American CFO Horton talks labor issues

[Bob Owens]

'92-'94 and most of the '80's were generally good periods for the airlines, so I'd guess 15-18 years since deregulation (about 1/2 the years) but that's only a guess.

Jim

Thats not how I remember them. Deregulation started in 78, the effects took a while, then you had several BKs in the 80s, 92-94 was also affected by the recession.

 

[BoeingBoy]

The bankruptcies in the 80's, at least among the big airlines, were CO, EA, and BN. CO was Lorenzo breaking the unions - that bankruptcy resulted in changes in the bankruptcy law as it pertained to abrogating contracts. EA and BN were somewhat special cases - after deregulation both jumped into just about every market they didn't already serve, which was unsupportable. I'm sure you remember that slap on the wrist AA got for trying to fix fares, too. Lorenzo bought EA and started selling assets to CO at below market prices (or for nothing), and the strike ended up putting EA out of business. For the other "legacy" carriers, the mid '80's ('82-'88) were good years.

The economy was rebounding in '91, so '92-'93 were pretty good years. That continued through 2000, as witness the 7 profitable years for AA prior to 2001.

You're welcome to see if Edgar has the AMR's annual reports for the years prior to '93, but lacking evidence to the contrary I stand by what I said.

Jim