How to Earn Respect as an Airline Pilot

[Rez O. Lewshun]

We're going to make the best impression on the traveling public, and we're going to make a pile of extra dough just from being first.​

— C. R. Smith, American Airlines, on the introduction of the Boeing 707, 'Forbes,' 1956.​

Its operation in a world beset by fuel and energy crises makes no sense at all.​

— Senator Cranston of California, regards the Concorde, 1974.​

You can be in London at 10 o'clock and in New York at 10 o'clock. I have never found another way of being in two places at once.

— Sir David Frost, Concorde regular.​

It is a magic aircraft . . . the pleasure of flying in it is almost a carnal one.

— Joelle Cornet-Templet, Air France's Chief Steward regards Concorde.​

An aircraft which is used by wealthy people on their expense accounts, whose fares are subsidized by much poorer taxpayers.​

— Denis Healey, British Labour Party, regards the Concorde.​

Without doubt, Concorde died yesterday at the age of 31. All that will remain is the myth of a beautiful white bird.

— 'Le Figaro' editorial, the day after AF 4590 crashed at takeoff from Charles de Gaulle aerodrome, 26 July 2000.​

For those of us who live in the shadow of this noisy monster, there aren't too many of us who are sorry to see it go.

— Anthony D. Weiner, Congressman for the 9th district of New York regards Concorde.​

The Boeing 747 is the commuter train of the global village.

— H. Tennekes, 'The Simple Science of Flight,' 1996.​

I don’t believe in being the launch customer for anything.​

— Carl Michel, British Airways’ commercial director, regards the Airbus A3XX (which was eventually named the A380), February 2000.​

We are pleased we haven't got one on order. It's too big an aircraft.

— Willie Walsh, CEO British Airways, regards the A380. Reported in AW&ST 21 November 2005.​

We have focused on derivatives for several years, but when it's time to do a new airplane, it's time to do a new airplane.​

— Michael B. Bair, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president for business strategy and development, announcing the 'Sonic Cruiser' (which was eventually canceled), 29 March, 2001.​

There has always been a certain romanticism associated with the airline business. We must avoid its perpetuation at Eastern at all costs.​

— Frank Borman​

I'm not paid to be a candy ass. I'm paid to go and get a job done. I could have ended up with another job, but the job I ended up with was piecing together a bunch of companies that were all headed for the junk heap . . . . I've got to be the bastard who sits around Eastern Airlines and says, 'hey, we're losing $3 million a day or whatever the number is and bang, bang, bang, bang, what do you do?' So, some jobs are easier than others.​

— Frank Lorenzo​

We are long-term players in the industry. We're not just crazy and emotional. We try to be logical business managers.​

— Frank Lorenzo​

I can't imagine a set of circumstances that would produce Chapter 11 for Eastern.​

— Frank Lorenzo​

As a businessman, Frank Lorenzo gives capitalism a bad name.​

— William F. Buckley​

From this day forward, you must assume that Eastern Airlines intends to force a strike, and you must be prepared for the worst.​

— Charlie Bryan, Eastern Machinists union leader .​

We were raped!​

— Frank Borman, after capitulating to Charlie Bryan's wage demands.​

You've got to treat people as equals, and make them feel like it's their company. I don't know if I've had any impact or helped persuade Frank [to sell Eastern]. But, I can tell you, there were many discussions on the subject.​

— Michael Milken​

Frank is capable of any kind of behavior to win.​

— Don Burr​

If you would look up bad labor relations in the dictionary, you would have an American Airlines logo beside it.​

— U.S. District Judge Joe Kendall, issuing a restraining order against an American Airlines APA pilot union sick out, 10 Feb 1999.​

The greatest sin of airline management of the last 22 years is to say, "It’s all labor’s fault."

— Donald Carty, Chairman and CEO American Airlines, 12 August 2002.​

Do you know how much faster I can fix an airplane when I want to fix it than when I don't want to fix it?

— Gordon Bethune, CEO Continental Airlines, quoted in 'Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up,' 2002.​

It's like telling Mozart that there are too many notes in an opera. Which one do you want us to take out?

