Posted on 11/29/2011 12:24:54 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — American Airlines' parent company is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks to unload massive debt built up by years of accelerating jet fuel prices and labor struggles.
The nation's third largest airline also said its CEO Gerard Arpey will step down. He's being replaced by Thomas Horton, currently the company's president....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
How to solve union problem. Avoid strike, agree to anything, then declare chapter 11.
I read somewhere this morning that it was costs driven by the unions.
in 1999 we owned a ton of AA stock. I need a new car, so I sold like 600 shares and bought a Nissan Maxima in cash. Those were the days...good thing I didn’t hang on to the stock...car’s gone too! LOL!
in 1999 we owned a ton of AA stock. I need a new car, so I sold like 600 shares and bought a Nissan Maxima in cash. Those were the days...good thing I didn’t hang on to the stock...car’s gone too! LOL!
While there is a LOT of AMR history that has led to them going broke, there is a key line in the bankruptcy filing that needs to be repeated over and over, and if needed, beaten in to the skulls of today’s liberals.
“the key to profitability is a competitive cost structure”
DUH...
Why do so many on the left not understand this?
The have an old fleet and crappy customer service.
Frankly, with what is taking place in our airports today, I can’t see how any airline is staying in business.
This homeland insecurity thing is way out of control.
Watch for them to merge with either British Airways or US Air.
“Watch for them to merge with either British Airways or US Air.”
There is a guy in the desert named Doug Parker, who is likely thinking that exact same thing, at the moment.
Wonder if Branson would look at buying them?
even uber-liberal CNBC said/inferred this was caused by union greed earlier today...
“Wonder if Branson would look at buying them?”
Not without a complete overhaul of the non-US ownership rules...
I bet that AA will be using chapter 11 to either break or win big concessions from their unions.
You can bet the SCOPE clauses in the union contracts will be the FIRST thing that AMR gets rid of.
These have kept AMR uncompetitive for TWO DECADES now, and has strapped them with a huge fleet of unprofitable 50-passenger jets, for years.
Now they can go get a bunch of mid-range 70-100 pax jets, and turbo-props. Bombardier is probably licking their chops right now.
Without SCOPE, AMR might well have survived it all.
Did TSA fondle them going to the court house when they filed it?
Being a lay-person in aviation union terms....can you explain to me what SCOPE is?
I definitely have noticed that AA’s fleet is old.....older than its competitors. They still primarily fly the MD-80s, which are over 30 years old.
SCOPE covers what the airline can fly. Since the unions demand that those that fly bigger aircraft get paid more, they limit the types of planes that can be flown by the parent company.
For instance, AA’s SCOPE Clause has been, for two decades, that non-AA pilots couldn’t fly anything larger than 50 seats, because they feared regionals would take jobs from mainline pilots. That would make having AA-pay scale pilots flying smaller planes an unprofitable proposition.
It was amended in recent years to allow 70 seaters, but just a VERY FEW.
This was the major point of contention in many of the Airline Strikes of the Late 80’s/Early 90’s.
Now there is a company that won't be pushing those 99%ers around any more!...even if those 99%ers are American Airline workers.
More good news for Obama. He will now “bailout” AA like he did GM. Protect union contracts and bosses, dictate what kind of planes to fly, dictate what airports to fly to, and all the rest of “centrally planned” AA.
NO bailouts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yet another “casuality” of former POTUS James Earl Carter’s - and the DNP’s - enchantment with “deregulation” of critical infrastructure ! IOW, “creeping socialism” at its worst ! >PS
I think that may happen. If it does happen either the US Airways will go away or the American Airlines will go away...
He would be insane to buy American Airlines..
Currently prohibited by law.
I’m glad I’m flying Delta later this week.
That's exactly what United did back in 2002.
After 9-11 the airlines(stockholders) got a 15 billion dollar bailout. My small aircraft parts making business got nothing.
46 airlines have filed Chapter 11 since 1979. That’s about 1 1/2 airlines per year. Many of which are out of business now (Pan Am, Eastern, TWA, Braniff, etc).
The airline industry is and has been very poorly run for many, many years. With few exceptions, they have too large a fleet with too many different types of planes. That means they have to have redundant parts on the shelf for each plane in case of breakage or maintenance. Then it spirals downhill from there. It’s a very poor business design.
Airlines like Southwest, who currently flies one type of aircraft are successful for many reasons but one is obvious, 1 type of plane, 1 type of part. Low overhead. Smart business.
