For what it’s worth, we’ve been hit by a number of emails in the last hour concerning a possible announcement regarding a move by US Airways on United Airlines.
While this would certainly be big news, for those of you who follow the industry (and hopefully by reading PlaneBusiness Banter), you shouldn’t be surprised.
Yee haw. I hope these rumors are spot on. I’m tired of reading emails about diaper bags and charging for carryons.
Hello everyone.
The latest issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. Subscribers can access this week’s issue here.
So who do we dissect this week?
Republic Holdings.
I’ll be honest. I’m still on the fence with this attempt by Bryan Bedford and the Republic management team to cobble together a new airline out of discarded parts of Midwest and Frontier Airlines.
I was hoping that this quarter we could get more visibility from the airline’s earnings results as to how the grand experiment is faring — but while Wall Street apparently liked the airline’s results (the airline’s stock led the sector this last week picking up a cool 14%), I didn’t hear anything that really won me over.
So — call me “continued skeptical.”
Had to snicker when the airline talked about how it was “harvesting synergies” of the Midwest/Frontier combo. “Harvesting synergies”…..fine example of corporate speak.
That kind of stuff makes me break out in hives.
We had one other regional airline report earnings this last week and that airline was ExpressJet. If you look only at the airline’s net profit numbers, it would appear that the airline did pretty well for the quarter. But no — the reason the airline posted a profit was because of a huge both cash and non-cash tax issue. The airline posted a $17 million operating loss — that was also a clear indicator that no, this was not that good of a quarter.
Meanwhile, the airline remains without a permanent CEO. You may recall that the airline’s CEO Jim Ream left the airline effective Jan. 1 — as he took the SVP of Maintenance and Engineering gig at American Airlines.
The weather certainly created a whole slew of new cancellations last week for many of the U.S. carriers. Adding to the pain of the New York area airspace – the longest runway at JFK International was officially shut down today — as the airport prepares to rebuild and widen it. It will be closed for four months.
I know. Let the fun begin.
On the economic front, it was another yin-yang week for economic tea leaf reading, but on the airline economic/RASM front, analysts continue to fall all over themselves about just how great year-over-year RASM numbers are going to be for the next 3-4 months.
Or as JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker said at one point, “If it flies, buy it!” Actually Jamie acknowledged last week that he is not quite that bullish now — but tonight we should get our first glimpse of higher RASM numbers — as Continental rolls out its February traffic report.
All this and more, including Japan Air Line’s horrendous loss, Air New Zealand’s nice profit, Aircell’s win at Alaska Air Group, fighting flight attendants, a new high-end, but reasonably priced crash pad for pilots in Houston, and more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter .
Editor’s Note: This week I welcome a previous contributor to PlaneBuzz, Frank Arciuolo. Frank has not been seen around these parts in a long time. For reasons he talks about in his latest effort. I figure he felt sorry for me after it took him two hours to read this week’s issue of PBB, and thought the environs around here had been much too quiet!
In his previous efforts in PlaneBuzz, we used a “Godzilla” rendering for his ID photo. I figured it’s time you get to see the real deal. Mud and all. Enjoy!
Hi there, Godzilla here. I know it’s been a very long time since I’ve contributed to PlaneBuzz but I’ve been preoccupied with some of the more mundane things in life – like trying to find gainful employment. My plan when I left my last job at the beginning of 2008 was to do some part time flight instruction and get a part time job as an FO on a corporate jet – I even got my CE500 type rating.However, like they did so many other people, circumstances conspired against me. Taking flying lessons is well down the list of priorities for most people now, if it makes the list at all. And right seat jobs in corporate aviation are as scarce as, well, the hair on my head.
But, I digress. Anyway, thanks to Holly for letting me fill my idle time and the pages of PlaneBuzz simultaneously.
You know the feeling an ex-airport ticket agent gets when he/she wakes up on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, looks out the window to see dense fog – then rolls over and goes back to sleep because they are off that day? That’s the feeling I got when reading about recent events at WestJet concerning their reservations system cutover and the system cutover at JetBlue this weekend.
In my previous lives I’ve participated in about 8 reservation system cutovers; one as an airline employee and the others as an interested bystander, AKA a vendor. My advice to any IT person working at an airline that is considering switching reservations systems is to dust off the resume and start networking (the people kind). People in the reservations system business (the “biz”) often refer euphemistically to a reservations system cutover as a migration. That’s a nice word, migration. It gives one the vision of a flock of Canadian geese traveling to MIA for a nice warm winter.
