Herb Comments On Webcast

[BoeingBoy]

But Kelleher discounted fears voiced by David N. Siegel, president and chief executive officer of US Airways, that Southwest posed a major threat to that airline's future.

"He's trying to win concessions from his employees," Kelleher said of Siegel.

Siegel had said in a video conference with employees a day earlier that US Airways' survival was at risk without major concessions from labor groups.

"Herb Kelleher wants your job," Siegel said. He said matching Southwest on fares would require severe cost-cutting that would mean labor groups could face pay cuts as high as 25 percent.

US Airways has lost when it has gone head-to-head with Southwest in Baltimore and on the West Coast, Siegel said, predicting that if his airline couldn't hold its position of strength in Philadelphia, "they're going to kill us."

"Baltimore is not Philadelphia," Kelleher said. "Baltimore was never the size of Philadelphia for US Airways."

"We will have 28 flights as of July 6. US Airways must have, what, 400 a day?" Kelleher said. "This is not the Viking killer ship coming in."

Full Article

Jim

 

[cltvff]

But Kelleher discounted fears voiced by David N. Siegel, president and chief executive officer of US Airways, that Southwest posed a major threat to that airline's future.

"He's trying to win concessions from his employees," Kelleher said of Siegel.


Full Article

Jim

WOW.... Kelleher really DOES want your jobs in PHL... this is just the type of rhetoric that Herb hopes everyone buys into. If you believe WN isn't a threat to US, then I have some land east of Myrtle Beach for sale.

 

[orwell]

But Kelleher discounted fears voiced by David N. Siegel, president and chief executive officer of US Airways, that Southwest posed a major threat to that airline's future.

"He's trying to win concessions from his employees," Kelleher said of Siegel.


Full Article

Jim

WOW.... Kelleher really DOES want your jobs in PHL... this is just the type of rhetoric that Herb hopes everyone buys into. If you believe WN isn't a threat to US, then I have some land east of Myrtle Beach for sale.

Exactly.

The fact that WN will "only" have 28 flights a day is irrelevant, as anyone who knows anything about airfares knows. The phenomenon works the same way as the one expressed in the following little maxim:

"If you add a bottle of wine to a barrel of sewage, you get sewage.
If you add a bottle of sewage to a barrel of wine, you also get sewage."

In this case, the analog to sewage is WN and its innocent 28 flights a day. Less than that is more than enough to ruin pricing in a market. A major could have 22 flights a day to the same city and an LCC enters, creating the sewage effect overnight. The media sure won't mention that the "legacy" carrier has 22 flights to the "low cost" new entrant's one while they're tripping over themselves to give the new "competition" free publicity - rather, they'll begin an unending drone about "lower fares" "increased competition" etc. ad naseum.

It ain't advanced economics. The LCCs revel in the way they can dilute a market with a tenth of the resources of their lumbering targets. This is a game of breaking into a market, taking advantage of one-sided press coverage and biased airport authorities who will stop at nothing to attract the latest gimmick in air travel, and feeding off infrastructure that took years to build up by the evil "legacy carriers" to grab market share. Something has to be done to address that - anything short of that will fail.

 

[robbedagain]

after the summer and after this full year i bet swa will have a lot more than 28 flts than what they say because our nbc 10 news even interviewed herb and herb said that their demands are high and growing

 

[USA320Pilot]

Southwest is going to kill the Philadelphia revenue environment. Kelleher does want your job at Southest for entry level part-time pay and benefits.

Regards,

USA320Pilot

 

[SVQLBA]

Siegel's analysis of airline pricing and revenue was appallingly weak. HP (AWA) is doing fine out of Vegas and PHX, both major stations for SW. They didn't survive with the sort of tactics Siegel is employing.

US (and the other legacies) only had themselves to blame for hanging on to a pricing structure based on extortion for too long. The concept of value applies as much to business travelers as super-price sensitive leisure travelers. If Siegel and Co are still dithering over F or not, prices etc they are clearly completely out of touch with what is valued by travelers, how to deliver it efficiently, how to price it, and how to market it. They haven't got out of the starting blocks in two years. I'll be utterly amazed if they figure it out and fix it in two months. (Did I mishear, or din't Siegel say they'd be in financial/covenant trouble again by June?)