— Gordon Bethune, Chairman of Continental Airlines, regards U.S. government criticism that carriers schedule too many flights, quoted in 'Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up,' 2002.​

Regulation has gone astray. . . . Either because they have become captives of regulated industries or captains of outmoded administrative agencies, regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anticompetitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.​

— Senator Edward Kennedy, opening remarks to the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, 6 February 1975.​

Whenever competition is feasible it is, for all its imperfections, superior to regulation as a means of serving the public interest.​

— Alfred Kahn, airline economist & Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board.​

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

This entire industry is in a death spiral, including this company, and I can't get us out of it. Deregulation is an abysmal failure and we have no more furniture left to burn.

— Bruce Lakefield, CEO US Airways, while between bankruptcies and before being taken over by America West, October 2004.​

Bankruptcy as a solution in kind of un-American.

— Tom Horton, Chief Financial Officer American Airlines, reported in USA Today, 6 April 2006.​

British Airways believes that it is intrinsically deceptive for two carriers to share a designator code.​

— British Airways, comment on PDSR-85, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Docket 42199, 1984.​

Code-sharing, alliances, and connections are all about "how do we screw the poor customer for more money?"

— Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's chief executive, quoted in BusinessWeek Online, 12 September 2002.​

I've tried to make the men around me feel, as I do, that we embarked as pioneers upon a new science and industry in which our problems are so new and unusual that it behooves no one to dismiss any novel idea with the statement that "it can't be done!". Our job is to keep everlasting at research and experimentation, to adapt our laboratories to production as soon as possible, and to let no new improvement in flying and flying equipment pass us by.​

— William E. Boeing, founder The Boeing Company, 1929.​

A sick customer results in a sick airplane manufacturing industry, whatever the cause may be.​

— John E. Steiner, Boeing Commercial Airplanes.​

We built a jet airplane to get in and out of a 5,000-ft field. No one believed it could be done.​

— Joseph Sutter, Boeing Commercial Airplanes on the B-727.​

This is the most important aviation development since Lindbergh's flight. In one fell swoop, we have shrunken the earth.​

— Juan Trippe, founder of Pan Am on the introduction of jet aircraft.​

If the pilots were in charge, Columbus would still be in port. They believe the assertion that the world is flat.​

— Robert L. Crandall, 1993.​

The Wright Amendment is a pain in the ass, but not every pain in the ass is a constitutional infringement.​

— Herb Kelleher, CEO Southwest Airlines.​

Think and act big and grow smaller, or think and act small and grow bigger.​

— Herb Kelleher​

It takes nerves of steel to stay neurotic.​

— Herb Kelleher​

You [the employees] are involved in a crusade.​

— Herb Kelleher​

That place runs on Herb Kelleher's bull********************.​

— Robert W. Baker, VP American Airlines, regards Southwest Airlines.​

I'm here to tell you that I am proud of a couple of things. First, I am very good at projectile vomiting. Second, I've never had a really serious venereal disease.

— Herb Kelleher, addressing the Wings Club in New York regards his time at Southwest, 2001.​

He's a nut job, but a focused nut job.

— Robert Land, JetBlue Airways government affairs director, regards boss David Neeleman, quoted in 'Fortune' magazine, 28 May, 2001. ​

Be Luke Skywalker, not Darth Vader. Ultimately love is stronger than evil.​

— Donald Burr, founder of People Express.​

Those were my children being slaughtered.​

— Donald Burr, on the death of People Express.​

We built the Model T; it was black and a lot of people bought it. But we found out not everybody wanted it.

— Randy Smith, marketing official, People Express Airlines, 'On no-frills flying,' New York Times 25 June 1986.​

The state of our airline industry is a national embarrassment.​

— Tom Plaskett, Chairman Pan Am, following the airline's collapse.​

All they have to do is look down at the traffic and suddenly they don’t feel like [flying is] that expensive a way to travel after all.

