Not me. This is were management goes to get there consulting and seek information at a cost of course. This is just what they show to the public behind close doors it’s a war room.
New Liquidity Initiative
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CallawayGolf
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You lived it as a pilot in the new reality of airline deregulation. Perhaps you needed to look outside of your industry and organized labor biases to see what the rest of the country experienced. So far Obama, Reed, and Pelosi haven't topped the malaise conditions of the Carter years, but his term is young - we could be there sooner than any of us would like.
BTW - Reagan didn't write the checks (federal spending). That role was filled as it always is by congress. Reagan pushed Tip O'Niell to bring spending discipline to the US government but was threatened with a total government shutdown (not a bad thing really). He also pushed for a line item veto so he could strip wasteful spending from bloated bills, but they refused that as well so they could protect pork projects aplenty . If you want to blame a house for out of control spending, its not the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, regardless of the party in office.
So you have interest. You can signup . The firm will tell you all you want to know. At cost of course
Art at ISP
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Freedom,
Your comment above shows you how truly clueless you are. While fare is important to the uneducated leisure traveler, it is important to a smaller percentage of business travelers. The fare has to be within a range, but it has to offer VALUE. If an airline has nothing but the lowest fares, it will not be long for the world.
The theory that smart airline management priorites are 1. Employees, 2. Customers, and 3. Shareholders, with 1 helping 2 helping 3 is a proven fact. Add that and VALUE to the proposition and you have a winning combination.
What really has to happen is that fares have to be rational. The age of $99 transcons should be over forever..it's not a sustainable price point. Then again neither is $1500 for the same trip. The airline business is the only one I know of which OPENLY and KNOWINGLY sells its product well below its actual cost on a regular basis. THIS is the reason why the business is in the shape it is. Everything else is incidental to this fact.
Many airlines know how to add value to their product, and charge a little more for it....such as WN's Business Select, UA's E+ etc. I even pay $10-$20 for an exit seat on Jet Blue from time to time.
It has been over 2 years since I was on a US operated flight. I have made a pledge that unless completely unavoidable, I will not put $1 of my money in US Airways until there is a change in attitude toward the high volume flyer and a change at the top...and I aim to keep my word... Fact is the grass IS greener on the other side of the terminal.
My BEST to you all...
^ That's hurtful, because I consider myself both fare sensative and well educated. If I'm on my employers dime, I'm more schedule sensative than worried about anything else.
As far as paying Parker $550k vs each of you $15 per year, I'd side with paying 1 individual a large sum, regardless of effectiveness due to the brittleness of money. There is little you can do with small amounts of widely distributed money, and money is brittle. Considering the geographic dispersion of all employees, there would be no meaningful injection of money into the economy. Even if all 32,000 employees went to the same McDonalds and purchased a 2-pack of apple pies, it would result in less than 1 extra customer per minute, buying low margin product, certainly not enough to even generate a new employee. Nor would it generate the needs for an additional strudel machine operator or apple picker.
Mr. Parker on the other hand is hopefully living wastefully....landscapers, piano lessons, dui lawyers, etc....high margin labor intensive goods that produce highly fluid money transfer.
As I said, money is brittle, essentially eroding each time it is handled. Consider a worker investing there $15 in a low fee brokerage account with $7 transaction fees. To buy and sell a stock it would cost $14, meaning they need to generate a 93.3% return just to break even due to transaction costs. Mr Parkers $550,000 investment would only need a 0.002% return to break even. Money is more durable and effective when it is clumped.
That's not a statement of support for Mr. Parker's performance, rather a show of support that from a macroeconomics standpoint, concentrating wealth does generate more economic growth than dispersed wealth.
As far as paying Parker $550k vs each of you $15 per year, I'd side with paying 1 individual a large sum, regardless of effectiveness due to the brittleness of money. There is little you can do with small amounts of widely distributed money, and money is brittle. Considering the geographic dispersion of all employees, there would be no meaningful injection of money into the economy. Even if all 32,000 employees went to the same McDonalds and purchased a 2-pack of apple pies, it would result in less than 1 extra customer per minute, buying low margin product, certainly not enough to even generate a new employee. Nor would it generate the needs for an additional strudel machine operator or apple picker.
Mr. Parker on the other hand is hopefully living wastefully....landscapers, piano lessons, dui lawyers, etc....high margin labor intensive goods that produce highly fluid money transfer.
As I said, money is brittle, essentially eroding each time it is handled. Consider a worker investing there $15 in a low fee brokerage account with $7 transaction fees. To buy and sell a stock it would cost $14, meaning they need to generate a 93.3% return just to break even due to transaction costs. Mr Parkers $550,000 investment would only need a 0.002% return to break even. Money is more durable and effective when it is clumped.
That's not a statement of support for Mr. Parker's performance, rather a show of support that from a macroeconomics standpoint, concentrating wealth does generate more economic growth than dispersed wealth.
I thought it was the fares, stupid?
It just shows your lack of acceptance of the very basic supply and demand principle. Why does it cost $1000 to fly PHL-BOS? Because people won't pay $1100. Sorry to lose you Art, but if your argument is based on rational fares, who exactly are you flying?
Art at ISP
Veteran
Qwerty,
The meaning of that slogan does not mean they have to be the LOWEST fares, they have to be rational. That means they have to make sense for both the customer AND the company. This means that a $99 transcon is no more rational than a fare of $1500 for the same seat. They are both completely irrational. Supply and demand can play into it, but gouging is unnecessary and unacceptable. To charge a high fare "just because you can" means you could win the battle but lose the war. Customers just won't tolerate that kind of pricing on a long term basis.
