Then you should write more clearly. When there is a paragraph that says:
"Petters also has an agreement with aircraft manufacturer Airbus to complete business jets at the facility. Salmen said there is a worldwide shortage of such completion centers, which provide finishing touches and customization for business jets after the major construction is done. "
and you follow that by inserting:
"Wow. Imagine that. A revenue opportunity squandered by NWA."
Hard for me to not assume that you mean that the missed revenue opportunity is in relation to the paragraph preceeding that insertion.
Okay, fair enough.
I would have thought that as much as you're on here, you would have "recognized" that as me giving one last comment askance bemoaning NWA's complete wasting of the DLH facility.
It's hard to have intelligent debate if there is not clarity from the beginning. If you meant something entirely different by your insertion, I'm not sure how I would know that, as I'm not a mind reader.
I'm not clairvoyant either, but I "know" enough about what people post (and how to infer from the same) to see where they're coming from...After all, GroundControl and Jenny knew exactly what I was driving at.
Nevertheless, in the interest of fairness, here's what I meant by that one sentence:
Can we not agree that profit is the ultimate "core strategy" for NWA? At the end of the day, is return on investment for shareholders not the ultimate goal?
I posit that DLH was *never* utilized to it's fullest potential. When it was "ours" it should have been running full throttle 24/7 (IIRC, it wasn;t even a 3 shift/ 7 day a week option until just a few years before it closed. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.).
Any excess capacity-either gained through efficiencies or during the peaks & valleys between heavy checks- should have been seen as golden opportunities to bring in ancillary revenue. Period.
Outfitting corporate jets? Maybe, maybe not. A more logical/solid/consistent option would have been bringing in 3rd party work from other carriers, Airbus itself, or the engine manufacturers. I believe both Airbus and B6 approached NWA about taking on some work, and were rebuffed.
As you well know, this is something that AA and to a lesser extent UA does. If I was running the show, no option would have been left off the table.
As a finance guy, you also know there are ways to make this work to have it be a finacially appealing option to potential customers.
DLH had the potential to be a cash cow. Instead it was squandered away from day one.
By the way, it's not condescension, it's disappointment. You've posted nothing by cynical garbage for the last month.
My cynicism should be seen as grave disappointment in the way this company is run.
What might seem like garbage to you probaly seems quite relevant to someone else.
Every issue that comes up, all there is some some one-liner on how NWA screwed this or that up, even when it's entirely off-the-wall stuff like this that doesn't even make any sense.
When NWA does something right, I'm usually one of the first to post; it just doesn't happen that often. Here's a couple in case you missed them:
1. Fuel savings programs.
2. Holiday attendance program (not a core strategy, but a nice idea, nonetheless)
3. More point-to-point flying to capture traffic in certain markets.
4. Turn cleaning initiative
The problem comes when everything that's implemented somehow gets botched.
With regards to the above examples:
1. A lot of cities' jetways still have interlocks on them. This means we can't plug in ground power until the jetway is all the way up to the A/C. This also means we can't start "turning" the plane until the engines stop. Besides the commodity of fuel, we're wasting the commodity of time. Furthermore, in the heat of the summer/cold of the winter, crews leave the APU running anyway. So now we're burning Jet A *and* the diesel it takes to run an aircart.
3. A lot of these flights start to thrive, then are cut before they can fully mature. We had a LAS red-eye out of here (and, yes, I know how notoriously low-yield that market is), that was literally oversold with people being paid off at least 3 of 5 days a week. The other 2 days saw healthy load factors.
They then decided that it wasn;t working and moved to a Weds./Sat. operation. Who in the world goes to LAS on a Weds.?! When that came to it's obvious conclusion, they axed the flight. Why fix something that's not broken? If LAS isn't working, why not try somewhere that is. I know there's an entire department right down the hall from you that crunches this data for a living. If I know where there markets are, why don't they?
I digress....
Anyway, I would think that there's enough elasticity in that specific market to adjust the fares to make it worthwhile while still keeping demand up. Barring that, there a *plenty* of markets (judging from the traffic numbers on the BTS and other sites, historical data, etc) from the midwest that make fiscal sense, and I'm not even taking into account the extra efficiency of keeping a plane in the air that would otherwise sit, keeping the ground/flight crews moving, utilizing fixed assets (gates, etc) more.
4. Another great idea...except it's one those of us on the ground have been trying to get put back into place for several years now.
Along with that, the company wants 2 people in the jetway on every arrival. No problem, but why not have them come through the back using airstairs (WN does this)? How wasteful it is to have 2 people sit in the jetway while 140 people come off!
(as an aside, I think the DC9 could be done using the ventral stairs on those that have them)
I know I'm in "thread drift" territory, but do you see where I'm going with this? Everytime the company tries to do something, rather than listen to those that do it day in/day out, they find a way to mess it up.
...And these are just a few day to day examples from the Ground Ops world. I'm not even touching on labor relations, outsourcing, sh*tty pass travel, etc.
It just seems like such a waste of talent for you to be in a job that you hate, working for people you despise. It seems like you could do better, and you'd be much happier.
I never said I hate the job itself...In fact, I still actually enjoy it, and I like working outside. The flexibility that it affords me is also a key reason to stay, but we've discussed that before. I also enjoy the people I work with. It's the incompetent clowns at the helm that I can't stand.
When I'm no longer happy or it's no longer feasible for me, I'll be gone. Untl then, I'll keep fighting for the direction I think NWA needs to take.
