AQ and Earndog (actually anyone who wants to read this),
AQ, you mentioned a "booster check" when your guys were furloughed. We voted to make the medical insurance payments of our furloughed pilots out of our pockets. That's not the only thing we have done for them, but the point is I think you'll find both our groups have a little more Ohana in them than most when it counts. We are both pretty tight nit and thats one of the reason the sabers come out when we talk of merging! You do have a point though in that our group has been fractionalized, It is due to having 2 councils. The battle of pilots wanting flying based on the mainland has split our group and you would be shocked at some of the infighting that has taken place over trying to put flying on the west coast.
Earndog raises a good point. Our airlines have two different corporate personalities. Two true stories here to illustrate the diference.
Early 90's when we were struggling, you CEO attended a MEC meeting and annouced that "Hawaiian was going out of business" and received a standing ovation! This came from an Aloha pilot who was there an said he was disgusted by his fellow pilots. Now compare that to a Hawaiian MEC meeting I was at. Paul Casey was there and Aloha had just made a very derogatory remark about us in the press. Someone asked him about it and his comment was "we don't believe in taking potshots at the competition, it's our philosophy to take the high road and worry about making ourselves better rather than try and put down the competition". This also got a round of applause from the attending pilots. These are just two examples of many similar incidents. Your Glen Zander did more to hurt the merger than our anti-merger committees if you ask me.
Over the last 25 years, Hawaiian has had one wild ride. We have been flying all over the world with DC-8's, L-1011's DC-10's and 767's. We have taken our lumps and personify the struggles of Airline deregulation as well as anyone. Our union has delt with issues (some of our own making) that you guys havn't even dreamed about. But we have a lot to show for it, relative to it's size, Hawaiian has been posting the best operating profits in the industry (all the while during our BK we paid every bill, made all our lease payments and funded our retirement). We also kept our working conditions intact and our hourly rate at the upper end of the industry pay scale. My pay coming out of Bankruptcy vs. when we went in is better (2.5% percent higher on the hourly, $5 an hour more for all South Pacific flying and 80 cents an hour more per diem) On top of this my retirement finally got properly funded. All this translates into about $400 dollars a month more take home. Also during the last couple of years I've gotten about $4-5000 dollars in bonus checks (profit sharing). That's the reality of our situation vs. some of the rhetoric floating around (posturing and militant whiners who would complain no matter what they got).
BTW, our guys are furloughed because Gotbaum elected to return 2 767's that we sorely needed than and now. We can be our own worse enemy sometime's as by delaying our exit from BK we lost 3 767's to another bidder.
None of us are perfect, we are all just trying to do what we can to survive in a very volatile industry. If you keep it in perpective, it's still a pretty good way to make a living. AQ, good luck to you guys. I guess you're waiting to hear more from your investor, bottom line is, in the long run I'm sure they have plans to expand, most people don't buy an airline with the intent to shrink it. You guys have plenty of potential and I hope these guys will utilize it.
Anyway, maybe this will clarify why some of us are a little sensitive to people taking potshots at us.
