What If........

[SparrowHawk]

I used to always think a business only airline like Midwest could work on a larger scale, I was wrong.

It never has! However if there is/was a way I think Steve Jobs could find it.

 

[Phoenix]

Well if i had to find an airline that was run more like Apple, it would be Alaska. A friend recently told me one of their management types came in to talk to a bunch of pilots, one of the subjects was being green. The executive proceeded to say that he personally didn't give a sh!t about the environment, but the kind of passengers Alaska was after certainly did. So he said Alaska was going to be the greenest f*&%ing airline out there. They know the kind of passengers they want, how to attract them, and how to make a profit.

Lots of tree hugging, granola heads, and Birkenstocks in the Northwest.

"On every flight our passengers demonstrate extraordinary environmental consciousness by sipping naturally carbonated Perrier out of recycled paper cups, while the pilots feed turbine engines that covert 30,000 lbs. of fossil fuel into future Perrier carbonation."

 

[SparrowHawk]

Lots of tree hugging, granola heads, and Birkenstocks in the Northwest.

In addition they take time out from hugging their trees to make some very tasty beer. Not that your post has a thing to do with the discussion.

 

[luvn737s]

Jester had it correct by and large. I would only add that the regulatory environment of airlines drives away innovators as well as the out-dated approach to labor relations. The truly visionary leaders have to have access to every aspect of a business and be able to shake it to it's core to affect real change.

Doug Parker had to give into a whining contingent that felt the Piedmont Heritage plane wasn't the right shade of blue. Those folks want nothing to do with visionaries or leaders. They just want their 1988 calendars back.

 

[SparrowHawk]

Jester had it correct by and large. I would only add that the regulatory environment of airlines drives away innovators as well as the out-dated approach to labor relations. The truly visionary leaders have to have access to every aspect of a business and be able to shake it to it's core to affect real change.

Doug Parker had to give into a whining contingent that felt the Piedmont Heritage plane wasn't the right shade of blue. Those folks want nothing to do with visionaries or leaders. They just want their 1988 calendars back.

Good Points. However I do take issue with the livery foul-up and your opinion regarding it.

Consider if the AWA plane had somehow gotten the wrong colors? It has little to do with living in the past. What it has to do with is respect for the past. Like it or not, Piedmont was the benchmark for customer service in an industry whose customer service rankings are often below those of the IRS.

The lack of attention to detail is indicative of Doug Parker's lack of vision. Keep in mind that Piedmont CEO/Founder Tom Davis was upon his retirement presented with a new Mercedes bought by the employees. So while as an outsider looking in, I can easily see how one might arrive at the decision you did regarding people living in the past.

One could easily argue that Tom Davis was a visionary.

 

[luvn737s]

Consider if the AWA plane had somehow gotten the wrong colors?

Personally, I think there are about 135 AWA airplanes in the wrong colors! A visionary would have jettisoned the USAirways name with great flourish and fanfare, as a clean break with a troubled past.

Nope, the west employees deal with events as they occur and react appropriately, as you would expect adults to do.

The east, not so much. I don't say that to flame, but simply as a real observation of their behavior.

Tom Davis a visionary? Nope. Nice guy perhaps, but he didn't keep his airline from being decimated by the PIT culture.

If you want to find the visionaries, you look to Juan Tripp and Eddie Rickenbacker as the bookends of international and domestic airline pioneering respectively. All those who came after rode on their coattails. PanAm and Eastern did not have the financial support to adapt to the new market realities post 1978 (perhaps the IBMs of the airline biz, but not exactly) and were left to be picked apart.

 

[Dont call me Shirley]

\

The lack of attention to detail is indicative of Doug Parker's lack of vision. Keep in mind that Piedmont CEO/Founder Tom Davis was upon his retirement presented with a new Mercedes bought by the employees. ...
One could easily argue that Tom Davis was a visionary.

A few years back, I tried to to organize "Buy a Yugo for DoUgIe campaign", for the following rationale: If he truly believes that "cheaper is better", let him show it by driving a cheap car. Also, maybe if he had not been driving that snazzy beamer on the night that resulted in his scrape with the law, he might have drawn less attention, and maybe not going as fast.

I even found a nice Yugo on E-bay that was formerly owned, not by a little old lady who only drove it to church, but by former Yugo USA exec. Low mileage, well maintained.

I figured if enough readers of this forum would chip in, it could happen. Words cannot express my disappointment when there we no takers.

From a CEO given a (custom painted in PI blue) Mercedes to one that doesn't even get a Yugo. Sad.

 

[SparrowHawk]

Personally, I think there are about 135 AWA airplanes in the wrong colors! A visionary would have jettisoned the USAirways name with great flourish and fanfare, as a clean break with a troubled past.

Nope, the west employees deal with events as they occur and react appropriately, as you would expect adults to do.

The east, not so much. I don't say that to flame, but simply as a real observation of their behavior.

Tom Davis a visionary? Nope. Nice guy perhaps, but he didn't keep his airline from being decimated by the PIT culture.