“Airlines like Southwest, who currently flies one type of aircraft are successful for many reasons but one is obvious, 1 type of plane, 1 type of part. Low overhead. Smart business.”
I remember, back in the late 80’s, on a layover in Los Angeles, spending all day and evening with a Southwest crew..pilots and flight attendants. I worked for United, and we flew a DC10 from EWR to LAX.
The Southwest flight attendants were amazed that I was part of a flight attendant crew of 8 and that we served food! I remember them looking at each other and saying, “Can you imagine serving FOOD and working with 8 people?”
I will never forget that.
Those were also the years when we served Filet Mignon dinners in first class on all dinner flights to and from ORD to PHL and EWR! A short flight! And, of course, economy class had chicken or beef. Always lots of food on all flights! So much was wasted also.
It wasn’t until around 2003 that United started selling food.
Thanks for the comments. I’m sure your right, that this is an important factor in the success/failure of various airlines.
You might want to examine the operational consequences of deregulation before casting undocumented aspersions. But I doubt you will ! As a long-time user of the air-travel system on a weekly basis, I’ll give you a quick sketch of the critical impacts.
Service: Deregulation took us from a “route system” providing air travel to/between multiple cities on that route and multiple links to the nation at those stops; to a “Hub and Spoke system” for the sole purpose of keeping passengers on a particular line, regardless of how much their travel time was extended. Many small cities lost air travel access or had “air taxi” access only.
The quality of passenger declined rapidly until air travel became the modern equivalent of riding the bus. Often a third world bus, at that.
Safety: The hordes of “great unwashed” also exhibit a remarkable degree of contempt for even basic safety rules and instructions, demanding a “exit row seat” then completely ignoring the rules about placement of carryons, or safety briefings despite having contractually obligated themselves to do so.
By bringing aboard bags and articles for overhead stowage, by their weight and character, posing lethal threats in event of an incident, combineded with their lack of self-dicpline posed a “perfect storm” in event of an incident.
Deregulation turned a largely co-operative industry into a competitive one, where once superbly maintained aircraft are now commonly dispatched with multiple “in-op” flags on cockpit instruments, faulty, in-op or missing cabin safety equipment awaiting sufficient “lay-over” time at a station with repair facilities. Aircraft became dirtier, vital servicing short-cut, and crew duty hours increased in the chase for revenue. Crew training was curtailed.
A DC-10 shed an engine coming out of O’Hare due to faulty (think “short-cut) engine replacement procedures. All aboard died. A 37 out of National ended up in the Potomac because line procedures didn’t permit/encourage pilots to return for de-icing. And the toll goes on annually ! Visit the NTSB.Gov site for a litany of crashes attributed to training/maintenance/operational failures all finding their genisis in “deregulation”. >PS
Thanks for your post! My neighbor is an ex-Eastern Airlines pilot from the 70’s thru the early 90’s. Actually flew them until they went away... literally overnight. He landed in Florida. Him and the crew checked into their hotel. Someone told him to turn on the news and that is how he found out that his airline no longer existed. He called the hotline and they literally told him “You’re on your own.”. Luckily he was able to hop a flight on another airline.
I remember the food on airlines. Now, the only time you get food is if you fly overseas. You’re right though. The food was actually good at the time! And the interior walls were yellow from the cigarette smoke! Ahhh.... the good old days!!!
“Thanks for your post! My neighbor is an ex-Eastern Airlines pilot from the 70’s thru the early 90’s. Actually flew them until they went away... literally overnight. He landed in Florida. Him and the crew checked into their hotel. Someone told him to turn on the news and that is how he found out that his airline no longer existed. He called the hotline and they literally told him “You’re on your own.”. Luckily he was able to hop a flight on another airline.”
“I remember the food on airlines. Now, the only time you get food is if you fly overseas. You’re right though. The food was actually good at the time! And the interior walls were yellow from the cigarette smoke! Ahhh.... the good old days!!!”
OMG....your Eastern Airlines story! How very interesting! I must ask my friend...a retired United F/A...about her husband, a former Eastern pilot....where he was when it happened!
Regarding the cigarette smoke...
I will never forget...many years ago...mechanics coming onboard one of our airplanes. Something was wrong with a door...we waited for them to fix it with passengers onboard.
The mechanics fixed it, but commented on the guck that was in every door of every airplane because of cigarette smoke!
Management takes care of management.
Scum had the votes in 2009. But not in 2011.
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