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What happened at Cappy?

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Eric,
Your one of these guys that I used to hear say..."I don't want to put out any applications just yet. If I do that I will have to choose to leave here before they pull the plug and go to Southwest" Totally clueless.

Wait until he gets furloughed, then let's see who he blames.
 
I would think he would still blame DHL, the responsible party.
 
Eric,
Your one of these guys that I used to hear say..."I don't want to put out any applications just yet. If I do that I will have to choose to leave here before they pull the plug and go to Southwest" Totally clueless.

Wait until he gets furloughed, then let's see who he blames.

Not so. I made a choice. I chose not to put out any apps. I chose to stay right where I am. I am fully aware that I can't make the kind of money or have the QOL I have here elsewhere.

I was fairly sure the high fuel prices were unsustainable and that the bubble would burst. I felt that when the bubble did burst being on the bottom of someone else's seniority list would not be a good thing. I had feelers out, I hoped I was wrong, but as the economy tanked I watched as the "outs" I had lined up evaporated and people got furloughed at those companies. Had I jumped to another company I would either be furloughed now or a very junior F/O working for a pittance sweating a possible or perhaps impending furlough. Instead, I'm a fairly senior CA still making pretty good money sweating a furlough. Given a choice between the two I'd rather be where I am. Had I been fairly junior I probably would have made different choice.

That's not to say I'm omniscient. I make mistakes. I didn't have enough faith in the conclusions I drew to get my investments out of the markets and into money market funds. To be truthful I really didn't expect the economy to tank as badly as it has. As a result I have "lost" an obscene (to me) amount of money on paper. That too was choice. So be it.

I'm not really into assigning blame. If you must assign blame though, I would suggest this whole mess (for us) really started with Cline, Braizer and Donoway. Their mistake was to turn a $20M investment into a $30M rathole worth nothing in the market place and use up Airborne's operating capitol in the process. This caused the stagnation of the company and eventually resulted in the need to sell the company to DHL. Without that sale the company would have likely have withered and died.

DHL made their own mistakes. They took what had been a successful low cost competitor with a "can do" attitude and ruined it with a lack of insight into the US marketplace and a failure to understand the nature of Airborne's customer base. The economy has no doubt made that worse. It may have actually worked to our advantage though. Without the economy tanking as badly as it has DHL might well have reached agreement with UPS by now.


Could or would Airborne have survived the current economic downturn if C,B,&D hadn't burned up the company's capital turning the 767’s in PC’s rather than SF’s? I don’t know. That’s water under the bridge. It is what it is.

In short, I belive assigning blame does me no good. I am focused on doing the best I can going forward. That means, for now, doing my job to best of my ability until it goes away. Then I'll go find something else to do. I have no illusions that it will pay me what I make now or have the same QOL. It won't. I'm not happy about that, but there is no point in dwelling on it or getting angry about it.
 
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But it sure is fun to see you get all heated up!

I'm glad it amuses you. You really do need to lighten up a bit.

Truthfully thought, I'm not heated up. I have some time on my hands and I'm a bit bored. Posting here is a diversion. Playing MF games with you and the other members of the "It's all JH's fault" cult entertains me.
 
I'm glad it amuses you. You really do need to lighten up a bit.

Truthfully thought, I'm not heated up. I have some time on my hands and I'm a bit bored. Posting here is a diversion. Playing MF games with you and the other members of the "It's all JH's fault" cult entertains me.

Actually watching you heat up lightens me up alot. Knowing you cannot wait to teach everyone with your great wisdom is quite entertaining
 
Blame who you want, Eric, Hete and his "boys" are holding severance hostage, and for what? That money means a lot to most of us, regardless of what we all want it for.

I blame Hete for that. I blame Hete, et al, for my first two furloughs. I blame him for running a company that despises it's employees. It doesn't have to be that way. Period. Remember this: Hete will walk away from this with MILLIONS. I repeat MILLIONS...the way things are going every pilot working for ATSG will be on the street.

I am done flying. Severance for me means I can make the move to owning and running my own business. The money has come from DHL and should be paid to us who are paying for their folly.
 

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