If you want to find the visionaries, you look to Juan Tripp and Eddie Rickenbacker as the bookends of international and domestic airline pioneering respectively. All those who came after rode on their coattails. PanAm and Eastern did not have the financial support to adapt to the new market realities post 1978 (perhaps the IBMs of the airline biz, but not exactly) and were left to be picked apart.

It may interest you to know that the former management of US Airways seriously considered changing their name to Piedmont. This idea apparently came from no less than Dave Siegel as he felt that the US Airways name carried so many negatives that a new name might be in order. Also this exploration apparently went so far as a few focus groups and would have happened if US had become profitable post BK#1.

As to Mr Davis, If memory serves he was long retired and perhaps deceased by the time the US/PI merger and the subsequent rancor between former US and PI employees that led to the cultural nightmare that is US today.

I don't know enough aviation history to comment on EAL and Pan AM and their leadership/vision. By the time I became aware Eastern has essentially done as a going concern.

Interestingly enough you still interact with one of the few remaining remnants of EAL. That is your reservations systems, SHARES which was originally known as System One at Eastern and was cited as the sole reason Lorenzo bought Eastern. There are 2 agents in BOS that worked with Eastern who clued me in on this and let me tell ya, I've never seen SHARES work better then when these two use it.

Doug Parker and his team are neither leaders nor visionaries, what they are is effective managers which is why IMO US Airways will never reach its full potential. One can only speculate what US would look like today had Gordon Bethune stayed and rose to CEO.

 

[nycbusdriver]

Looking back I think management stopped running USAirways as soon as the deal with United was announced and it seemed like they did every thing they could to put the airline into BK as quickly as possible after the deal fell through.

True, and the attacks on 9/11 gave Wolf "certain opportunities" (quote from Rakesh Gangwal) to speed that process up even further.

Doug Parker had to give into a whining contingent that felt the Piedmont Heritage plane wasn't the right shade of blue. Those folks want nothing to do with visionaries or leaders. They just want their 1988 calendars back.

Yeah. He gave in, repainted it and it's still the wrong color blue. If the American Worst paint scheme had been messed up, you can be sure it would have been made perfect pronto.

One could easily argue that Tom Davis was a visionary.

He truly was. Even Bill Howard was a visionary. Howard's big downfall was letting himself get outmaneuvered by Ed Colodny while the CEO of Norfolk Southern was in the hospital recovering from a serious heart attack.

As to Mr Davis, If memory serves he was long retired and perhaps deceased by the time the US/PI merger and the subsequent rancor between former US and PI employees that led to the cultural nightmare that is US today.

He was alive at the time of the merger. He passed on in April, 1999, at the age of 81. No one from US corporate at the time, or their predecessors, attended the services. Cool northern efficiency, I tells ya!

There was relatively little rancor in the aftermath of the PIA/AAA merger. Relative, that is, to what we see today. I say that because I lived through it everyday. Any you?

 

[luvn737s]

Yeah. He gave in, repainted it and it's still the wrong color blue. If the American Worst paint scheme had been messed up, you can be sure it would have been made perfect pronto.

Really? If Franke was still here there would be no "USAirways", no waste of money on heritage planes, no kow-towing to anyone on either side and the east would be wearing a barrel around their waists and a broom handle up their b--- and happily telling everyone who would listen, how lucky they were to have a job. The injunction would have been in place on June 1 and he would have told USAPA to do what they do best up a rope.

Franke while not a visionary, would have been exactly the right man to squeeze the collective jewels of the east pilot group until they decided to go along with the merger timeline. I can't believe I would ever wish him on anyone, but this merger proves nothing is beyond the realm of possibility.

 

[SparrowHawk]

Really? If Franke was still here there would be no "USAirways", no waste of money on heritage planes, no kow-towing to anyone on either side and the east would be wearing a barrel around their waists and a broom handle up their b--- and happily telling everyone who would listen, how lucky they were to have a job. The injunction would have been in place on June 1 and he would have told USAPA to do what they do best up a rope.

Franke while not a visionary, would have been exactly the right man to squeeze the collective jewels of the east pilot group until they decided to go along with the merger timeline. I can't believe I would ever wish him on anyone, but this merger proves nothing is beyond the realm of possibility.

Hey kids, can we take this off line or to the pilots thread. 737, I appreciate your efforts to keep things on topic. However with all due respect to both you and Nybusdriver you have 3814 pages last I looked so can we keep it kinda focused on the speculation?

 

[ContUNITEus]

This is getting to be another east vs. west ego battle. :blink:

 

[UPNAWAY]

In some ways I still wonder why a huge tech company has not tried to buy an airline only because of how cheap they are. They could pay cash without even breaking a sweet. Also with a lot of your self starters in tech you might think they would be inclined to think they can make it work. But since that is never even mentioned probably shows just how bad a business this is to be in.

 

[luvn737s]

The draw of the airline business is simple - CASH. Visionaries seek the challenge of building something out of nothing. Airline caretaker managers turn a viable something into nothing. With alarming consistency.

 

[Iclubbabyseals]

The draw of the airline business is simple - CASH. Visionaries seek the challenge of building something out of nothing. Airline caretaker managers turn a viable something into nothing. With alarming consistency.

I could not agree with you more. Well done.