[CORedneck]

I flew Qantas when I went to New Zealand a year and a half ago and their service was good. I have flown United before and I was never impressed with them. The people were arrogant, pompous. I had to fly out of Chicago and my flight home was 6 hours late. The kept changing the gate over the hours like 4 times. Not impressed.....

Kind of sad, when they did bankruptcy, their executives got windfalls but the pilot's pension got turned over to the Federal Gov't and the pilots lost. Their was a story on one pilot who was getting $10,000 per month before the federal turn over. Now he gets $2500 and he is unable to go back to work.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Kind of sad, when they did bankruptcy, their executives got windfalls but the pilot's pension got turned over to the Federal Gov't and the pilots lost."

You might be interested in how Joe Biden responded to the pleas of some laid-off pilots just a month after 9/11:

http://www.tnr.com/columnists/story.html?id=ba9b09bb-ed01-4582-b6ec-444834c9df73&k=93697

Rhetorical Question
by Michael Crowley
Post Date October 22, 2001

It's a bright early October morning on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot's cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. "I hope you will support my work on Amtrak as much as I have supported you," he begins. (Biden rides Amtrak to work every day and is obsessed with the railroad.) "If not, I will screw you badly."

A dozen faces fall in unison as Biden lectures on. "You've not been good to me. You're also damn selfish. You better listen to me..." It goes on like this for a couple of minutes. Strangely, Biden keeps grinning--even fraternally slapping the stunned man's shoulder a couple of times. When we finally head into the building, Biden's communications director, Norm Kurz, turns to me. "What you just witnessed is classic Senator Biden." [...snip...]

[businessprofessor]

Kind of sad, when they did bankruptcy, their executives got windfalls but the pilot's pension got turned over to the Federal Gov't and the pilots lost. Their was a story on one pilot who was getting $10,000 per month before the federal turn over. Now he gets $2500 and he is unable to go back to work.

Are you defending the thugish pilots union? You must either have a short memory or be willingly ignorant. The pilots union, like other unions, has had a major hand in United's problems. Do you remember the summer of 2000? If you flew United that summer, you would probably remember the work stoppages. The pilots threw a temper trantrum over their deal for ownership of United. The pilots and other unions became part owners of United in 1994 or 1995. These groups immediately started fighting with each other and other shareholders. The unions that they could just skim the extra profits without any recourse. They were very unhappy when the stock price sunk.

If the unions had any sense, they would picket against rat politicians. I would endorse workstoppages on flights with rat politicians. The rats would get the message soon enough.