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Remember how last week I told you that Summer is almost over? Well, guess what:
It is now even more almost over.
I’m sorry to once again be the bearer of bad news, though I guess if I were really sorry I’d stop bearing it. But there is hope: with a week to go until Labor Day, we still have time to go on one last trip, which you’re quite likely already primed to do. And it stands to reason that you will need for this trip a means of conveyance.
Might I suggest…
If you’re going to profile an airline for your business-related newsletter, which I’ve done once or twice before, you might as well choose the world’s largest airline by daily passengers carried. Not too shabby!
Founded in 1930 via the merger of more than eighty smaller airlines (imagine the paperwork for that deal), American Airlines has played a central role in the history of not merely American aviation, which you would expect, what with the whole name thing, but aviation at large.
Today, with over one-thousand aircraft, 350 destinations, and nearly $50 billion in revenue, American Airlines is continuing to push the boundaries of the aviation industry. While they conduct this pushing in ways both big and small, the method that’s most relevant to my corner of the world is how American Airlines has effectively embraced creator marketing.
To prove that point, I made some charts:
American Airlines Creator Count, 2020 - 2025
American Airlines expanded its global base from 3k creators in 2020 to 10.4k creators in 2025, a solid 3.4x increase over six years. Keep that relatively modest figure in mind as we see some of the more substantial gains to come.
Notably, American Airlines’ creator count dipped slightly from 2022 to 2023. We don’t typically see that recent of a decline for a brand that’s still displayed overall growth in a metric. It just goes to show that even for global mega-companies like American Airlines, social media is an eminently fluid thing.
American Airlines Post Count, 2020 - 2025
No signs of decline when it came to post count, though. American Airlines’ number of social media mentions increased from 9.2k posts in 2020 to 36.9k posts in 2025, a bang-on 4x surge.
It stands out to me that posting activity increased, albeit just barely, between 2022 and 2023, at the same time that American Airlines’ number of creators declined. That positive momentum—an indicator that even American Airlines had fewer creators, they had found the right creators—was an early sign of the impressive growth that the brand has seen ever since.
American Airlines EMV, 2020 - 2025
We see an even more dramatic increase with Earned Media Value (EMV), a metric that gauges the virality and impact of individual content in social media conversations. In this case, American Airlines’ Earned Media Value (EMV) grew from $24.9M in 2020 to $198M in 2025, a 7.9x improvement.
As with post count, American Airlines’ EMV increased steadily each year without any annual declines. The most significant acceleration came in 2025, when the brand’s EMV more than doubled year-over-year, pushing the brand oh-so-close to the $200 million milestone.
American Airlines Impressions, 2020 - 2025
But impressions is where American Airlines really soared. Here, the count expanded from 153.4M impressions in 2020 to 3.2B impressions in 2025, a 20.9x surge.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing—or, uh, flying, as it were. After hitting some turbulence between 2020 and 2021, impressions rebounded dramatically in 2022, and reached cruising altitude by 2025, when American Airlines tripled its exposure.
American Airlines Engagements, 2020 - 2025
Engagements upped its totals from 12.9M in 2020 to 106.8M in 2025, an 8.3x increase that fell short of American Airlines’ impressions improvements, but nonetheless demonstrated the same general trajectory and pattern as the brand’s broader growth.
Like we saw in other metrics, American Airlines’ engagements more than doubled between 2024 and 2025, indicating that the brand's expanding prominence on social media translated into substantially higher levels of consumer interaction.
And where were those consumers interacting with American Airlines?
American Airlines' Share of Impressions by Platform, August 2025 - July 2026
Instagram is the primary driver of impressions for American Airlines, accounting for nearly 60% of American Airlines’ total pie. TikTok provides the second-largest share, while YouTube and Facebook contribute meaningful alternative visibility streams, resulting in a well-diversified awareness mix. Notably, American Airlines’ Instagram impressions saw mild YoY improvement, while TikTok saw more dramatic declines. That said…
American Airline's Share of Engagements by Platform, August 2025 - July 2026
In a reversal of the usual dynamic, where TikTok drives impressions and Instagram drives more engagements, we see a narrow victory for TikTok in the latter category. TikTok leads total interactions despite generating only one-fifth of impressions, indicating exceptionally strong engagement efficiency on the platform despite YoY declines. Instagram remains a close second, while Facebook and YouTube contribute comparatively smaller shares of audience interaction.