However a reservations system migration, or at least the ones I’ve been involved in, does NOT resemble a migration of birds to South Beach for the winter. Picture a reservations system migration as a flock of 1 million geese leaving Canada on a Friday night. On Saturday morning nobody can find ANY geese ANYWHERE. By Saturday mid afternoon 3 million birds arrive in Tampa, but only 25% of them are actually the geese that left Canada Friday night, the rest are pigeons. By Saturday night trucks have been chartered to take ALL of the birds from TPA to MIA because nobody wants to let them out of their sight. The trucks arrive in MIA Sunday morning and are gone through manually (by IT employees) to determine which are the geese they want to keep and which are the pigeons. Sunday night the airline CEO does the math and realizes that 25% of 3 million does NOT equal the 1 million geese he had Friday night. Where are the rest of the geese? Holy crap, what’d we do with those pigeons? Resumes and bird poo simultaneously hit the mail and the fan Monday morning.
Funny story, yes, but perhaps more real than you think. Airline reservations are literally money in the bank. Moving this valuable asset from one point in cyber space to another is fraught with land mines. There are a host of technical issues that would make your eyes glaze over and I’d be happy to talk about them in detail to any other IT geeks out there, but that’s not today’s point.
Since migrating is such a gut wrenching experience where the BEST result is a zero sum gain (and the worst result is working in bird poo), don’t do it! Some cutovers are unavoidable, like the DL/NW move and whatever will eventually happen with YX/F9 and the boyz in IND. Those cases also represent mergers/acquisitions, where the party on each side of the transaction has an interest in avoiding a train wreck. Migrations that are the riskiest are the ones where an airline is changing reservations systems they may have outgrown, or perhaps for a better deal.
Traditional hosting or multi host systems are very good at high volume transactions and at communicating with Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and other systems. Because they communicate with external systems so well, traditional host systems can greatly expand an airline’s distribution reach. However, since those external systems, by design, withhold certain information from the host system (like fare basis code, form of payment, and other key customer information), the host system has difficulty figuring out of someone booking in an external system has simply reserved a seat or has actually purchased a ticket. Traditional host systems are excellent for generating large volumes of bookings and they can ensure tickets are purchased on booking within its system, but not as good as ensuring the purchase of bookings made outside its system.
The newer reservations systems are much slicker at communicating with customers within their system and with the airline’s web site, but are not very good at communicating with outside GDS and other systems. Like the traditional hosting systems, they are good at forcing the customer to purchase a ticket before ending the reservation. One big advantage they have over traditional hosting systems is that the newer systems create a database of the airline reservations. A real database allows the airline to do detailed analysis of its customers and to effectively execute Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) to its customers based on their purchases. This type of information makes airline marketing people salivate at the possibilities for the easiest type of marketing there is – to your existing customer.
For a boutique type airline starting out that has made the decision to remain out of the GDS and its evil and expensive booking fees, the selection of a reservations system would lean towards one that allows better CRM. However if the airline grows to a point where expanding the distribution network is necessary, as is agreeing to booking fees and all the rest, they’ve chosen the wrong reservations hosting system.
It makes sense to either add the robust external communication feature to the true reservation database system, or add the relational database feature to the traditional hosting systems. The first system to truly do that will have the golden egg. However, there are immense technical challenges of taking the incredibly dense set of text files (which is really what they are) that are contained in the reservations systems of AA, UA, DL, etc. and indexing them into a relational database. That would seem to argue for a solution that “bolts on” to the big hosting system and allows both systems to do what they do best.
Until this happens, try to be on vacation the weekend your airline reservations migrate!
It’s Halloween. BOO!
For at least two airlines — that means it is time to get scary.
Especially for some of the airlines’ top executives.
Friday over on Denton Drive here in Dallas, it appears that Southwest Airlines‘ former Chairman and CEO Herb Kelleher decided to go with the Willie Nelson/Biker combo look, while current Chairman, President and CEO Gary Kelly pranced down the Yellow Brick Road as Dorothy.
I don’t know what it is with Gary and his cross-dressing tendencies, but ever since he turned out as Edna Turnblad a couple of years ago — we’re almost afraid to look. (Last year Gary and two associates were attired as ZZ Top.) Early betting this year had Gary dressing as Julia Child.
But here’s the one that got me. Anyone know who that is?
