Sunday, June 13, 2004
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When US Airways' pilots face the airline's lead union negotiator Bruce Ashby in the coming weeks, they will look across the bargaining table at a tall, soft-spoken executive who just might be running the entire airline someday.
To many employees and airline observers, the 43-year-old senior vice president is a good bet to move up in the company and eventually succeed current Chief Executive Officer Bruce Lakefield. The latter, a 60-year-old ex-Wall Street banker who came out of retirement in April to lead the Arlington, Va.-based company through yet another turbulent period, has no airline operating experience.
Even Lakefield, who continues to work without a permanent contract, has hinted privately that Ashby may replace him at some point. "I have a feeling that [Ashby] perhaps could be getting groomed to take over as CEO," said Teddy Xidas, president of the Association of Flight Attendants' Pittsburgh Local 41.
"A lot of people have suggested that Ashby is ultimately an airline CEO material," said local airline analyst Bill Lauer. "The shorthand explanation" for Ashby's heightened role "is he may be the senior-most person left inside the company with legitimate hands-on airline operating experience."
Perhaps more importantly, Ashby is a two-time graduate of Stanford University who has the trust of Lakefield and US Airways Chairman David Bronner.
Both are allowing Ashby to lead a critical set of contract talks with the pilots union, the group being asked to give up $295 million in concessions as part of a larger $800 million request from all employees this summer. Without the new round of concessions, the third in three years, the carrier has said it may be forced to file for bankruptcy again.
Why was the bespectacled Ashby chosen to deal with the unions face to face, when another senior vice president, Jerry Glass, had the job of head negotiator during two previous rounds of contract talks in 2002 and 2003 and has been responsible for the airline's relationship with unions?
It may simply be a case of a welcome new face. Glass has an uneasy relationship with union leaders -- a problem Ashby does not have. In fact, it's difficult to find a union official with something bad to say about him.
"I always thought he was a straight shooter and an honest person," said Piedmont Airlines pilot and union leader Calvin Dilks, who has dealt one-on-one with Ashby. Ashby is in charge of the US Airways Express commuter division, which includes US Airways-owned Piedmont.
Richard O'Leary, another pilot and union leader with US Airways-owned Allegheny Airlines, called Ashby "personable, approachable and articulate. Whenever I called his office, he always picked up the phone."
Ashby even has the trust of Xidas, the strong-willed flight attendant and local union president known for her frequent criticism of the company. While Xidas has a volatile relationship with some executives, she claims to get along with Ashby, even praising him for his recent handling of a complaint she made about a MidAtlantic Airways flight crew stranded in its home base of Pittsburgh because of a jet maintenance problem.
The airline would not let the flight attendants stay at a hotel on US Airways' tab. But Ashby, who also runs US Airways' MidAtlantic regional jet operation, allowed the crew members to go home and paid them for the rest of the day, going well beyond what is required by the flight attendants' contract.
"I was impressed with that," Xidas said. To deal with unions, she said, "you have to be a person who keeps your word and I think he can be. I believe he will do the right thing; I think he understands the employee conditions. I think that is why the board decided to put him front and center."
A protege of former US Airways chief executive officer Stephen Wolf, Ashby is something of a wunderkind in the airline industry, holding important jobs at United Airlines and Delta Air Lines in his late 20s and early 30s. He became a US Airways vice president at age 35, one of a select group of top executives handpicked by Wolf, who took the top job at US Airways in 1996.
Ashby, in eight years, has survived four CEOs, a bankruptcy filing and the high management turnover common to the airline industry. A key to his appeal is his broad knowledge of the business, with experience in airline finance, planning, marketing, operations and labor negotiations. Also important is his personality, described as straightforward and honest.
"I always found him to be a pretty sincere individual," said Bruce Aubin, a senior vice president at US Airways in the late 1990s. "I think he is conservative in his thinking, but he is credible and he is an easy individual to get along with and that may be why he was put into this position."
Not that he always agrees with everyone. In fact, Ashby was known to disagree strongly with former CEO David Siegel and former chief financial officer Neal Cohen, feeling the two executives should have moved more quickly on certain initiatives and that they lacked a cohesive strategy for turning around the company.
But Ashby also found a way to disagree with Siegel and Cohen in a nonconfrontational way, although Ashby did talk quietly to other companies during that time about making a move, according to a former senior executive with US Airways who worked with Ashby.
In the late 1990s, Ashby's diplomatic skills were tested similarly in a critical set of union negotiations, and the ex-senior executive who worked with Ashby remembers that he was adept at knowing when unions were simply "horse trading" and when something was really important to them.
