usfliboi comments:
Well to point out your own beliefs. This is from the media so we dont know if this is fact. So the word "guess" you used is a good word to use.
Well, usfliboi, you are absolutely right to suggest that what is printed in the paper should be up for scrutiny. "Don't believe everything you read" as they say.
Unfortunately for the strength of your argument, the analogy you employ for your argument doesn't hold up.
There are somewhat different standards of rigor for newspaper reporting than there are for corporate propaganda phone lines. There are editors and checks and balances (inadequate, but more intensive now in the wake of some of the reporter scandals of the last couple years). The newspaper at least has to maintain a certain pretense of objectivity.
There there is absolutely no such requirement of checks and balances (though there is certainly plenty of pretense) on corporate propaganda lines. They do, however run things past Legal, I would assume, but that is for the purposes of CYA, which is not the same thing as accuracy and fact-checking.
When the figures Siegel and so forth are touting are included in an SEC filing, then there is a bit more weight to them because there is the potential for them to be held accountable for fraud if they have doctored the books.
In the meantime, whether the stats are correct or not, it still leaves the question of how they were arrived, how they compare to similarly arrived at figures at other companies and what they actually mean. Siegel is a master spinmeister as most of us learned in the aftermath of his employee-friendly road shows in 2002.
... And now back to our regularly scheduled thread topic.....
-Airlineorphan
