle’s CEO said the chain is making “generous portions” the standard after a wave of social media criticism. bit.ly/4bVgfq4 The company’s CEO Brian Niccol said during Wednesday’s second-quarter earnings call that about 10% of Chipotle’s 3,500 restaurants are outliers in terms of portion sizes and the chain is on a mission to make bigger portions uniform across all locations. To fix the uneven portions, Chipotle is taking a closer look at the outlier restaurants and doubling down on training and coaching in part to reemphasize larger portion sizes. That means every customer should get two substantial scoops of rice and four ounces of meat. Read more: bit.ly/4bVgfq4

Dell was the world’s largest seller of personal computers in 2000. In the decade that followed, the industry shifted entirely. bit.ly/3Yjzo1E The market became divided between high-end laptops and low-margin Chromebooks with little room for a middle player. The server and storage business, another of Dell’s strengths, became increasingly obsolete. Founder Michael Dell returned to the company to lead a hard reset. The team renewed focus on where the technology world was going and made deals to match it, including the enormous $67 billion takeover of EMC which owned an 8 percent stake in VMware. Using the VMware spinout to boost cash and collateral, the company eventually went public again in 2018. Read more: bit.ly/3Yjzo1E

LinkedIn: Sundar Pichai and his team have launched an internal competition and will hand out prizes to the winners. bit.ly/3WlXqGX Alphabet-owned Google reportedly launched a “golden prompt” competition for its Gemini workspace product, which is home to a host of AI-enabled productivity and collaboration tools for emailing, calendars, meetings, and more. Seven winners of the competition were chosen, with their prompts spanning examples from tracking and following up on business leads to flagging customers who need an urgent response. Other cases included keeping track of invoices and receipts, as well as helping users find research on leads. Read more: bit.ly/3WlXqGX

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has announced that it is going forward with Amazon and Prime Video as one of its new media partners to stream games and that TNT/Warner Bros. Discovery bid “did not match the terms” of Amazon’s offer despite matching the $$$ amount. We’ll see if WBD will take this to court but, in the meantime, I recently explained for Fortune the various upsides of such a deal for Amazon. As I wrote: "For the tech giant, the deal helps fill a hole in its already-giant advertising business, while serving as a nice addition for Prime members who are sports fans but who might occasionally dabble with the thought of dropping the service. The risks on the other hand, whether monetary or related to internal politics, appear relatively minimal for a company valued at $2 trillion. If you’re Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, you probably do this deal 10 times out of 10, even at the steep cost of a reported $1.8 billion a year." More details within: https://lnkd.in/eRR3tXSR

NBA games are getting a new home next year, ending their decades-long partnership with Warner Bro’s Discovery. bit.ly/3Yebk0h “Throughout these negotiations, our primary objective has been to maximize the reach and accessibility of our games for our fans,” the league said Wednesday in a statement. The NBA’s refusal of Warner Bro’s Discovery’s new offer sets up a potential legal battle with the media giant that has been its broadcast partner since Ronald Reagan was president. “We think they have grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-’26 season and beyond, and we will take appropriate action,” Warner Bros. said in an email. Read more: bit.ly/3Yebk0h

Google cofounder Sergey Brin got a $366 million windfall from selling all his Tesla shares in 2021. Now he’s using some of the funds to back biotech startup Soneira, which is studying a hallucinogenic mental-health treatment derived from an African shrub. The company is reportedly launching clinical trials to see whether Ibogaine, a psychedelic compound found in the roots of the African Iboga shrub, could be used as a treatment for traumatic brain injury caused by sports injuries, car crashes, and combat experiences. Read more: bit.ly/4cRBCtz

Mark Zuckerberg joins a growing list of executives that feel a specific field of study isn’t critical for employment. bit.ly/4dbuFUF Rather than pinpointing a particular subject for aspiring Gen Z professionals, the billionaire Harvard dropout stressed that mastering a skill outweighs having a business or economics degree, as such tenacity can be applied across various business areas. “If people have shown that they can go deep and do one thing really well, then they’ve probably gained experience in the art of learning something and taking it to an excellent level, which is generally pretty applicable to other things,” he concluded. Read more: bit.ly/4dbuFUF

Southwest Airlines will begin offering assigned seats, ditching the free-for-all policy that has been a defining feature of the carrier for more than half a century. The airline announced the seismic change to its business model Thursday alongside a new premium-class option and plans for redeye flights. While Southwest indicated earlier this year that it was reconsidering the seating policy, it’s now facing heightened pressure to revamp underperforming operations from activist investor Elliott Investment Management. The steps represent a strategic shift for the carrier, which has steadfastly maintained open seating while other airlines raked in revenue by charging extra for more-desirable seats. Read more here: bit.ly/3WiBjkG