Ashby also was "very good at disciplining the management team" and not allowing other executives to present the unions with misleading information, the senior executive said. "He would not let his principles be influenced." Aubin agreed, saying Ashby "wasn't an individual you could stampede into something."
But the former senior executive who worked with Ashby said that, in the end, Ashby would keep his ego in check. "His view is, 'I have a boss. Once the game plan is decided, I will not have my own personal agenda.' It takes a lot of strength for a senior executive to know you can't run your own pop stand here."
Perhaps the only marks against Ashby, who declined comment for this story, are the low-fare operations he helped create at United, Delta and US Airways in the '90s. All three -- Shuttle by United, Delta Express and MetroJet -- lost money and are now defunct.
United dropped Shuttle by United, a West Coast carrier, because it was unable to make money against low-fare rival Southwest Airlines. Delta and US Airways shut down Delta Express and MetroJet, respectively, after the 9/11 attacks and recession crippled travel.
Ashby almost got his shot at running an airline in 2000, when Black Entertainment Television founder and US Airways board member Robert Johnson named Ashby as president of DC Air, a Johnson start-up suggested as part of the failed merger of United Airlines and US Airways. Johnson, speaking on CNN in June 2000, called Ashby "one of the most experienced and talented young executives in the business today."
People who know Ashby said the executive has one bad habit: smoking. On many days, he can be spotted outside US Airways' Crystal City corporate headquarters in suburban D.C., puffing away on a cigarette.
Jon Ornstein, chief executive officer of Phoenix commuter airline Mesa Air, is concerned about it and tells Ashby, "For someone so smart, you are pretty dumb." But "he knows it." So why does he do it? " 'I am driven to it,' " Ornstein says, quoting Ashby.
Ornstein, whose airline is one of US Airways' largest contract carriers, has warned Ashby that his biggest weakness is having worked at so many large airlines. "I remind him, 'Don't let those things ruin your vision.' "
Ornstein also worries that Ashby will get too close to the unions and lose sight of US Airways' larger objectives, which is to try and be as productive as the low-cost airlines -- mainly Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways -- that are eating its lunch in the East.
In the end, though, Ornstein does not believe Ashby will "fall into that trap. Bruce will work with all the constituents for as long as he thinks it is productive. At that point, he has the ability to be tough, if necessary."
By asking Ashby to handle union negotiations, US Airways is "trusting him with the key to success or failure," said the former senior executive who worked with Ashby. "It says a lot."
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When US Airways' pilots face the airline's lead union negotiator Bruce Ashby in the coming weeks, they will look across the bargaining table at a tall, soft-spoken executive who just might be running the entire airline someday.
To many employees and airline observers, the 43-year-old senior vice president is a good bet to move up in the company and eventually succeed current Chief Executive Officer Bruce Lakefield. The latter, a 60-year-old ex-Wall Street banker who came out of retirement in April to lead the Arlington, Va.-based company through yet another turbulent period, has no airline operating experience.
Even Lakefield, who continues to work without a permanent contract, has hinted privately that Ashby may replace him at some point. "I have a feeling that [Ashby] perhaps could be getting groomed to take over as CEO," said Teddy Xidas, president of the Association of Flight Attendants' Pittsburgh Local 41.
"A lot of people have suggested that Ashby is ultimately an airline CEO material," said local airline analyst Bill Lauer. "The shorthand explanation" for Ashby's heightened role "is he may be the senior-most person left inside the company with legitimate hands-on airline operating experience."
Perhaps more importantly, Ashby is a two-time graduate of Stanford University who has the trust of Lakefield and US Airways Chairman David Bronner.
Both are allowing Ashby to lead a critical set of contract talks with the pilots union, the group being asked to give up $295 million in concessions as part of a larger $800 million request from all employees this summer. Without the new round of concessions, the third in three years, the carrier has said it may be forced to file for bankruptcy again.
Why was the bespectacled Ashby chosen to deal with the unions face to face, when another senior vice president, Jerry Glass, had the job of head negotiator during two previous rounds of contract talks in 2002 and 2003 and has been responsible for the airline's relationship with unions?
It may simply be a case of a welcome new face. Glass has an uneasy relationship with union leaders -- a problem Ashby does not have. In fact, it's difficult to find a union official with something bad to say about him.
"I always thought he was a straight shooter and an honest person," said Piedmont Airlines pilot and union leader Calvin Dilks, who has dealt one-on-one with Ashby. Ashby is in charge of the US Airways Express commuter division, which includes US Airways-owned Piedmont.
Richard O'Leary, another pilot and union leader with US Airways-owned Allegheny Airlines, called Ashby "personable, approachable and articulate. Whenever I called his office, he always picked up the phone."
