Ever worked for a company of that size? I'm willing to bet their designers are as frustrated as you.

I agree-- they're probably pulled in lots of different crazy directions by marketing and branding teams who dictate how the site should look.

Firing that web design team shouldn't even be on the list-- it should be more about firing the exec who didn't push hard enough internally to focus on usability over all of the zillions of other priorities the front page of aa.com would have.