— Jim Herron, 'On $70 seaplane flights from Manhattan to Fire Island,' New York Times, 1 July 1986.​

Governments have supported airlines as if they were local football teams. But there are just too many of them. This is the only industry I know that has lost money consistently and makes money infrequently.​

— Richard Hannah, airline analyst with UBS in London, 'Fortune' magazine, February 1996.​

I think historically, the airline business has not been run as a real business. That is, a business designed to achieve a return on capital that is then passed on to shareholders. It has historically been run as an extremely elaborate version of a model railroad, that is, one in which you try to make enough money to buy more equipment.​

— Michael Levine, Executive VP Northwest Airlines, 1996.​

It's not a testosterone-driven industry any longer. Success is making money, not in the size of the airline.​

— Gordon Bethune, Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, 1996.​

There are a lot of parallels between what we're doing and an expensive watch. It's very complex, has a lot of parts and it only has value when it's predictable and reliable.​

— Gordon Bethune, Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, 1997.​

In airplanes you have a choice between chocolate and vanilla. One year could be vanilla or it could be chocolate. I don't attach any relevance to which one.​

— Gordon Bethune, Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, regards buying Boeing or Airbus products, 2000.​

Americans love rising-from-the-ashes stories. They love the underdog coming back. We're going to take a tarnished brand name and bring it back to a high degree of luster.​

— Martin R. Shugrue Jr., President and CEO Pan American World Airways, 1996.​

In a sense, when we started Virgin Atlantic, I was trying to create an airline for myself. If you try to build the perfect airline for yourself, it will be appreciated by others.​

— Richard Branson, 1996.​

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

Sue the bastards.​

— Sir Freddie Laker's advice to Richard Branson regarding British Airway's dirty tricks campaign against Virgin Atlantic.​

Branson 'dirty tricks' claim unfounded.​

— Headline of an article in the British Airways newsletter 'BA News,' 1992. The article became the center of the largest libel payment in British legal history.​

I've said many times that I'd be thrilled to sell the airline to the employees and our guys said no, we'll take all the money, anyway.​

— Robert L. Crandall, 1997.​

The air is annoyingly potted with a multitude of minor vertical disturbances which sicken the passengers and keep us captives of our seat belts. We sweat in the cockpit, though much of the time we fly with the side windows open. The airplanes smell of hot oil and simmering aluminum, disinfectant, feces, leather, and puke ... the stewardesses, short-tempered and reeking of vomit, come forward as often as they can for what is a breath of comparatively fresh air.​

— Ernest K. Gann, describing airline flying in the 1930's.​

There are only two reasons to sit in the back row of an airplane: Either you have diarrhea, or you're anxious to meet people who do.​

— Henry Kissinger​

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.​

— Orson Welles, interview to celebrate his 70th birthday, 'The Times,' 6 May 1985.​

The world is divided into two kind of people: normal, intelligent, sensitive people with some breadth of imagination, and people who aren't the least bit afraid of flying.

— Layne Ridley, 'White Knuckles: Getting over the Fear of Flying,' 1987.​

Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means.... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash.​

— Cecil Beaton, 'It Gives Me Great Pleasure', 1955.​

It was over in a blink of an eye, that moment when aviation stirred the modern imagination. Aviation was transformed from recklessness to routine in Lindbergh's lifetime. Today the riskiest part of air travel is the drive to the airport, and the airlines use a barrage of stimuli to protect passengers from ennui.​

— George Will, 'Charles Lindbergh, Craftsman,' 15 May 1977, 'The pursuit of Happiness, and Other Sobering Thoughts,' 1978.​

Anything that is white is sweet.
Anything that is brown is meat.
Anything that is grey, don't eat.

— Stephen Sondheim, regards airline food, 'Do I hear a Waltz,' 1965.​

The more I fly, the more I'm convinced that the true wonder of modern aviation is the transformation of tasteless particles into something known as airplane food.

— Bob Blummer, 'The Surreal Gourmet.'.​

The quality of food is in inverse proportion to a dining room's altitude, especially atop bank and hotel buildings (airplanes are an extreme example).

— Bryan Miller, 'New York Times' restaurant critic.​

To me, an airplane is a great place to diet.

— Wolfgang Puck​

It's either expensive or it's crappy.

— JetBlue Airways spokesman regards airline food. Reported in The New York Times, 26 June 2002.​

A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you've been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.

— Shana Alexander, 'The Feminine Eye,' 1970.​

Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth) I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece.

— Erica Jong, 'Fear of Flying,' 1973.​

Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.