Ashby even has the trust of Xidas, the strong-willed flight attendant and local union president known for her frequent criticism of the company. While Xidas has a volatile relationship with some executives, she claims to get along with Ashby, even praising him for his recent handling of a complaint she made about a MidAtlantic Airways flight crew stranded in its home base of Pittsburgh because of a jet maintenance problem.
The airline would not let the flight attendants stay at a hotel on US Airways' tab. But Ashby, who also runs US Airways' MidAtlantic regional jet operation, allowed the crew members to go home and paid them for the rest of the day, going well beyond what is required by the flight attendants' contract.
"I was impressed with that," Xidas said. To deal with unions, she said, "you have to be a person who keeps your word and I think he can be. I believe he will do the right thing; I think he understands the employee conditions. I think that is why the board decided to put him front and center."
A protege of former US Airways chief executive officer Stephen Wolf, Ashby is something of a wunderkind in the airline industry, holding important jobs at United Airlines and Delta Air Lines in his late 20s and early 30s. He became a US Airways vice president at age 35, one of a select group of top executives handpicked by Wolf, who took the top job at US Airways in 1996.
Ashby, in eight years, has survived four CEOs, a bankruptcy filing and the high management turnover common to the airline industry. A key to his appeal is his broad knowledge of the business, with experience in airline finance, planning, marketing, operations and labor negotiations. Also important is his personality, described as straightforward and honest.
"I always found him to be a pretty sincere individual," said Bruce Aubin, a senior vice president at US Airways in the late 1990s. "I think he is conservative in his thinking, but he is credible and he is an easy individual to get along with and that may be why he was put into this position."
Not that he always agrees with everyone. In fact, Ashby was known to disagree strongly with former CEO David Siegel and former chief financial officer Neal Cohen, feeling the two executives should have moved more quickly on certain initiatives and that they lacked a cohesive strategy for turning around the company.
But Ashby also found a way to disagree with Siegel and Cohen in a nonconfrontational way, although Ashby did talk quietly to other companies during that time about making a move, according to a former senior executive with US Airways who worked with Ashby.
In the late 1990s, Ashby's diplomatic skills were tested similarly in a critical set of union negotiations, and the ex-senior executive who worked with Ashby remembers that he was adept at knowing when unions were simply "horse trading" and when something was really important to them.
Ashby also was "very good at disciplining the management team" and not allowing other executives to present the unions with misleading information, the senior executive said. "He would not let his principles be influenced." Aubin agreed, saying Ashby "wasn't an individual you could stampede into something."
But the former senior executive who worked with Ashby said that, in the end, Ashby would keep his ego in check. "His view is, 'I have a boss. Once the game plan is decided, I will not have my own personal agenda.' It takes a lot of strength for a senior executive to know you can't run your own pop stand here."
Perhaps the only marks against Ashby, who declined comment for this story, are the low-fare operations he helped create at United, Delta and US Airways in the '90s. All three -- Shuttle by United, Delta Express and MetroJet -- lost money and are now defunct.
United dropped Shuttle by United, a West Coast carrier, because it was unable to make money against low-fare rival Southwest Airlines. Delta and US Airways shut down Delta Express and MetroJet, respectively, after the 9/11 attacks and recession crippled travel.
Ashby almost got his shot at running an airline in 2000, when Black Entertainment Television founder and US Airways board member Robert Johnson named Ashby as president of DC Air, a Johnson start-up suggested as part of the failed merger of United Airlines and US Airways. Johnson, speaking on CNN in June 2000, called Ashby "one of the most experienced and talented young executives in the business today."
People who know Ashby said the executive has one bad habit: smoking. On many days, he can be spotted outside US Airways' Crystal City corporate headquarters in suburban D.C., puffing away on a cigarette.
Jon Ornstein, chief executive officer of Phoenix commuter airline Mesa Air, is concerned about it and tells Ashby, "For someone so smart, you are pretty dumb." But "he knows it." So why does he do it? " 'I am driven to it,' " Ornstein says, quoting Ashby.
Ornstein, whose airline is one of US Airways' largest contract carriers, has warned Ashby that his biggest weakness is having worked at so many large airlines. "I remind him, 'Don't let those things ruin your vision.' "
Ornstein also worries that Ashby will get too close to the unions and lose sight of US Airways' larger objectives, which is to try and be as productive as the low-cost airlines -- mainly Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways -- that are eating its lunch in the East.
In the end, though, Ornstein does not believe Ashby will "fall into that trap. Bruce will work with all the constituents for as long as he thinks it is productive. At that point, he has the ability to be tough, if necessary."
By asking Ashby to handle union negotiations, US Airways is "trusting him with the key to success or failure," said the former senior executive who worked with Ashby. "It says a lot."
