A Future That's Up in the Air

[whlinder]

Link

NEW YORK -- It was a perfect day for flying as United Flight 27 soared out of John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Dianne Tamuk, the lead flight attendant -- still blond and exuberant at 52 -- welcomed everyone to United's skies for perhaps the 5,000th time in her career. Tamuk's smile is as winning as when she started out in 1978, her sure-and-steady voice a balm for the rising anxiety of flying.
It's a good thing she's resilient because Tamuk will be smiling her way through at least another thousand of those announcements. The meltdown in the airline industry since Sept. 11, 2001, has decimated pensions and reduced pay for flight attendants, making planned retirements for many in Tamuk's generation unaffordable. The grim joke at United is that those wheelchairs at the end of the ramp aren't just for elderly passengers; soon enough, they'll be for the crew.

"It is amazing to me any United employee can still smile at customers," said aviation industry consultant Michael Boyd. "But they do, and their in-flight customer service is among the best in the world."

I don't know what airlines Boyd has flown on, but obviously not very many outside the U.S.

 

[Harry Callahan]

Appears in spite of all she loves her job.

 

[StraaightTaalk]

Ms. Tamuk represented our profession well in that article.

 

[rotate]

Ms. Tamuk represented our profession well in that article.

What is this, an epidemic?

Not all worthwhile work is a profession. A professional is someone who undertakes a very long training process and is self-employed: see physician, lawyer or professional engineer. While their work is respectable, pilots and flight attendants are not professionals, they are employees.

Pilots and flight attendants can't even barf unless a manager or a union rep approves it! Physicians, lawyers, CPAs and professional engineers are independent.

Now, the mercenary managers that are stripping employees of their pay and benefits are true professionals h34r: It takes years of education and training to ruin an entire population.

NOT!

Just unlimted greed.

There have been other winner-take-all-socities in the history of the world. You can visit them with your pass benefits. They are all ruins: Egypt, Rome, Chizhen-Itza, Babylon, Angkor Wat and many more.

America is well on it's way to creating a future ruin.

God bless all hard-working, honest people even if they are not...professionals.

 

[StraaightTaalk]

What is this, an epidemic?

Not all worthwhile work is a profession. A professional is someone who undertakes a very long training process and is self-employed: see physician, lawyer or professional engineer. While their work is respectable, pilots and flight attendants are not professionals, they are employees.

Pilots and flight attendants can't even barf unless a manager or a union rep approves it! Physicians, lawyers, CPAs and professional engineers are independent.

Now, the mercenary managers that are stripping employees of their pay and benefits are true professionals h34r: It takes years of education and training to ruin an entire population.

NOT!

Just unlimted greed.

There have been other winner-take-all-socities in the history of the world. You can visit them with your pass benefits. They are all ruins: Egypt, Rome, Chizhen-Itza, Babylon, Angkor Wat and many more.

America is well on it's way to creating a future ruin.

God bless all hard-working, honest people even if they are not...professionals.

Get some help.

 

[rotate]

Get some help.

Yep, I did have one too many dirty martinis before I wrote my post, and I am still angry. But calling yourself a professional does not make it so, StraaightTaalk.

I wish you and your fellow AA employees all the best, but having worked for two carriers n the airline industry for over thirty years I will not, and can not, predict it.

 

[Borescope]

" still blond and exuberant at 52 -- "


Amazing what a little dye does