The Company That Couldn't Shoot Straight

songbirdstew

Senior
Sep 10, 2003
478
51
THE COMPANY THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT

48 days after the "Res Migration" on March 4, 2007, US Airways continues to flounder. Agents can't check passengers in for flights. Passengers can't be rebooked after their flights have been cancelled or delayed. Flights are being dispatched without passenger manifests. Employees commuting to work or traveling for pleasure (part of our compensation package) are being left at the gate because record locator numbers "can't be located".

A walk through an East Coast hub airport is like being in the horror film "Night of the Living Dead" as passengers wait zombie-like in endless lines or run madcap through concourses trying to catch their connecting flights.

Employees have no answers and more importantly no direction.

"So far they (the customers) are putting up with this", said Travis Christ, vice president of sales and marketing. "It's not too late".

"If there was an eighth day of the week we would like to have it", said Anthony Mule, senior vice president of customer service.

"You can run a substandard airline for a short period of time, but you can't do it for a long period", said CEO Doug Parker.

Say what?

The bottom line gentleman is this- you can't run a substandard airline FOR ANY LENGTH of time. Your job is to get it right the first time.

After cashing in millions of dollars in stock options last year, key America West managers are now walking around apologizing to customers and employees at the "New US Airways". Most of the same mangers were at the helm in 2000 when the former America West Airlines suffered meltdowns that drove customers away.

At this week's Crew News Session in CLT, Doug Parker said, "we weren't prepared for the reservation migration". We weren't prepared? How would a supervisor respond if a Flight Attendant or a Pilot were to tell them, "I was not prepared to operate that flight'? Employees do not have the luxury to not be prepared. We come to work every day prepared to do our jobs only to be let down by our leaders. As employees we are all held accountable for our actions. As parents we demand accountability from our children. Who holds are leaders accountable? Ultimately it is the people who pay all of our salaries.

There are no more excuses. There is no more time. The days of apologies are over. The employees have had it. The customers have had it.

The merger between America West and US Airways created an airline more than twice the size of America West. The merger also created a mentality among management that the airline could be run at half the cost. It can't. While managers spend time crafting "performance bonus packages" for each other, rank and file employees are left to fend for themselves. Contract talks are going nowhere as management continues to make substandard proposals that will never be ratified by the members.

The lesson here is this- there is no such thing as a "Full Service-Low Cost Airline". That model, sold to Wall Street, only works if you find employees willing to work for nothing and customers willing to pay for nothing. Neither will continue to happen.

Thank you,

Mike Flores, President
The US Airways Master Executive Council
AFA-CWA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Bring back sabre, bring back sabre, bring back sabre.

Our employees have suffered enough. It is time to get out on the street both employees and passengers and start showing this country what usairways has done !

We need sabre, we don't believe you will start hiring and we have no money ! For g-d's sake usairways, this is your last chance.
 
Good e-line. I think that when the dust settles for the migration it will be better system overall. Think of this:

West never had Sabre, East never had Shares (QUIK). Now that east has worked with this, they are working as a team to create a much better version of Shares, using what they had from SABRE and applying it to SHARES. In the end, it will be an awesome system, but this had to happen to put all of the heads together. Thats my take on this.
 
Good e-line. I think that when the dust settles for the migration it will be better system overall. Think of this:

West never had Sabre, East never had Shares (QUIK). Now that east has worked with this, they are working as a team to create a much better version of Shares, using what they had from SABRE and applying it to SHARES. In the end, it will be an awesome system, but this had to happen to put all of the heads together. Thats my take on this.

So you think this airline in it's sad sad state has the luxury of reinventing the wheel and peicemealing a patchwork RES system together? :blink: How about this idea?- SABRE already does all those "fancy things" (as Tempe would say). Admit the mistake and move on.
 
Go back to the desert and bring shares with you !

Bring back sabre, bring back sabre.

Lets get a united front on this and stop babbling day after day. Now is time to take action !
 
Good to see that someone is realizing you cannot be a full service low cost airline. It is like trying to build and sell BMW quality at Kia prices. It does not work unless labor and resources are free. Something has got to give ..... IMHO
 
Bring back sabre, bring back sabre, now lets get together for some real media attention at the annual stock holders meeting in may in PHILLY! This is how we do it from now on. Anyone onboard?

PB , the new airline name should be BBS (bring back sabre).
 
I agree 100% desertfa66. East went through the SAME thing when we went from PACER/ARTS to SABRE. The crying continued until SABRE was replaced with SHARES, now the crying is to bring back the system that replaced the beloved PACER....go figure
 
Thank you Pollyanna :rolleyes:

From the customer perspective which frankly is the only one that matters it has been an unmitigated disaster of the first order. The Katrina of Res Migrations if you will.

All the while we have Baghdad Bob out there insulting the customers intelligence. They were caught in Documented Lies there Pollyanna.

Here we are 9 weeks into this abortion and multiple pages of fixes still exist. The QIK overlay is by all accounts near useless. See Pollyanna when you have a REAL airline you need a REAL reservations system.

When US was just the East it had the only third world banana republic airport in the USA as a hub. Now thanks to all of the "Enhancements" from the "Cost of everything, Value of nothing" Gang we now have third world on-time performance, third world baggage services, third world wages, third world inflight service, third world customer service and last but not least a third world reservation system.

All of which give me an idea. Perhaps the company should change its name to TWA which would be "Third World Airways". Or Trailerpark In The Sky Airways

Rude Bob, very Rude
 
I agree 100% desertfa66. East went through the SAME thing when we went from PACER/ARTS to SABRE. The crying continued until SABRE was replaced with SHARES, now the crying is to bring back the system that replaced the beloved PACER....go figure

We did? We went through about 1/8 of this and not for this long. I remember it well and it was not this bad or this screwed up. We also had SABRE that were professionals working it all out. These people are a gaggle of fools.
 
We did? We went through about 1/8 of this and not for this long. I remember it well and it was not this bad or this screwed up. We also had SABRE that were professionals working it all out. These people are a gaggle of fools.


I disagree with your 1/8th statement, but I do agree that the timing and degree of difficulties was not this bad. However, US was not "reinventing" itself at that time. There was one problem to focus on....not a multitude of changes.

And hula-flyguy/DesertFA66 and Tempe living in reality! :lol:


Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be...I tried it, didnt like it. Altered reality in this job works much better
 

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