And speaking of that audience…
The single biggest creator story in this dataset is Fabrizio Romano, an Italian soccer journalist whom we’ve previously covered in our EPL newsletter. Soccer’s biggest news-breaker sits at No. 1 in EMV on American Airlines’ August 2025 to July 2026 creator leaderboard, with $4M EMV across 39 posts. Notably, Romano hadn’t posted about American Airlines during the preceding 12 months, demonstrating the brand’s ability to continue finding generative contributors. Romano’s caption in his top post reveals the hook: "Here we go! Milano → Miami → World Cup! There's nothing quite like knowing you're heading to the biggest football tournament on the planet." These posts, tagged #ad, position American Airlines as the go-to carrier for World Cup travel, applying Romano's signature "Here we go!" announcement format to pre-departure boarding rituals. The result was an impactful campaign that combined travel and sports, which is something that American Airlines knows a good deal about.
The Dallas Cowboys ($6.7M, 58 leaderboard posts) remain a dominant sports partner, with training camp and team travel content serving as a reliable season-over-season contributor. American Airlines also brings rivals together, given that the Philadelphia Eagles tagged the brand in similar transportation-related content. Across other sports, the US Soccer MNT proved a standout growth story, tagging American Airlines in World Cup preparation content, while the Miami Heat reunited their 2006 championship roster at American Airlines Arena for a 20th anniversary event. Across all of these partnerships, the common thread is occasion-led travel content serving as the basis for a broader sports moment, an effective formula that rarely grows stale.
But American Airlines doesn’t have to turn to sports to get people interested, even if it helps. One of the most distinctive features of American Airlines' creator community is the depth and quality of its dedicated aviation content ecosystem, a cluster of accounts treating all things air travel as their primary subject matter. Rather than sponsored content, these posts represent a genuine enthusiast community that’s built loyal audiences around aviation news, ATC audio, near-miss incident coverage, and aircraft reviews. That’s the beautiful thing about the creator economy: there truly is something for everyone.
AaronRheins2 ($1.9M EMV) leads the cluster with short-form news-style aviation content, while flightsimulatorfantasy ($1.3M EMV) covers ATC audio incidents with a commentary format. You might be able to guess the sort of content favored by flightdrama ($1.1M EMV), an account that aggregates industry data and labor news—pilot pay brackets, customer satisfaction rankings—with captions framed as aviation journalism. Airline Videos ($900k EMV) is for the thrill-seekers out there, posting near-miss and other runway footage. Captain REBEL ($831k EMV) brings a cockpit POV to the flight content game, while abbie.cheeseman ($342k EMV) takes an analytical, myth-busting approach to explaining jet bridge design and debunking hub map misconceptions.
Clearly, this is a diverse, expanding creator subculture. For creator marketers in the aviation industry, these creators represent an underutilized partnership opportunity. With deeply engaged, aviation-literate audiences who trust their coverage of American Airlines as editorial content, light brand engagement such as cabin access, route previews, or pilot Q&As would likely generate considerable earned media returns.
The lifestyle creators among American Airline’s dataset are defined less by a single dominant archetype and more by a recurring content format: unscripted passenger moments that turn a typical flight into a shareable story. This content generates American Airline’s highest individual-post EMV totals precisely because they feel unmanufactured, and stem from a surprisingly wide range of creator profiles.
For example, @meganmillion100 holds the top single post on American Airlines’ entire leaderboard, a TikTok that generated $268k, chronicling a flight upgrade captured in real time. Meanwhile, thelifeofprice ($791k EMV) has built a content stream around gifting snack bags to flight crews. In the spirit of companies everywhere mobilizing employees as creators, daniii.ap ($1.1M EMV) is an American Airlines gate agent posting from inside the operation, humanizing the brand while providing a unique and eye-opening perspective. Finally, some folks are just there for the drama: Justin Escalona ($353k EMV) turned a "First Class Karen" passenger confrontation into a serialized multi-part vlog, keeping viewers on the edge of their (quite comfy) seats.
The common thread across all of these themes is that American Airlines is a setting, rather than the sole subject: the plane, the gate, the crew, and the destination become the backdrop for human stories. Brands that can reliably generate this kind of ambient co-starring role in creator content, especially across different industries, become a backdrop to everyday life. It’s a powerful position for any brand to occupy, and one that’s sure to help American Airlines fly even higher.
*All data, unless otherwise specified, stems from CreatorIQ's public-facing brand leaderboards. We will never share performance metrics from a customer's CreatorIQ profile, or any brand's private information.
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