Boyd says LCC's have their problems approaching

[GuppyWN]

Bring it on. The way I see it, once the legacy carriers regain profitability, the employees (managers) will just choke the life out of the operation. Again.

Gup

 

[800Dog]

Bring it on. The way I see it, once the legacy carriers regain profitability, the employees will just choke the life out of the operation. Again.

Gup

Spoken like a management love child! If the legacies go away, how do our troops get to and from the theater? LUV, Jetblue, AirFrance, Lufthansa?

 

[YourPilotFriend]

How did the employees choke the life out of it? SWA has the highest paid employee's in the industry. Don't worry GuppyWN you can join the rest of us here in the paycut world soon. In my opinion, SWA will be in or near bankruptcy by 2008-2009.

 

[Skyguy]

Management and Pilots

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He spots
a
man down below and lowers the balloon to speak with him. The balloonist
gets
close enough to speak with the man on the ground and shouts down to him,
"Excuse me, but maybe you can help me. I promised my friend I would meet him
half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man on the ground responds, "No problem; you are in a hot air
balloon
hovering about 30 feet above
this field. You are located at 26' 04.4 North Latitude, and 80' 09.2 West
Longitude and drifting slowly south."

You must be an airline pilot, says the balloonist.

"I am, how did you know?" replies the man on the ground.

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically
correct, but I have no idea what to make of the information you gave me. I
am
still lost, so you have done absolutely nothing to help me!"

The man on the ground says "You must be in airline management."

"I am" replies the balloonist, "how did you know?"

"Well"; says the man on the ground, "you do not know where you are or
where
you are going. You have made a promise that you cannot keep and you expect
me
to solve your problems for you. The fact is that you are in the exact same
position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault."

Ain't this the truth!

 

[abe44]

Bring it on. The way I see it, once the legacy carriers regain profitability, the employees (managers) will just choke the life out of the operation. Again.

Gup

Guppy,

I tend to agree...just thank your lucky stars that you have a management group that knows what the hell is going on! I work for a legacy management.....I, and the rest of the employees here have sacrificied big-time and now are paid much less than you and your co-workers. Everyone at my company is paid less than SWA, except our senior managers!

Not counting the huge bonuses/stock options that they will make after we exit BK, our senior managers already make a lot more than yours! (and their performance shows that they should be earning about 1/10 or your top guys/gals).

My hope is that we get rid of our "dead weight" as we restructure here. If I were in charge I would bring over some intelligent SWA managers (at double their current salary...still less than our worthless managers) and give them total power to clean house. (I work for Delta, by the way).

Either that, or just re-hire the folks who ran this place before the bean counter, Harvard MBA's took over.

My prediction (you heard it here first!) is that LCC pilots/flight attendants/mechanics/gate agents/etc will be crying about their company coming to them for givebacks in the near future because they can't compete with the so-called "legacy" carrier costs.

It's an easy prediction to make, because the time is NOW!

Abe44

 

[T45Flyer]

In my opinion, SWA will be in or near bankruptcy by 2008-2009.

YourPilotFriend,
Just curious on what situation or issues that you see to bring you to this conclusion. Thanx.

 

[ivauir]

. The LCC cards are for the most part worthless.
.

Lots of folks seem to like the Swa card ....

 

[canyonblue]

If a passenger is only flying 2-3 times a year..he is going to have a hard time earning a ticket on Southwest too.

Yea I know, I was going to put 8-9 for the simplicity of the free ticket, but it just ends up in a p!ssing match anyway. Bottom line is if you fly enough to cover 100,000 miles or more, I would thing you could afford to just buy a ticket to Europe and not have the hassle of the blackouts.

 

[Dane Bramage]

"In my opinion, SWA will be in or near bankruptcy by 2008-2009."

In my 5+ years of reading FlightInfo, THAT is the most ridiculous statement I've ever seen here. Dude, you are NOT smart...

 

[DTW320]

They will point to Airtran, with their "point-to-point" service and their low-paid employees. They don't realize that Airtran pays it's 717 Captains more than Delta or United or Northwest pays their widebody Captains. They also don't realize that Airtran is a Hub carrier just like Delta, Northwest and United.

Sorry Abe, minor BS flag on the play.....

At least for now,even with the huge concessions, DAL and NWA pay more for every widebody CA than Airtran pays the most senior 717 CA. Same for UAL(747-400 & 777) with the exception of 767 CA which is $4/hr less than AT 12yr 717CA.

