“This is not class envy - if an enterprise is bankrupt, the CEO should be flying economy class (if at all) - and preserving capital above all else.”
I understand how appearances are, but in reality, if you are dealing with a business with 9-digit daily revenues, it is just crazy to stick top officers in the commercial air travel grinder to chew up their productive hours (even without delays/cancellations). It is just crazy. These people make decisions with tremendous economic impact on the company. You cannot risk what amounts to a few days a year minimum spent dealing with commercial air travel crap, and that is assuming no overnights in hub cities, missing important meetings, etc. The potential financial risk to the company exceeds the cost of the chartered/whatever flight hugely, at least for top officers. How many people deserve/need such access is another matter for debate.
To address the class-warfare rhetoric directly, as I noted on the example, would the house banking committee have been sympathetic if one of their 8 punching bags had been a no-show because of weather in ORD causing a canceled connecting flight?
“I understand how appearances are, but in reality, if you are dealing with a business with 9-digit daily revenues, it is just crazy to stick top officers in the commercial air travel grinder to chew up their productive hours (even without delays/cancellations). It is just crazy. These people make decisions with tremendous economic impact on the company. You cannot risk what amounts to a few days a year minimum spent dealing with commercial air travel crap, and that is assuming no overnights in hub cities, missing important meetings, etc. The potential financial risk to the company exceeds the cost of the chartered/whatever flight hugely, at least for top officers. How many people deserve/need such access is another matter for debate.”
You are correct - I agree CEO’s of important companies have every practical reason to have and use private jets.
I think you missed my point though, Bank of America, Citigroup, and others are no longer relevant companies who’s CEO’s make important decisions of national economic importance. They are on the brink of nationalization. They should be resolving to do no harm - both to the country and their debt and equity holders. This means staying put, in my opinion. Their schedules are irrelevant - in fact the LESS their CEO’s do the better the country is. If only it were possible for the CEO of BofA and Citi to have been stuck in an airport for the past few years, just think how much better off the country would be!
Nationalized companies, or defacto nationalized companies should not be flying around in private jets and more than our congressmen should. They simply are not relevant enough to warrant spending taxpayer money to do so.
“To address the class-warfare rhetoric directly, as I noted on the example, would the house banking committee have been sympathetic if one of their 8 punching bags had been a no-show because of weather in ORD causing a canceled connecting flight?”
Sure, they’d bloviate, but who cares? most of those 8 are more unimportant and less relevant than they think. The ones that depend on government bailout money for their very existence are the ones to which I refer. Their companies would not be any worse off if they were flying commercial or simply not traveling at all. The taxpayers may well be better off, in fact.