Last week, 250,000 people get displaced because AA hasn't maintained their airplanes. AA blames it on the FAA, then this weekend, the Chairman apologizes and semi-takes responsibility.
Then today, they give themselves $40 million in bonuses. Meanwhile the stock was dropped from $32.3 to $8.3 in the past 12 months.
Now, the bonuses are for 2005-2007 and it is now 2008. And the FAA wasn't enforcing the wiring rules, so AA did not fix them. Nevertheless, the wiring should have been maintained properly.
Further, what does it say about an executive board that decides the day after the weekend from hell for travelers to give out $40,000,000 in bonuses? Could they have waited six months? Did it have to be the day after this weekend?
Do they even have a public relations department at AA? Do they even care? They may have a legal obligation to reward these people. Who is responsible for that?
Having flown on their airline numerous times and talking to their staff over the weekend...they were offensive and arrogant. It must start at the top and go down.
Since their stock price is down over 7% today alone (as of this posting), I see the market is rewarding them for their behavior. I'm not for any government intervention here. The market will take care of it. I just want AA to play on a level playing field and not get preferential treatment at DFW and Love Field (too late there).
“. I’m not for any government intervention here. The market will take care of it”
I’m not sure of that...our gov’t seems to want to bailout everyone these days.
Agreed. I'm betting they can't sell this stock for a while, and most stock is worth $0 in a bankruptcy.
Not very much.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
About as much as the flight attendants on your last flight cared about you.
However, as a licensed A&P mechanic for better than 30 years, I take great issue with your characterization of AMR's failure to properly maintain their aircraft. You're simply regurgitating all the wrong info as misrepresented by the idiot media. I won't go into the technical nature of the issue, but suffice it to say that AA had implemented the AD addressing the aux hyd pump wire bundle well before the deadline specified in the AD. The issue with the FAA was AA's EOC used to implement the Directive - even though AA was the prime airline working with the manufacturer to develop the inspection criteria and the fix.
That the FAA would then turn around more than two years after completion of the AD and threaten AA with the grounding of their fleet, after the FAA was summarily accused by whistle blowers of pandering to the the very airlines they were supposed to be regulating, speaks volumes about the despicable effort to save face in front of Congress by the FAA.
I'm all for holding AA accountable for their vast failings as a major air carrier - and there are many - but shoddy maintenance ain't one of them. This episode with American was nothing more than a failing gov't regulatory bureaucracy run amok at the expense of a private business. And they're not done yet; there's plenty of pain to spread around to the other airlines in order to save face at the expense of the confidence of the traveling public.
Reagan was right: government is the problem.
Bonuses are an important part of encouraging good management. Incentive programs work best when you reward people when they do at least some things right, and reward them much more when they do more right.
If you cut off the rewards for everyone whenever some one screws up, or even if you make someone ineligible for any rewards when they screw up, you remove the incentive to excel for the rest of the year.
These bonuses are also most likely rewards for last calendar year, and most of AA's declining profits are linked to the rising costs of fuel rather than things their management has control over.
However, since profits are declining, these bonuses are smaller than they have been in the past.
Do they even have a public relations department at AA? Do they even care? They may have a legal obligation to reward these people. Who is responsible for that?
So they should base bonuses on how the class warfare advocates will spin things? Yea, that's a great business decision.
“Since their stock price is down over 7% today alone (as of this posting), I see the market is rewarding them for their behavior. I’m not for any government intervention here. The market will take care of it. I just want AA to play on a level playing field and not get preferential treatment at DFW and Love Field (too late there).”
The incestuous relationship between the board of directors and executive staff has to be monitored, regulated, or somehow modified. This is not the first, nor will it be the last case of executive staff trashing a corporation, and being rewarded. The executive staff will prosper, the corporation is weakened, workers, customers and stockholders all pay the price for this.
It’s not criminal, but it should be.
And the stock just keeps falling