Not that any of this matters, just trivia............

 

[MLBWINGBORN]

How did the employees choke the life out of it? SWA has the highest paid employee's in the industry. Don't worry GuppyWN you can join the rest of us here in the paycut world soon. In my opinion, SWA will be in or near bankruptcy by 2008-2009.

Well..
I guess we fooled them again boys..

As long as folks think we are harmless and about to die a very public death they will continue to blame something/sombody else for their woes.

About every quarter some wise ass makes a statment like we are just a tic toc away from some disaster.

But never provides supporting data nor qualified information as to how this is supposed to be happening.

What some of you folks dont get is that we are ALWAYS close to the edge.

We plan to be CLOSE TO THE EDGE.We LIKE being close to the edge.

And we will do everything required to stay as close to the edge as possible.

Some posters on this board are like Mike Boyd.

They read the posts here,look thru then WSJ or NYT and then spout some earth shattering news that at best is fiction very loosely based on a very narrow collection of biased reports or opions.

People like Mike Boyd are nothing but hired mouth pieces that on slow days when hes not writing for a client like American or United,spout off the obvious and charge you for it while laughing all the way to the bank.

In other words..He is nothing but a hired tool.

Give him no more credit than that and you wont be surprised nor disappointed.

Give him more..You very well may find yourself at the very least embarassed and at the very worst BROKE.

 

[FlyBoeingJets]

Originally Posted by YourPilotFriend
How did the employees choke the life out of it? SWA has the highest paid employee's in the industry. Don't worry GuppyWN you can join the rest of us here in the paycut world soon. In my opinion, SWA will be in or near bankruptcy by 2008-2009.

Originally posted by Abe44
My prediction (you heard it here first!) is that LCC pilots/flight attendants/mechanics/gate agents/etc will be crying about their company coming to them for givebacks in the near future because they can't compete with the so-called "legacy" carrier costs.

C'mon guys. Delta started losing money in '01 and just declared BK in '05, almost 5 years of losses. Do you really think BK in 3 years will happen at a SWA? A carrier that now pays cash for a majority of their new aircraft (8% growth) and still posts a profit. With those pesky fuel hedges strong until the end of 2007 and some until 2009. IMHO, if you want to predict BK in 3 years pick a carrier posting losses with a less robust balance sheet.



Abe44,

Your assertion makes more sense, but I disagree. See the above paragraph. Mostly, I think the near future is too soon. The human nature factor will loom large and IF pay cuts are on the table, you are right, the whining will be louder than a T-37 during the second engine start.

Also, look at www.airlinepilotcentral.com Airtran, or any other pax carrier, does not pay narrowbody captains more than legacy widebody captains. Maybe ABX does.

 

[AA717driver]

All I know is that a huge debt load killed TWA. It wasn't an instant death but it killed them just the same.

Those carriers coming out of bankruptcy are or will be carrying a huge debt load. So does AA. Anyone is crazy to talk of real (not just paper magic) profits at these carriers until that debt load is substantially (90%) reduced along with the debt service payments. AA has to siphon $1 BILLION straight off the top of their annual revenue to service the debt. Scares me.

Personally, I have been treated better on the LCC's (SWA, Frontier and AT) than on the Legacies. That is what determines where my money goes.TC

 

[llowwelll]

They also will tell you that all LCC's are profitable. Not so, just look at Jet Blue's recently reported loss......or Airtran's latest quarter and 2006 estimate....or SWA's 2005 performance (minus their fuel hedges).

AirTran's 2006 fiscal year average profit estimate ranges anywhere from a low of $0.70 per share (AirTran's own website: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=64267&p=irol-estimates) to a high of $0.88 per share (http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/analyst/earnest.asp?Symbol=AAI). The spread from individual analysts varies from $0.24 per share (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ae?s=AAI) to $1.44 per share. Of course, AirTran may surprise all of the analysts and post a loss for the next fiscal year, but even with the lowest estimate for 2006, profits should approximately double FY 04 results. None of the analysts that I saw are forecasting a loss in FY 06 at AirTran.

 

[TZtoSWA]

Spoken like a management love child! If the legacies go away, how do our troops get to and from the theater? LUV, Jetblue, AirFrance, Lufthansa?

ATA, World, Omni, etc.