USAir = Perpetual junk

[OnTheDole]

Has any airline furloughed or went backrupt more times than US Air... Seriously as long as I've been in aviation thats really all they've been good for. So do they hold the distinguished title?

 

[PuffDriver]

Has any airline furloughed or went backrupt more times than US Air... Seriously as long as I've been in aviation thats really all they've been good for. So do they hold the distinguished title?

About as much worth as America West was.

 

[~~~^~~~]

Hard to say in this business. You know there were a variety of airlines that sprang out of the Eastern meltdown; Carnival, Kiwi, and even some that lived, like ValuJet. Then you have Kalitta, Buffalo Airways, Mesa, Nations Air, etc ....

US Air is doing so much better than I ever expected they would. Of course, they do this as a result of not paying their people what they are worth for the work they do.

 

[get2flyin]

About as much worth as America West was.

I don't think anyone expected a ticker-tape parade for saving USAir, but a simple "thank you" would have been nice.:laugh:

 

[hockeypilot44]

Usair was the place to work in the mid eighties. They had the best contract of anyone, great duty regs, a great pension, were making money, and the company treated all of its employees well. Now it is a terrible company. The thing about this industry is that a lot of the Usair pilots could have chose anywhere to work that they wanted, but they chose Usair. It is not their fault that Usair has been screwed up by management just like it is not the Southwest pilots fault that Southwest has been successful. While Usair was thriving, no one in their right mind would pick Southwest over Usair. Southwest had no pension, paid the least of all airlines, and only offered you one aircraft to fly for the rest of your career. My point is that things change. In 15-20 years, we could be saying the exact same thing about Southwest, etc. Things change. All we do is fly airplanes. We are labor. We have very little impact on whether our company succeeds or not. United has a very similar story to Usair. The answer to your question is no, and America West has never been an airline of choice. Usair has. Thankfully, I do not work for Usair, but I will not bash that pilot group.

 

[satpak77]

Pan Am was "the place" to get hired in the late 70's, early 80's as we all know too. Ditto TWA.

Todays "great" airline could be tomorrows failure.

 

[WSurf]

US Air is doing so much better than I ever expected they would. Of course, they do this as a result of not paying their people what they are worth for the work they do.

And what airline does pay what the workers are worth? Besides Southwest.....

 

[reepicheep]

USAir was a great place in the mid 80's - unfortunately while the visonaries in the rest of the industry were placing their bets on international expansion and high O & D hubs (Delta, United) or fueling expansion via low costss (Piedmont, Southwest) USAir made exactly the wrong strategic moves at exactly the wrong times. Bet the Farm on the PIT hub. Bought F100's. Business as usual circa 1976. Acquired PSA and Piedmont and immediately set about dismantling whatever it was that made those airlines work. And spread the high-cost USAir brand of "cool northern efficiency" throughout the decades-old route networks they'd just bought, essentially rendering them non-competitive and dead.

Too bad; with a progressive and proactive upper management USAir could be Delta today, or Southwest.

 

[hockeypilot44]

USAir was a great place in the mid 80's - unfortunately while the visonaries in the rest of the industry were placing their bets on international expansion and high O & D hubs (Delta, United) or fueling expansion via low costss (Piedmont, Southwest) USAir made exactly the wrong strategic moves at exactly the wrong times. Bet the Farm on the PIT hub. Bought F100's. Business as usual circa 1976. Acquired PSA and Piedmont and immediately set about dismantling whatever it was that made those airlines work. And spread the high-cost USAir brand of "cool northern efficiency" throughout the decades-old route networks they'd just bought, essentially rendering them non-competitive and dead.

Too bad; with a progressive and proactive upper management USAir could be Delta today, or Southwest.

Exactly. The pilots had nothing to do with this. If pilot pay would have kept up with inflation, a captain would be making $500,000/year in today's dollars. A pilot used to make more than the President. Southwest pilots never took a pay cut other than an inflation beating. Southwest pilots have also never signed an industry leading contract. I'm not picking on Southwest intentionally. I just get sick and tired of hearing how airlines should be like Southwest when I heard for years how no one in their right mind would want to work for Southwest. This industry sucks. There is no skill involved in making a successful career. Just dumb luck.

 

[DCAA320]

Has any airline furloughed or went backrupt more times than US Air... Seriously as long as I've been in aviation thats really all they've been good for. So do they hold the distinguished title?