 

[deltawatch]

Here's the bad thing, lets say CWA takes a 25% pay cut. If Herb really wants PHL then he will ask his group for concessions. He will tell his guys U is paying $15.00 we are paying $24.00, we have to get to down to $20.00. in order to cont. growing our airline......

CWA Agent NOW $20.00 an hour - 25% = $15.00

WN Agents NOW $24.00 an hour - $4.00 = $20.00

Herb still gets PHL

Were does it stop? Heck half my group is going to be furloughed any how.... <_<

 

[kiloromeo]

The SWA "affect" in PHL will influence all flying out of PHL, not just the route for route competition with SWA...and the traveling public will absolutely hate US Airways when they still have to pay $200 to BUF while its oly $29 to Manchester NH. U will be viewed as a preditor gouger ...its 6 cents or adios.

 

[700UW]

Southwest is going to kill the Philadelphia revenue environment. Kelleher does want your job at Southest for entry level part-time pay and benefits.

Regards,

USA320Pilot

How many times do you have to be corrected?

WN DOES NOT UTILIZE PART-TIME at their AIRPORT LOCATIONS.

WN is the HIGHEST % of UNIONIZED employees and they make more then US employees by a mile!

 

[Kev3188]

700UW--

It's amazing how often people forget to mention this......

 

[mweiss]

Here's the bad thing, lets say CWA takes a 25% pay cut. If Herb really wants PHL then he will ask his group for concessions. He will tell his guys U is paying $15.00 we are paying $24.00, we have to get to down to $20.00. in order to cont. growing our airline......

No he won't. Because he doesn't have to. WN at $24 with its current efficient structure would still run rings around US at $15 with its current inefficient structure.

 

[700UW]

Actually it does not surprise me, he has been posting wrong information forever and leaving out other facts.

 

[More Facts and Less Emotion]

Here's the bad thing, lets say CWA takes a 25% pay cut. If Herb really wants PHL then he will ask his group for concessions. He will tell his guys U is paying $15.00 we are paying $24.00, we have to get to down to $20.00. in order to cont. growing our airline......

CWA Agent NOW $20.00 an hour - 25% = $15.00

WN Agents NOW $24.00 an hour - $4.00 = $20.00

Herb still gets PHL

Were does it stop? Heck half my group is going to be furloughed any how.... <_<

These may be facts that WN has same or even higher top out pay for some employee groups. BUT, the whole truth is that benefits are different for many and the most important difference is WORK RULES and AVERAGE SENIORITY.

It gets reported and discussed a lot, but many people continue to twist the facts and it just further upsets people that don't understand what is happening.

The AVERAGE LABOR COST IS IMPACTED BY:

1. Pay rates
2. Benefits
3. Work rules
4. Average seniority

Ignoring all the facts is dangerous at a time like this.

 

[Cfm56]

Quite often an organization will look for an "enemy" and shift employees' focus on that enemy and use that "enemy" as the reason as to why things are going down the tubes so as to divert attention from what really went wrong from within.

Don't blame SWA or Jetblue for the situation at USAirways. SWA isn't coming to PHL to put USAirways out of business -- they simply see an opportunity, as well run business tend to do. Over the years USAirways milked their monopolistic markets with incredibly high fares and smugly thought costs didn't matter because of the monopoly which they felt protected them. The travelling public was financially raped but had no choice and as a result USAirways left themselves wide open for others to finally come into "their' markets. Check SWA's near monopoly on various Texas or California routes such as Dallas-Houston and you'll see they still keep fares fairly low, thus essentially keeping out any future meaningful competition. You'd think after USAirways got kicked out of California that management would have seen the future and started preparing for it but it was too easy to just stay status quo or easier to simply arrange the airline to be merged into another.

 

[usfliboi]

Southwest is going to kill the Philadelphia revenue environment. Kelleher does want your job at Southest for entry level part-time pay and benefits.

Regards,

USA320Pilot

How many times do you have to be corrected?

WN DOES NOT UTILIZE PART-TIME at their AIRPORT LOCATIONS.

WN is the HIGHEST % of UNIONIZED employees and they make more then US employees by a mile!

700. for some one who continues to be suspended and half right half the time, you sure do seem to think youre always right. Must be a wonderful world you live in !