How about managing your way out of this mess, instead?

[FlyBoeingJets]

How do you overcome about $1 Billion a year in debt servicing, lowering of credit rating, lack of fuel hedging and the cost of parking aircraft and downsizing (read: reduced revenue and costly non-performing assets)?

Just to match the costs of growing airlines you have to cut wages way low, unless you can find other ways to save or make money. One option is charging decent fares on lucrative international routes. The transition to more international flying is now occuring but the effects won't be seen for awhile. I'm amazed at how slow this stuff happens but the results will be seen later in '05, particularly if oil goes down.

BTW, is a cheaper dollar going to help or hurt AA, UAL, DAL?
There are more issues but that is part of it. My 2 cents.....

 

[G4G5]

How many UAL retired folks are collecting a pension and medical benefits?
What is the average age of UAL's fleet vs Airtran's?
How many fleet types does UAL operate vs Airtran?
What did UAL pay for a gallon of fuel vs Airtran?
What is the average tenure of UAL's ground staff vs Airtran?
Overall maint, utilities, insurance, yada yada costs?

All of these questions and plenty more equate to why UAL is having it's troubles. Those of you who simply say poor mgt need to do a little more research on this industry as a whole.

The current mgt and employee group can do little to change any of the above. It's the nature of the beast and one of the reasons why history is bound to repeat itself. Sooner then later B6 and Airtran will have the senior employee group and history will repeat itself once again

 

[FlyFastLiveSlow]

We as a pilot group (all airlines) need to petition our government for some sort of protection against this obvious attack by managment to lower the quality and sanctity of our profession.

Do you actually think this administration gives a crap that corporate America is raping the pilots' contracts? HA!

 

[46Driver]

Do you actually think this administration gives a crap that corporate America is raping the pilots' contracts? HA!

Y'all seem to be forgetting that UAL has been in Chapter 11 for over 24 months. The pilot's contracts may be going down, but at least the UAL pilots have jobs.

 

[Ty Webb]

The big factors contributing to UAL's present downward spiral are:

POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE:

LEVERAGING:

ECONOMIC FACTORS:

LOW COST CARRIERS:

Let's not forget the twin boondoggles of the doomed USAirways merger and the aborted entry into the fractional bizjet market. Bet those hundreds of millions would come in handy right about now.

 

[AA717driver]

Stephen "Don't call me Steve" Wolf is laughing at all you schmucks from his chateau right now... TC

 

[Clyde]

Let's not forget the twin boondoggles of the doomed USAirways merger and the aborted entry into the fractional bizjet market. Bet those hundreds of millions wold come in handy right about now.

Ty,
That is an excellent point. UAL was very ready to purchase US Airways back in 2000, and that was not going to be cheap. When they backed out they still had to pay some pretty hefty fees. They obviously had the money back then to spend, and they weren't complaining about salaries and wages either. All of a sudden when the $hit hits the fan, it's the fault of the pilot's wages.

My question to the execs is this: If you had all of this money sitting around ready to buy another carrier, how did you lose all of it in the course of a year? Also, I wonder why they didn't bother to reduce their debt load while they had the money to do it.

 

[-9Capt]

This is the first civil conversation I've seen posted here in a long time. Someone is bound to come along and ruin it.

 

[FlyFastLiveSlow]

This is the first civil conversation I've seen posted here in a long time. Someone is bound to come along and ruin it.

I'll second that.

 

[UALjan15]

Don't the UAL employees own at least 51% of the company? Correct me if I am wrong but that gives them control of UAL's destination.

OK, you're wrong. Since the Chapter 11 filing, most everything associated with the ESOP is overcome by events. I believe the 2 board seats still exist, but the employee's shares are gone/worthless. There is no "control of UAL's destination" by any employee group, or even all of them together if they chose to work together as a single team. The best the employee groups can do is negotiate with the company in the face of horrific losses and hope to come out better than they would have in the 1113 proceeding.

It will all make for a fascinating case study some day, but for now, it is a nightmare that you just can't seem to wake up from.