Yo "onthedole" what's it like having a single digit IQ?

 

[AA717driver]

In their heyday, the USAir employees (for the anal-retentive, no, not ALL of them...) looked down their noses at we lowly TWA people trying to bum jumpseats or non-rev.

From agents to rampers to pilots, they made snide remarks and even openly wished TWA would "just go away".

Funny, I always got the opposite from SWA...TC

 

[reepicheep]

Exactly. The pilots had nothing to do with this. If pilot pay would have kept up with inflation, a captain would be making $500,000/year in today's dollars. A pilot used to make more than the President. Southwest pilots never took a pay cut other than an inflation beating. Southwest pilots have also never signed an industry leading contract. I'm not picking on Southwest intentionally. I just get sick and tired of hearing how airlines should be like Southwest when I heard for years how no one in their right mind would want to work for Southwest. This industry sucks. There is no skill involved in making a successful career. Just dumb luck.

I would partially agree. The USAir, Piedmont, and PSA pilots hired in the 1980's can hardly have forseen the train wreck on the horizon.

For the US Airways pilots hired during the Wolf training float "heyday" of 1999-2000 - they should have known better. All the signs were there. And they were amply warned by the realists among the pilot group. Not just a case of "bad luck".

 

[ColKurtz]

Has any airline furloughed or went backrupt more times than US Air... Seriously as long as I've been in aviation thats really all they've been good for. So do they hold the distinguished title?

Continiental, twice in BK.

 

[ironspud]

In their heyday, the USAir employees (for the anal-retentive, no, not ALL of them...) looked down their noses at we lowly TWA people trying to bum jumpseats or non-rev.

From agents to rampers to pilots, they made snide remarks and even openly wished TWA would "just go away".

Funny, I always got the opposite from SWA...TC

Funny. I always got the "TWA screwed the OZ guys because we only gave them DOH" lecture from every USAir jumpseat I got.

 

[Ky.BrownBourbn]

In their heyday, the USAir employees (for the anal-retentive, no, not ALL of them...) looked down their noses at we lowly TWA people trying to bum jumpseats or non-rev.

From agents to rampers to pilots, they made snide remarks..."

Hell, they did the same thing to their own employees, I get treated better now then when I worked there...It was pretty sad!

I cleaned airplanes at Piedmont AIrlines before the age of 10, a friends father took us there for fun quite often, I remember what a real airline was like! Management has just beat down the employees for everything, It's kind of what happens when they combine so many airlines and place all the employees to fight for whats theres (and use the groups againist each other to lower pay benefits etc.) It's been going on since 88-89 (the first merger I can remember with Piedmont PSA and USAir) and it continues, The unions should have had merger plans in place as soon as the first merger happened! (probably somewhere around 1920 when one mail carrier took anothers mail over the hump or something similar!)

Just my 2 cents!
Later,
KBB

 

[PreContact]

just like it is not the Southwest pilots fault that Southwest has been successful.

I think the Southwest pilots would tend to differ with that argument. They're a productive lot.

 

[donvag]

You guys have to remember that Southwest pilots are paid the most because every other airline pilots have taken paycuts and concessions. If Delta and United pilots where paid what they were paid 5 years ago there wouldnt be that much hype on their pay.

 

[BeCareful!]

I don't think anyone expected a ticker-tape parade for saving USAir, but a simple "thank you" would have been nice.:laugh:

Thank you.

Now......Gear Up!

 

[JT12345]

My dad had TWA stock. I think they take the record. 2 Bankrupts. I think the stock was junk twice and reorganized and reoffered.

Never say it can't happen here. I am wondering about all the LCCs.

If a passenger doesn't have money because of the recession to travel it doesn't matter what the ticket price is. There are other expenses to traveling, and airline tickets going up $100 is just one thing.

 

[get2flyin]

Thank you.

Now......Gear Up!

Wake up, go put your tie on, and get out to your aircraft. Your 170 is double parked! Embraer division, HA! That never gets old!

 

[BeCareful!]

Not my plane.....never flew the 170, 175, nor the 190. Not sure what you're talking about.

Now.....about that gear......UP!

 

[Deadalus]

Thank you.

Now......Gear Up!

What are you talking about my little biaaaaattchhh? Nicolau says "gear up!", ha ha.

 

[get2flyin]

What are you talking about my little biaaaaattchhh? Nicolau says "gear up!", ha ha.

