Hey Hal-
I feel bad as heck for those guys that are getting furloughed over there. It really is a terrible thing. Both of our companies are in dire straits right now. Both of them. You know the only way to survive is to grow....that's it. Aloha took the route of small aircraft and secondary markets. HAL is going big a/c big markets. I'm not sure what is best coming from Hawaii. On the mainland, its simple......Southwest works.....here its a differen't animal.....
All that being said, you know as well as i do the interisland market was killing both companies. We agreed to collude on routes. For some reason, HAL wanted to fly roughtly 10% more than we did this month. They had differen't demographics than we did. Fine. Differen't companies and differen't ways of thinking. When it comes down to it, we are both almost breakin' even....Long haul, differen't story. you guys go head to head with the majors, we don't....again, differen't way of thinkin'....
I don't want to be a pain, but I am so friggin' tired of hearing about how bad we are over here. The smartest thing in the world for these two barely surviving airlines was a merger. Why in anyone's name people didn't want that to go thru (besides the travel agents and people that are using our companies for next to nothing) is beyond me. Yet we still got so much opposition from next door. As a new company, NOT ALOHA, NOT HAL, but a new company, we'd actually be in a position to make our own market. No one could have touched us. Its really a sad deal....but....more to the point...you mentioned that you didn't like the way HAL cooperated with US. Read the filing. It didn't quite work that way!
The worst part is, I think it sucks that either of us, nay any airline has to layoff labor. It's not right. We all move into these jobs with a long term goal in mind. It bothers me to no end that, like you (or one of your other posters here) says, every year around xmas, people get furloughed. That's wrong. I truly hope that you all get recalled as soon as possible. We've all put in too much to be just casually booted aside for no other reason than poor company planning. Pure BS!
This round, we are fortunate over here at AQ. Some day in the future you guys will be over there. I really hope you don't gloat when the time comes. We sure as hell try not to. Congrats on the Cathay Pacific deal...that'll save some jobs!
