Doug gets scrappy!!!
US Airways Group CEO Doug Parker shot back at Continental Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek today for calling the Tempe-based carrier the “ugly girl” in the two airlines’ courtship of United Airlines.
Here’s the full text of a memo Parker sent to US Airways workers today:
Fellow Employees:
A number of you have contacted me asking about Continental CEO Jeff Smisek’s “ugly girl” comment yesterday. In case you haven’t seen it, when announcing their plans to merge with United Airlines yesterday, Mr. Smisek said, “I didn’t want (United CEO Glenn Tilton) to marry the ugly girl. I wanted him to marry the pretty one.” The ugly girl was a clear reference to US Airways. Like me, many of you found his comment both chauvinistic and offensive to the hard-working people of US Airways.
First, you should know that Jeff sent me an apology, stating that he “got carried away in the moment,” “really felt badly” and “had no good excuse.” I believe Jeff was sincere in his apology, have accepted it on behalf of all of us and am ready to move past it.
Having said that, the e-mails I’ve received from many of you suggest this comment hit a nerve so I wanted to give you my views. As one of you simply put it, “Why are we the ugly girl?” The answer, of course, is we are not and there’s no better evidence of that than our recent performance.
In fact, we are performing better than Continental on almost all of the important metrics of our business. Financially, we each reported first-quarter financial results in the past two weeks, and while we both lost money, we both lost much less than last year. However, US Airways’ rate of improvement was much better than Continental’s, driven by both higher revenue growth and better cost control. On an absolute basis, our profit margins are now higher than Continental’s.
Operationally, we’re performing much better than Continental in the primary customer service metric of on-time performance. US Airways jets arrived on time more often than Continental’s during the first-quarter 2010, and we also outperformed them in on-time during all of 2009 and 2008. We are also now neck and neck with Continental in areas like baggage and complaints. This is all being noticed by the outside world, as US Airways’ stock price is up 42 percent so far this year, while Continental’s is up 15 percent, even after announcing their merger.
Bottom line, I think both of our airlines are doing a great job in a challenging business -- but if I were them, I wouldn’t be pointing fingers.
US Airways Group CEO Doug Parker shot back at Continental Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek today for calling the Tempe-based carrier the “ugly girl” in the two airlines’ courtship of United Airlines.
Here’s the full text of a memo Parker sent to US Airways workers today:
Fellow Employees:
A number of you have contacted me asking about Continental CEO Jeff Smisek’s “ugly girl” comment yesterday. In case you haven’t seen it, when announcing their plans to merge with United Airlines yesterday, Mr. Smisek said, “I didn’t want (United CEO Glenn Tilton) to marry the ugly girl. I wanted him to marry the pretty one.” The ugly girl was a clear reference to US Airways. Like me, many of you found his comment both chauvinistic and offensive to the hard-working people of US Airways.
First, you should know that Jeff sent me an apology, stating that he “got carried away in the moment,” “really felt badly” and “had no good excuse.” I believe Jeff was sincere in his apology, have accepted it on behalf of all of us and am ready to move past it.
Having said that, the e-mails I’ve received from many of you suggest this comment hit a nerve so I wanted to give you my views. As one of you simply put it, “Why are we the ugly girl?” The answer, of course, is we are not and there’s no better evidence of that than our recent performance.
In fact, we are performing better than Continental on almost all of the important metrics of our business. Financially, we each reported first-quarter financial results in the past two weeks, and while we both lost money, we both lost much less than last year. However, US Airways’ rate of improvement was much better than Continental’s, driven by both higher revenue growth and better cost control. On an absolute basis, our profit margins are now higher than Continental’s.
Operationally, we’re performing much better than Continental in the primary customer service metric of on-time performance. US Airways jets arrived on time more often than Continental’s during the first-quarter 2010, and we also outperformed them in on-time during all of 2009 and 2008. We are also now neck and neck with Continental in areas like baggage and complaints. This is all being noticed by the outside world, as US Airways’ stock price is up 42 percent so far this year, while Continental’s is up 15 percent, even after announcing their merger.
Bottom line, I think both of our airlines are doing a great job in a challenging business -- but if I were them, I wouldn’t be pointing fingers.