That’s US Airways’ COO Robert Isom. I tell you what — that boy has the Barry Gibb thing going, doesn’t he? I hear he hit some pretty high notes Friday as well — as the US Airways’ executive team, aka the Bee Gees, entertained airline employees at the airline’s headquarters in Tempe.
Gotta love that hair.
Hark! Today there is news of two proposed FAA penalties — and the news does not involve an airline based in the Dallas area.
Today the FAA announced that it has assessed a proposed civil penalty of $5.4 million against US Airways, and a proposed civil penalty of $3.8 million against United Airlines.
in the case of US Airways, the FAA said in a statement that the airline allegedly operated eight aircraft while out of compliance with safety directives or its own maintenance program.
In a letter to employees issued just a few minutes ago, US Airways COO Robert Isom wrote,
“It is important to remember that today’s announcement references situations that are in the past, and in several cases, date back to two years ago. This isn’t to make light of the findings or our corrections to those findings, rather it’s to say these occurrences are behind us, and today, we have improved upon an already solid maintenance program.
The FAA proposed civil penalty dates back to challenges we faced related to our America West/US Airways maintenance integration in 2007. The integration presented some challenges in the areas of inspection and records during 2007, 2008 and early 2009. Our team has worked cooperatively with the FAA to investigate and correct any discrepancies to the FAA’s satisfaction.
More specifically, over the past nine months, we and the FAA have completed a formal review of our aircraft maintenance tracking systems as well as a comprehensive review of our maintenance program. This collaborative process included efforts to identify the issues, drill down to find the root cause and develop comprehensive fixes.”
However, In the case of United Airlines, the FAA alleges that the airline flew one Boeing 737 aircraft on more than 200 flights after “violating its own maintenance procedures.” That’s the “official” language. In plain language, the airline apparently continued to fly a plane that had shop towels stuffed in the aircraft’s engine.
On April 28. 2008, a United 737 returned to Denver after shutting down an engine due to low oil pressure indications. During teardown of the engine a week later, United mechanics found that two shop towels, instead of protective caps, had been used to cover openings in the oil sump area when maintenance was done in December 2007. As a result of United’s failure to follow its maintenance procedures, between February 10 and April 28, 2008, the airline continued to fly the airplane on more than 200 revenue flights when it was not in an airworthy condition.
Wonderful. Shop towels?
As is the case with all proposed FAA fines, each airline will have 30 days in which to appeal the proposed fines. In the past, this would then be followed by a little horsetrading between the airlines and the FAA — in an attempt to lower the fine amounts.
Will be interesting to see how much these fines are reduced. Especially the United one. While the US Airways’ transgressions seems to be based on issues involving proper record keeping of the newly merged airline — the shop towel incident with United strikes me as a much more serious “safety” issue.
As many of you are aware, a number of pilots representing the group of pilots at US Airways which was originally with America West, or the “West” pilots as they are nornally referred to — entered into litigation last year against USAPA, the independent pilot union that was created as a result of the original ALPA merger seniority award. That organization was, and is, made up primarily of old US Airways’ pilots, or the “East” pilots as they are known.
The reason for the litigation — the seniority award.
As many of you also know, this spring, after months of intense legal wrangling, US District Court Judge Neil Wake had whittled down the case to one central issue: whether the union is fairly representing all the pilots at US Airways. The legal term is duty of fair representation, or DFR.
The verdict after all the screaming and teeth gnashing? The court found in favor of the former America West pilots. In other words, the court agreed that yes, the formula used for the award was fair, and that by dumping ALPA and setting up USAPA in an attempt to circumvent that award — that the union did indeed not represent all of its members fairly.
But as we all know — this decision, which cost both sides millions of dollars in legal fees, really brought very little closure to anything.
First, the braintrust at USAPA basically refuses to admit that this means it needs to back off and allow the original ALPA seniority award, which used a “blended” process, and not date-of-hire method, to be used as part of any collective bargaining agreement. So essentially there has still been no movement in terms of negotiating a new contract agreement for the pilots.
And second, there is the question of damages.
And no damages are more attention-getting than the legal fees that both sides have incurred since the start of this huge mess.
This week I continue to get caught up on all my email that came in over the last couple of weeks, and today I was reading the latest missive from Leonidas, the group that sued USAPA.
In their latest missive, the group tells its members that its legal team has submitted a request that their legal fees be paid by the union, or USAPA.