— Vice President Albert Gore.​

I wanted to soar through the air​

— Yuji Nishizawa, after hijacking All Nippon Airways flight 61 and stabbing the captain to death in order to try and fly the B-747 himself, July 1999.​

Fly the friendly skies.​

— United Airlines advertising slogan.​

Something special in the air.​

— American Airlines advertising slogan.​

To fly. To serve.​

— British Airways advertising slogan.​

The world's favourite airline.​

— British Airways advertising slogan.​

The Proud Bird with the Golden Tail​

— Advertising slogan of Continental Airlines, pre-1983 bankruptcy.​

We love to fly. And it it shows.​

— Delta Air Lines advertising slogan, replaced with 'You'll love the way we fly' in January 1995.​

Some people just know how to fly.​

— Northwest Airlines advertising slogan.​

How do we love you? Let us count the ways . . .​

— Early Southwest Airlines advertising slogan.​

The Wings of Man.​

— Eastern Airlines advertising slogan.​

Air Canada. That's a good name for a Canadian airline.​

— Johnny Carson, December 1974.​

I mean, they get paid an awful lot of money. The only good thing about them is they can't work after they're 60.

— Judge Prudence Carter Beatty, New York Southern District Bankruptcy Court, regards Delta Air Lines pilots. Reported in The Wall Street Journal, 18 November 2005​

Life expands in an aeroplane. The traveler is a mere slave in a train, and, should he manage to escape from this particular yoke, the car and the ship present him with only limited horizons. Air travel, on the other hand, makes it possible for him to enjoy the 'solitary delights of infinite space.' The earth speeds below him, with nothing hidden, yet full of surprises. Introduce yourself to your pilot. He is always a man of the world as well as a flying ace.​

— Early French advertisement for airline service, quoted in 'The Airline Builders,' Oliver B. Allen.​

 

[pilotyip]

That right share with everyone

[/color][/color]

So does investing in employees. I think at this point we are debating numbers and percentages... how much should go to the employees...Neither can SWA execs. Can you explain the SWA effect?




It can always be worse... and if I am lucky... sure..

Were any of the SWA management available at bargin prices to come in and save NWA, DAL, UAL, etc.? How about their SWA stock options they would loose if they went and saved the BK carriers? BTW a company who gives everything to the employees will not be company very long. SWA doesn't do it, they retain a major protion of their earnings to do such things as fuel hedges, purchase new airplanes, open new routes. Funding the company's growth is in the best interest of the employees. BTW you had to have that as a cut and paste, no one can type that fast.

 

[PCL_128]

BTW where is the mangement board?

In Hell.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

Were any of the SWA management available at bargin prices to come in and save NWA, DAL, UAL, etc.? How about their SWA stock options they would loose if they went and saved the BK carriers?

SWA secret is no secret. Anyone can do it... the reason why the legacy CEO's don't do it is because there is no raping of the employees for personal fortunes.

The SWA execs have a bit more heart.

Tell me... what CEO and exec team would not love to have SWA performance...

But the temptation to rape the employees is too great...

BTW a company who gives everything to the employees will not be company very long. SWA doesn't do it,

I never said they do. or should...

they retain a major protion of their earnings to do such things as fuel hedges, purchase new airplanes, open new routes. Funding the company's growth is in the best interest of the employees.

But why can't other Exec do it? One reason is productivity. SWA employees are productive. Why? They trust thier exec team.

Why don't NWA employees trust Steenland.

BTW you had to have that as a cut and paste, no one can type that fast.

 

[Jimmy C. Corn]

SWA secret is no secret. Anyone can do it... the reason why the legacy CEO's don't do it is because there is no raping of the employees for personal fortunes.

The SWA execs have a bit more heart.

Tell me... what CEO and exec team would not love to have SWA performance...

But the temptation to rape the employees is too great...





I never said they do. or should...




But why can't other Exec do it? One reason is productivity. SWA employees are productive. Why? They trust thier exec team.

Why don't NWA employees trust Steenland.

that made no sense.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

I say you're banned by tomorrow night....

 

[737 Pylt]

I say you're banned by tomorrow night....

You really think it will take that long?
Anyone can see that this is the same loser as jerk406!
737

 

[Jimmy C. Corn]

You really think it will take that long?
Anyone can see that this is the same loser as jerk406!
737

Ok, I can see you are the forum bully. Why?

I received a PM from someone stating that you are also General Lee, Heavy Set, Midge, and Scope_out_RJs.

It also said that you were accused of stalking a flight attendant at your regional airline before you were hired at your current employer.

Is that true?