Secondhand Smoking Jacks: When will these bloated airlines ever learn?

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

When will these bloated airlines ever learn?

LA Times reports that Delta and Northwest have both filed for bankruptcy.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; September 14, 2005 at 6:35:00 PM CDT
Michael said...: It's their union contracts that are killing them.; September 14, 2005 at 7:19:00 PM CDT
Ken said...: It wasn’t the price of jet fuel, or market forces that brought down Delta Airlines. It was a culture of arrogance among management and an adversarial relationship with the equally arrogant pilots. The management at Delta believed their own rhetoric that they were better than everyone else and incapable of failing. In the end it was their air of superiority that blinded them to a changing market. Early on they felt no need to compete with new upstart carriers that would eventually run rings around them.; September 15, 2005 at 2:26:00 AM CDT
Michael said...: Looks like I need to backtrack some. I was thinking of Southwest, which is profitable, when I made my comment about union contracts. According to today's New York Times, Southwest is unionized and pays some of the highest wages in the industry. Unlike Delta or Northwest, however, it has fuel contracts that have protected it from recent price increases.; September 15, 2005 at 6:29:00 AM CDT
Scooter said...: I know that the unions have hurt. I also know that SW employees are among some of the most loyal in the industry, unionized or not.

I wonder if some of it has to do with a hangover mindset (Ken's "arrogance" perhaps) from the days of regulation...when they were protected almost as little utilities. That's been what, twenty years?

I've always found the pilots' union arrogant, too. They might have learned something from the PATCO disaster.; September 15, 2005 at 7:43:00 AM CDT
Scooter said...: Pretty decent analysis in the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4399993; September 15, 2005 at 10:36:00 AM CDT