“In essence though, we are making a request for the reimbursement of all legal fees and non-taxable expenses spent while protecting the careers of our pilots and protecting the validity of “binding arbitration.” To do this, we are not asking for anything too novel in that we have requested that all members of the bargaining unit share in the expense. There is no division of East or West with regard to who would be forced to pay for this legal action. On the surface, this may seem unjust, but what must be considered is the superb return on investment for all US Airways pilots should this request be granted. If the plaintiffs prevail here, then the $1.8 million in total expenses would be repaid to our legal counsel, and the balance of contributions received thus far would remain in the Leonidas trust, standing by to protect the minority for many years to come, just as stated in our Leonidas LLC objectives which were published long ago; “’We will remain perpetually poised to aggressively defend our rights until such time when we are no longer threatened.”’
So just how much are we talking about?
As they said in their comments above, the legal fees for the America West pilot group now stand at about $1.8 million.
And the litigation is not over yet.
As the folks at Leonidas point out,
“Back to that return on investment for the victims (for simplicity sake, we will use a little “chainsaw” math in this analysis):
$1,821,000 Approximate West legal expenses
5200 Approximate number of pilots subject to USAPA
$350 Approximate pro-rata share of expenses$1,260,700 Approximate East pilot share of expenses
3600 Approximate number of East pilots
1600 Approximate number of West pilots
$560,300 Approximate West pilot share of expenses
The net result is that the class of West pilots would receive $1,260,700 from the East pilots in return for their own contributions of only $560,300- an instant return on investment of 125% for the West pilots. We will acknowledge that this does not seem fair to those West pilots who have voluntarily funded our legal effort on the front end, but it would have the benefit of compelling those unwilling West beneficiaries of our legal campaign to finally contribute something nonetheless. Of course, true justice would be served by seeking these funds directly from the primary author of the entire USAPA saga; Lee Seham himself. That will be up to either the current USAPA leadership [unlikely], or perhaps a future and competent leadership team that will take over once Cleary and his team are removed and forever banished from union affairs.”
So while now the two sides continue to fight out the damages part of the ruling in court — let’s look again at how much money we’re talking about — just to pay off the legal fees for the America West-led group of plaintiffs. Almost $2 million bucks.
And I would add — how much is USAPA itself now on the hook for — in terms of its own legal fees it has racked up in defending this ridiculous stance of theirs?
But here’s the ironic part. All those expenses are having to be paid out of the general union dues pot — that same dues pot that is supposed to fund USAPA, which is supposed to represent all pilots at the airline. Yes, including the ex-America West guys.
I’ve said it before, and I have to say it again. The utter stupidity of this situation — on more than one front — continues to just flat out amaze me.
I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything, in terms of scope, that rivals this situation in terms of sheer union leadership idiocy.
And for this industry — that’s saying something.
Here’s hoping that the pilots at US Airways elect new union leadership at USAPA that understands, at least, the concept of rational thinking. Or maybe ….. reasoned thinking. Or maybe just …..thinking. Period.
First, AirTran and Continental announce a slot swap involving slots at Newark, Reagan National and LaGuardia on Tuesday. But the scope of that deal was swamped this morning with news that US Airways and Delta Air Lines have agreed to terms on a much larger deal that involves both a swap of slots, and a few routes thrown in for good measure.
This morning US Airways announced that it will obtain 42 pairs of slots at Reagan National, as well as access to slots in Tokyo (NRT) and Sao Paulo, Brazil (GRU) from Delta Air Lines.
In return, US Airways is giving Delta Air Lines 125 pairs of slots at LaGuardia.
This is a big deal for US Airways. The airline estimates that the deal will create an additional $75 million dollars in revenue per year.
It’s a positive for Delta Air Lines as well, as Delta continues to muscle into the New York market in a major way. This is a huge gain for them.
And no, this does not affect the US Airways’ Shuttle operation in any way.
Meanwhile, yesterday it was reported that AirTran plans to stop flying to and from Newark completely — giving its takeoff and landing slots to Continental Airlines. In exchange, Continental is going give AirTran slots at both Washington Reagan and LaGuardia.
Apparently AirTran will give Continental 10 slots, a single gate and a jetway at Newark. In exchange, Continental will give AirTran four slots at LaGuardia and six slots at Washington Reagan.
So, those are the facts.
What does all this horse trading mean?
It means that the bigger airlines are doing exactly what we said they were going to do. They’re getting creative.
