You think AA has on-time troubles now?

[JAMAKE1]

Fixed your post...

That was good. Touché.

 

[Barfbag]

Not likely; employees are last to board the BK flight, we're all non-revs remember?

 

[southwind]

Fixed your post...

DL did not do terribly well operationally absolutely stunk last summer..........I don't know why in the hell I continue to work them !


Fixed your post !

 

[texasreb]

------ "God willing, maybe we will get one of OBAMA's left leaning pro worker BK judges who might finally make sure AA executives finally SHARE THE PAIN!"----- !!!!! Now that's funny! ----- That's right Hopeless, Obama will save you!!!

+1

 

[Bob Owens]

I guess you overlook the fact that UA's employees got hosed by the ESOP first, and then bankruptcy. And US 's employees got hosed twice. The guys at NWA? TWA?

I know you think it has been so horrible, but I will say it again. Those guys got raped. You got an unwanted pat on the ass.

Maybe our asses are a little more sensitive than yours, after all yours has probably seen more action than ours. We gave up more in one round of pre BK concessions than our peers did in multiple rounds of BK. We kept the pension, which costs them less over the short haul, with no guarantee that they won't go after it over the long haul but we lost more sick time, vacation time, holiday pay and have inferior work rules. AA claimed that $100 million of the so called labor cost gap was maintenance, well when you figure that with OH in house and our costs are only $100 million more then they really are enjoying a substantial savings of around $260 million.

 

[Kev3188]

It's fun watching you try to keep up with all of us. Keep going; you can do it!

 

[WorldTraveler]

Kev,
you can pick out a bad month or even a bad couple of months for any carrier.... just about every carrier has had their time in the cellar.
.
Yet, do you realize that in the 12 months ended July 2011 (the latest DOT monthly report), AA, CO, and DL had the EXACT same on-time rate at 78.7 and more than 75% of US passengers flew on carriers who had an ontime rate +/- 2 points of average?
Picking out a single statistic for any purpose, including trying to prove that a carrier has operational problems has to be based on more than a month or two worth of data and also more than a single data point or two.
WN and DL were each in last place in one quarter of 2010 but both managed to jump dramatically since then; for the past 12 months, DL is tied w/ AA and CO for 9/10/11th place and WN is at 12th place, separated by 1/2 of a percentage point.
UA and US both posted higher than average OT results but had cancellation rates 3-4X higher than DL or WN....as you well know, it's not hard to be on-time if you cancel when it won't work out the way you want.
Baggage claims and consumer complaints for DL both dropped dramatically from above average last year to below average this year and lower than its other network peers.
.
And your chance of being involuntarily denied boarding on DL is 1/3 of the industry average which is exactly where AA is; and DL's invol denied boarding ratio is beat only by HA and B6 - who doesn't overbook at all.
.
As much as you or anyone else would like to believe otherwise, there is no systematic evidence that US airline mgmt teams - at any airline - consistently run a poor operation and do not address problems when they occur, even if it requires money to do so.
.
My original point was and remains that any carrier can "fix" their operation if they are willing to throw enough money at it... DL did so this year and the results have been quite dramatic. DL beat its network peers in the most recent month/quarter (depending on the statistic) for every DOT measure.
Of course having money to be able to fix operational problems helps, but evidence shows that even in BK, airlines have not let their operation fall apart.

wt

"employees know that holding on to customers during BK might make the difference in whether their company survives or not."

What makes you think that employees at AA would care any more if AA files bk? You know that if AA files bk that management will still get their bonuses while labor takes it further up the exhaust pipe.

Simple question.

WHY should we care?

What makes ANYONE think that if AA files bk that once we exit bk things will be any different? After all the management team in place that lied to us with "shAAred sAAcrifice" will still be here. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Labor could work for free and AA management would still find ways to blame labor for the company losing money.

Because, Ken, the vast majority of people really do want a job and will put forth the effort to save their company and their job when push comes to shove.
If you go back and look at OT performance for each of the 4 airlines that filed in the past decade, they all had an improvement in the year or two after they filed for BK.
Sure, the companies cut capacity but employees DID NOT take out their frustration w/ the BK process on the operation.

 

[southwind]

It's fun watching you try to keep up with all of us. Keep going; you can do it!

Never been a problem keeping up with you Kev. Btw , when's the last time, on these boards,that you "Didn't" berate the company who signs your checks ?

 

[Kev3188]

Kev,
you can pick out a bad month or even a bad couple of months for any carrier.... just about every carrier has had their time in the cellar.

Not debating that, or anything else. Just noting that this quote is euphemistic at best:

DL did not do terribly well operationally last summer

Fact is, we sucked no matter what angle you looked at it from. Yeah, we managed to make $$ despite ourselves, but it doesn't change the fact that operationally, we were an embarrassment. Did they fix it? Some of it, but not all.

Never been a problem keeping up with you Kev.

... And yet your posts all indicate otherwise...

 

[WorldTraveler]

Given that there are costs to both running a poor operation and in running an excessively good one, there is clearly a balance that must be found for any airline and history does show that US airlines have pretty strong financial incentives to fix their operational problems... but given that the ultimate measure of success for any business is profit, when the company is generating above average profits than the industry, there has to be pretty good evidence that increased costs to improve the operation will translate into increased profitability.
Being mid-tier to slightly above appears to be the best balance between operational stats and headcount/block-time etc considerations.
.
AA has been in that territory for quite some time so they now quite well the cost of swinging to either extreme - and also why they are not likely to allow the operation to go dramatically in one direction or the other.

 

[Frank Szabo]

Given that there are costs to both running a poor operation and in running an excessively good one, there is clearly a balance that must be found for any airline and history does show that US airlines have pretty strong financial incentives to fix their operational problems... but given that the ultimate measure of success for any business is profit, when the company is generating above average profits than the industry, there has to be pretty good evidence that increased costs to improve the operation will translate into increased profitability.
Being mid-tier to slightly above appears to be the best balance between operational stats and headcount/block-time etc considerations.
.
AA has been in that territory for quite some time so they now quite well the cost of swinging to either extreme - and also why they are not likely to allow the operation to go dramatically in one direction or the other.

I'm not sure what you MIGHT have learned in business school, but it costs precious little more to do things correctly than it does to screw up - both cost almost the same with respect to business operation - been there, done that. The difference was I didn't have a 128 layer (with sub-accounts per layer) accounting system in which to bury my screwups - that's the major difference between a large corporation and small business - plenty of places for the incompetents to hide the screw ups (and themselves) and keep their jobs.

Good or bad management, one must go through the same motions and spend the same money (almost) - buy airplane, (1) fill with gas and people, fly like hell, set it down, kick people off airplane, goto (1).