While fares are somewhat important to everyone, the business traveler considers schedule, convenience and product as well. The airline which delivers VALUE for a similar price (notice not necessarily the lowest price) will be more likely to get the business traveler's business.
As I have said repeatedly, the biggest cause of airlines losing money is their constant selling of their product below cost. RATIONAL fares would still offer a range of fares, but the overall average fare would be higher, and it would be a win/win for the customer and the company.
EXAMPLE: I recently had to choose between DL at $535 or WN at $580 for a trip to BNA. The DL flight was non refundable and had the normal restrictions and fees for changes. The WN flight was fully refundable and changes were possible at no charge as long as space was available. I chose WN because their fare added VALUE to the equation--refundable and changeable is worth somewhat of a premium.
I have NEVER advocated that fares have to be rock bottom--they have to be RATIONAL... there is a difference.
Happy Thanksgiving all....
nycbusdriver
Veteran
Reagan pledged to slim down government, and he said the Department of Education would be an early target to go. Instead, he oversaw the addition of yet another cabinet level department, and doubled the size of the federal government. All that with cutting taxes and writing bad checks. Okay, Congress wrote the checks, but Reagan signed every one.
He whined for a line item veto like every other president. Most figured it was a waste of time because the Constitution of the United States does not allow for selective parts of a bill to be voided by the Executive branch. While Reagan didn't get that wish, it was tested in 1996, and lo and behold, it was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. (Funny how that works.) So, even if Reagan had the line item veto, it would not have lasted very long.
Give me an ability to write unlimited bad checks and I can make myself and all my friends and family look very prosperous. Reagan did nothing different during the Reaganomic years. I have no children. I hope yours, and your grandchildren, are happy to pay your share of the flagrantly outrageous spending. I hope they can pay my share, too.
ableoneable
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I agree with your points.
I would point out, however, that while no president has enjoyed a line item veto, they used to have the authority to withhold funding.
Nixon was the last president to enjoy this authority. Reacting to the watergate scandal congress moved to diminish the authority of the office of the president and the deficit began to grow exponentially.
Other than that you are correct. The republican presidents who have cut taxes while ramping up spending, to a greater degree than the 1969 Democratic Congress would have ever dreamed, have been more than just disingenuous in blaming others for the destruction which now envelopes our economy.
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luvn737s
Guest
Airlines whose labor groups embrace improvements to productivity can reduce their costs of production. Airlines who cling to outdated and unproductive work rules simply to gain the feeling that they are able to retain their rapidly eroding power and influence, are saddled with higher costs and make them uncompetitive. Each $99 fare that they match on Travelocity is done at a loss and contributes to the precarious job security that labor suffers.
Good Union Pilots. Tirelessly working towards their own (and other's) career demise.
Good Union Pilots. Tirelessly working towards their own (and other's) career demise.
Pacemaker
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US Airways' non-competitive cost structure has little or nothing to do with "unproductive work rules". Prior management long-ago decided to operate with a short-haul regional airline model concentrated in the worst ATC, airport, and weather environment in the US and this continues to the present. If you plugged Southwests' labor agreements into the US Airways business model you would hardly see the difference. And vica versa. Stop pointing fingers at each other, at the east, at the west; you should all be pointing fingers at management.
When did US concentrate their ops in the NYC region? PHL is not the worst ATC-delay ridden airport, if that was your point. But it does generate substantial revenue for the airline compared to any other hub they've ever had (PIT, BWI, CLT, PHX, LAS). So...you should revise your argument. Their choice to focus on PHL was a good one in the larger scheme of things.
Worst on time departures:
2006: ORD, ATL, EWR
2007: ORD, EWR, JFK
2008: ORD, EWR, MIA
2009(thru Sep): MIA,EWR,DFW
http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_inform..._ontime_tables/
Look at the airlines that focus their hubs in those cities. Do you hear anyone telling them that they shouldn't be operating in delay-prone areas to turn a profit?? Someone should have told Gordon Bethune 15 years ago to not build up EWR I guess. Just think how much better off they'd be. 🙂
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luvn737s
Guest
Having agreements that tie F/A's schedules to pilot's schedules and Bid Sheets versus PBS are just 2 examples of east's failure to adapt.
I have been ready, willing and able to give the east credit for trying to build common ground, but their actions speak volumes about their callous disregard of everything west. Abandon the RICO suit, the 9th Circuit Appeals and open a Constitutional Convention to re-write the USAPA C&BL's with some west input and you would see a massive change in opinion.
Is anyone picketing the Strip in defense of the LAS base closure? Of course not.
nycbusdriver
Veteran
There are real benefits, especially in the delay prone northeast, to having the flight attendants paired with the pilots. Before the southern division was assimilated, our flight attendants had different pairings. I can remember countless times during aircraft changes arriving at the gate, only to find there were no flight attendants. They were delayed upline somewhere, so now we had only two pieces (pilots, airplane) of a three-piece puzzle (pilots, cabin crew, airplane.) The flight attendants often had the same scenario. Or, we might go to our new gate and be greeted by the flight attendants who would tell us that the airplane is running hour late.
By pairing the cabin crew with the cockpit crew, it reduces the puzzle considerably and had great value when the weather turns to crap. Changing cabin crews continuously makes CRM very difficult, especially when a puzzle piece is running late. I remember my last trip pairing under the southern division very well. It was a 4-day trip with 14 legs. I had 12 different sets of flight attendants in the four days. That's crazy.
I didn't see anyone picketing at LGA, either, so let's stop the bellyaching.
Dog Wonder
Veteran
If they were picketing the Strip, some one would be giving them fliers for Strip shows.
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