While most headlines over the last few months have continued to talk about the lack of liquidity, “Which airline is most at risk?” — we have continued to make the argument in PlaneBusiness Banter that in this industry — good management teams are going to find a way to survive.
Look at the airlines involved in these two deals announced. Four of the better management teams out there.
We don’t see United, we don’t see a mention of American.
Meanwhile, Republic and Southwest are slugging it out over Frontier. Again, two of the better management teams in the industry.
Oh, and speaking of American – is it just me, or does that Holy Grail of a British Airways – American Airlines anti-trust agreement seem to continue to diminish in importance as the days go by?
I continue to believe that American, by putting all of its eggs in one basket it doesn’t even have in its possession yet, runs a big risk of being odd man out when the music stops.
This week’s mega-earnings issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. I think this one has set a new record at around 100 pages. Hey, I like to give you lots to think about.
This week I look at five airlines that recently reported second quarter earnings in-depth: AirTran; Alaska Air Group; Delta Air Lines; United Airlines; and JetBlue.
We also have earnings summaries now posted for ExpressJet, Republic Holdings, and Hawaiian Airlines on the site for PBB subscribers.
So what did we like or didn’t like about the earnings from this crop of airlines?
It was nice to have three honest-to-god profits to talk about this week. AirTran had an excellent quarter, Alaska was no slouch either, and JetBlue also had a nice quarter — although their profits were not as hefty as those posted by either AirTran or Alaska.
Then there is Delta. The airline continues to slog through some very costly underwater fuel hedges. And of course the airline is being hit hard on the international front as demand has simply gone into hiding for not only Delta but all the U.S. carriers who fly internationally.
And then there is United Airlines. CFO Kathryn Mikells was hammered in the airline’s call about the “L” word — yes, that would be liquidity.
But she retained her poise and kept telling those analysts that they were asking “terrific” questions.
Meanwhile, down in Atlanta, Delta’s Richard Anderson was called out by yours truly for his excessive use of corporate speak. And if I hear the word “synergy” one more time, I’m going to go stark raving mad.
But of course, the big news of last week was the news that Southwest Airlines had made a bid on Frontier Airlines — as part of that airline’s bankruptcy auction process.
Southwest is now burning the midnight oil, doing their due diligence, as final bids need to be in the hands of the court by Aug. 10. (Yes, look at your calendar. That’s next Monday.)
All this and much, much more, including details on the $1 billion cobbled-together financing deal that Air Canada announced this week — The Patron Saint of Failing Airlines Lives! (We are referring of course to GECAS)
All that and more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. Subscribers can access your issue here.
Holly here. Reporting from the airline earnings bunker where I have been toiling since last week.
This week’s PlaneBusiness Banter will be posted later today. It’s one of those monster issues. Next week’s issue will be just as packed, as we finish up from the group that reported last week. Just way too many earnings reports compressed in too short a period of time last week. Whew.
Having said that, it was an interesting group of calls last week. Just a couple of tidbits from what we heard.
One, US Airways, which has flirted with the idea of grounding its Embraer 190 fleet in the past — in an effort to cut capacity further at the airline — sounds like it is now looking at the possibility in a much more serious way. Because of the airline’s contract with its pilots — the airline is constrained in terms of how much flying it can remove. But it could remove the 25 Embraer 190 fleet in one fell swoop — thus cutting their capacity by 2.5%. It’s really the only option the airline has left if it wants to cut capacity further and in listening to the airline’s call last week, it sounds like the airline is very close to pulling the trigger on the move.
Two, I’m getting pretty tired of hearing the folks at Southwest Airlines keep talking about all these revenue initiatives they are going to do in the …future. Third quarter, fourth quarter. First quarter 2010. Who knows.
I am assuming the reason the airline keeps talking about all these things we are going to see — someday — is because the airline does not have the technological backbone in place to do them ..NOW.
Meanwhile the airline still does not charge for passenger bags. And revenues generated from their Business Select program continue to be under original forecast.
I think there is way too much money being left on the table here.
Three, the whole question of liquidity and who has it and who doesn’t permeated the calls last week.
Jamie Baker and Mark Streeter, analysts at JP Morgan Chase found themselves right in the middle of the fray after they published a note on where they saw United, American Airlines, and US Airways in the “Dance of the Cash Constrained.”
Hoping to clear up any confusion they had caused with their note, they issued another note later in the week in which they wrote:
Did We Not Make Ourselves Clear? – We are surprised by the volume of incoming calls from people who believe that our view is that LCC [US Airways] somehow disappears.
