Flight Plan

[longing4piedmont]

Flight Plan
Inside Gerald Grinstein's struggle to save Delta


Article

I was one of about 50 customers who was invited to go through the Velvet Rope Tour, which in mentioned in the article regarding meetings with the employees in ATL, though not mentioned by name. I had a chance to meet the senior management. I spent about 20 minutes one on one with Whitehurst prior to the meeting and I have to say I blistered him on a couple of topics (think ASA). I found him to be honest and forthright in is answers. In addition, I had a chance to meet one on one with the other managers. They were open, to the point, discussions. (for example I told Jeff Roberston, that I flew DL in spite of the skymiles program, not because of it, when he asked what I thought of the program.) I did not like some of the answers I heard during those conversations, but truly appreciated the straight answers even when they knew I was not going to like them. I could not have been more impressed.

Six months later I can tell you that many of the items they told us they were working on, some of which were not public knowledge at the time, have either been implemented or are in the works.

One quote stands out for me in the article. Whitehurst ran through all the CASM, RASM, and other performance numbers and at the end he told us the same thing. DL is in bankruptcy because they were no longer a value in the market place and they intended to change that. I my opinion they have come a long way in that regards in the last year.

But the wounds have been slow to heal. As Whitehurst strode to the front of a dim, windowless room at the Atlanta airport, there was no applause--not one clap--from the 20 or so veteran pilots who had gathered on a steamy July morning to hear the boyish-looking executive's plans for fixing the bankrupt airline. With mock seriousness, Whitehurst ticked off the litany of excuses that his predecessors had cited to explain the Atlanta carrier's downward spiral: high fuel costs, stiff competition from rivals like AirTran Airways Inc. (AAI ), rich pension obligations, and--yes--high labor costs. Whitehurst paused, then said, "Let's be honest. That's bull----. We are in bankruptcy because we have been losing in the marketplace."

 

[Dave]

Flight Plan
Inside Gerald Grinstein's struggle to save Delta
Article

"We ran the numbers and the only deal that would [hypothetically] create more overlap than this one would be American and United," confides one Delta exec. "The [notion] that this could survive DOJ is beyond comprehension."


I think this paragraph sums it all up. By the time D.O.J. gets finished carving out all the overlapping routes, the synergies Dougie was so fond of will be gone.

Good luck to all the Delta employees.

 

[Bear96]

For Grinstein, Bastian, and Whitehurst, bankruptcy has been a tortuous process in which they, in effect, killed off the old company as they tried to raise a new Delta from the ashes. Bastian still vividly remembers standing in the bankruptcy court the day Delta filed. "There must have been 200 people in the courtroom," he told a large gathering of employees in September. "And I was the only person there from the company among layers of accountants, lawyers, all eyeing what they were going to take from Delta--an arm, a leg."

Yet for all the agony of bankruptcy, Bastian told the same employees that it was exactly the medicine Delta desperately needed.

. . .

From the moment that Grinstein put Delta into bankruptcy last year, he knew he was racing against the clock to save the airline. And Grinstein and his lieutenants now confess that as recently as late last year, he wasn't sure whether Delta would survive--or if it would join the likes of Braniff International Airways, Eastern, and Pan Am in the long line of casualties since the airline industry was deregulated in 1978. "When Gerry, Ed, and I sat down and ran the numbers, we were scared to death about whether we would make it through the winter," Whitehurst now recalls. "We were looking at running out of cash."

Oh my. I thought WT had told us DL was just sailing through BK, and that being in BK is really no biggie -- more like a formality or speed bump on the road to pre-ordained world domination? (Unless you are UA, of course -- THEN, it's serious.)

I don't know what to believe . . .

 

[MMB]

"We ran the numbers and the only deal that would [hypothetically] create more overlap than this one would be American and United," confides one Delta exec. "The [notion] that this could survive DOJ is beyond comprehension."
I think this paragraph sums it all up. By the time D.O.J. gets finished carving out all the overlapping routes, the synergies Dougie was so fond of will be gone.

Good luck to all the Delta employees.

Thank you.

 

[FWAAA]

"We ran the numbers and the only deal that would [hypothetically] create more overlap than this one would be American and United," confides one Delta exec. "The [notion] that this could survive DOJ is beyond comprehension."
I think this paragraph sums it all up. By the time D.O.J. gets finished carving out all the overlapping routes, the synergies Dougie was so fond of will be gone.

Good luck to all the Delta employees.

That un-named Delta exec doesn't know very much about antitrust law. Route overlap isn't gonna be the show-stopper that Grinstein thinks it is.