Not to worry, USAPA will save them (and only them).

 

[puddlejumper101]

You guys have to remember that Southwest pilots are paid the most because every other airline pilots have taken paycuts and concessions. If Delta and United pilots where paid what they were paid 5 years ago there wouldnt be that much hype on their pay.

I still wish it was that way. SWA has always been like a marathon runner somewhere in the middle of the pack. Out of nowhere, all of the runners started to slow down and now we find ourselves in the lead. We look around and wonder how this happened, and now realize we have a bulls eye on our back. I would rather someone else took the lead. In addition, trying to negotiate a contract when you are in the lead kinda stinks. I don't think we ever set out to break records, just that we ran at the same pace the whole time. The contracts that United and Delta had were record-breaking. We just have the same contract we had a long time ago. It's very good, but never intended to break any records. Yet, we get blamed for dismantling the industry when in reality all SWA did was keep it's word and it's contract.

 

[Quimby]

You guys have to remember that Southwest pilots are paid the most because every other airline pilots have taken paycuts and concessions. If Delta and United pilots where paid what they were paid 5 years ago there wouldnt be that much hype on their pay.

if, if, if....and we all saw how long those contracts lasted.

 

[hockeypilot44]

if, if, if....and we all saw how long those contracts lasted.

Those contracts did not last because of a ridiculous amount of start-up airlines paying their pilots peanuts while they undercut the legacies. Companies like JetBlue, Virgin America, SkyBus, Airtran, etc. The list goes on and on. We should have a national union with minimum pay rates for specific airplanes to prevent undercutting on the labor front. I think it is a disgrace that so many pilots are willing to fly 76 passenger jets for less than $30,000/year as a first officer and less than $60,000/year as a captain. We're our own worst enemies because we think we have the best job in the world.

 

[ironspud]

Yeah. You go boy. You rock.

 

[weasel_lips]

Yeah. You go boy. You rock.

Or 747 Captains making $80,000.

 

[Quimby]

Those contracts did not last because of a ridiculous amount of start-up airlines paying their pilots peanuts while they undercut the legacies. Companies like JetBlue, Virgin America, SkyBus, Airtran, etc. The list goes on and on. We should have a national union with minimum pay rates for specific airplanes to prevent undercutting on the labor front. I think it is a disgrace that so many pilots are willing to fly 76 passenger jets for less than $30,000/year as a first officer and less than $60,000/year as a captain. We're our own worst enemies because we think we have the best job in the world.

it was a little more than start-ups that brought down the big contracts........believe what you want though.

 

[Gillegan]

I would partially agree. The USAir, Piedmont, and PSA pilots hired in the 1980's can hardly have forseen the train wreck on the horizon.

As one who chose USAir in the 80's for some of the same reasons mentioned (making money, industry leading contract etc.), I would have to disagree. There were signs even then of the coming train wreck though it's always much easier to see them in retrospect.

In the mid-80's, USAir was a regional airline that essentially ran unopposed in the high cost - high yield northeast. If you wanted to fly to Albany, Rochester, Erie, Pittsburgh or Elmira etc. there was only one way to go and they sure socked it to you on price. Their costs were the highest in the industry. When they decided to expand into a national carrier, they had never effectively competed with anyone and were ill-equipped to compete with American, United and Delta. They were also loaded with hubris. When I joined, a representative from the company came to talk to our class and he was so full of B.S. about how we couldn't fail, how American wasn't going to know what hit them, and basically how Ed Colodny's ....... didn't stink that I should have known better. Well, about the minute that USAir started to compete with the established majors, they started to lose money and it wasn't until American West bought them that they didn't have the highest costs in the industry.

I do think that as pilots, we have a group-tendency (as do some of the airlines in general) to ignore some of the more basic principles of business - that revenue minus cost equals profit, that you need a basic market for your product and that in a customer service business such as this, if someone can provide better service at the same or lower cost, they will take your customers away.

This whole group tendency towards RJ's has me completely flummoxed. The smaller the airplane, the higher the unit costs. So lets fly two RJ's to the same destination within 20 minutes of each other when it would cost less to fly one 737 with the same passengers. RJ's have their niche - as a tactical aircraft to develop new markets but this wholesale conversion to them defies logic. Oh, and let's charge more to fly from point A to hub B than we charge to fly from point A to hub B to point C. Yeah, that's going to work!