As noted earlier this week, “assuming LCC or UAUA die off, as we believe some do, is a mistake, in our opinion.” What we do take issue with is US Airways’ ability to raise incremental capital should industry fundamentals deteriorate further or even remain stuck here in neutral. There has been very little dialogue, as near as we can tell, as to the potential that 2010 demand may prove as bad as 2009’s. Alternatively, bump up your RASM and fuel by similar amounts and one’s industry models probably won’t show any meaningful improvement. It is against this backdrop that we continue to believe that borrowing power (as well as the need for incremental borrowing) at AMR & UAUA significantly exceeds that of LCC. Put another way, AMR needs to borrow a lot of money, and we think it has plenty of ways to do so. United needs to borrow less, and we think it also has a few bullets left to fire in the capital-raising gun. However, our view on LCC is that while its near-term needs are arguably low, its capital-raising options appear largely nonexistent if demand trends simply bump along from here or in fact worsen. We therefore believe that some form of Washington-mandated combination might potentially occur. Nothing this earnings season changed our view in this regard, nor our opinion that risk/reward in LCC shares remains weak assuming most scenarios short of quick recovery (though LCC’s peer-leading 54% decline since May 6th obviously tempers our negativity).
I’d suggest you tread very softly when discussing liquidity with US Airways‘ CEO Doug Parker however. Doug went on another one of his “liquidity rants” in the airline’s call last week. Deja vu all over again. It was just last year at about the same time that analysts were saying US Airways didn’t have enough cash to get through the winter. Then they pulled off that slick $1 billion financing deal out of nowhere.
As someone observed about this industry — don’t underestimate the ability of an airline to find cash.
No matter how bad the business environment.
This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.
It was a busy week for the Things With Wings last week.
First, American Airlines reported its second quarter earnings results. The airline lost a lot of money. $390 million to be exact. $319 million excluding special items. However, you’d never have known it if you listened to the airline’s earnings call — which seemed focused on one thing — liquidity. Oh, and capacity reductions. That’s fine, but there are other aspects of an airline’s operations I’d like to hear about.
Then we had the blockbuster news concerning Continental’s Chairman and CEO, Larry Kellner. As I write in this week’s PBB, even though the management backbench strength at Continental Airlines is strong, and the airline should be able to carry on just fine as Larry goes to seek his fortune in the equity investment game — it’s quite discouraging to see one of the industry’s best and brightest leave.
Following up on our piece in last week’s issue about United’s bone-headed (or would that be heavy-handed) attempts to get travel agencies to take on more financial risk — or rather some travel agencies — the airline said late last week that it is going to give agencies 60 days to implement the business operation changes it seeks.
This whole thing still reeks. Nothing the airline says rings true.
Southwest Airlines had its own place in the spotlight last week, or would that be the sunlight, as the airline had a 737-300 aircraft develop a hole in the roof while enroute from Nashville to BWI. Not what the airline wants or needs — especially considering the issues the airline has had with the FAA concerning fuselage checks in the past. Preliminary NTSB report says there was no evidence of previous corrosion at the site.
That was not the only bad news Southwest had last week. The airline was also notified that its debt rating with Moody’s is under review, signaling a potential downgrade.
The Senate produced its version of an FAA Reauthorization bill last week. How did it differ from the House version? It differed on quite a few items. We talk more about that in this week’s issue.
Those misguided folks at the US Airways Pilot Association, the pilot union that was created in an attempt to circumvent the original ALPA seniority award that was handed down after US Airways and America West combined forces — had their head handed to them on a plate by U.S. District Judge Neil Wake last week. Wake issued his final injunctive order on the case brought against USAPA by the former America West pilots. Yes, we talk about this too.
Oh, and speaking of USAPA, we also give them, and our readers, a handy step-by-step instruction of how you correctly determine just how much an airline executive makes, using SEC documentation. Apparently the folks at USAPA have a problem figuring these things out.
British Airways raids its guaranteed employee pension benefit larder, Air Canada gets all of its employees “on board” with its 21-month contract extension program, and 215 Delta pilots sign up for the airline’s sweetened “early-out” package. Somehow I think the guys in suits over in Atlanta had hoped that number had been higher.
All this and more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.
If you are a subscriber, you can access this week’s issue here. If not, you can learn how you can become a subscriber by clicking here.