New Bold Airlines

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............. A good airline can make a penny into 50 feet of copper wire.

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and they are also saving tons of cash by having the baggage handlers make new signs.



they had just finished this one with a couple of Sharpie's and some "Wite-Out"

I hate to think of where they cut that sheet metal from.....

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They're a bold bunch all right. My family tagged along with me last year as I traveled to attend a professional conference. My wife and children had accumulated enough frequent flyer miles on the unnamed airline to fly free. After we returned from the trip I checked the mileage balance in my 10-year-old son's frequent flyer account as, by my calculations, he should be left with only a few thousand miles in his account. I was correct. . .to a point. After the trip he had about 6,000 miles in his account. Unfortunately, shortly after that a deduction transaction labeled "adjustment" for 50,000 miles was made to his account by the unnamed airline giving him a balance of NEGATIVE 44,000 MILES IN HIS FREQUENT FLYER ACCOUNT. I called the airline and explained the situation, and was transferred at least five times to other departments (some twice) and explained the situation each time. After about two hours on the phone, I finally got to the end of the line to a supervisor of some type who explained to me that it is possible to have such a large negative mileage balance. She claimed the 50,000 mile deduction was legitimate but had now way of validating or explaining it and, quite frankly, had no intention of investigating it. It sounded like an inside job to me. I then informed her that I attended graduate business school with the current CEO of the airline she worked for and that I intended to contact him personally first thing in the morning using her name(the truth is, the airline CEO and I did go through the same MBA program, but he was a few years behind me and I don't know him, but she didn't know that. I did however, intend to contact him). Amazingly, her response to me was "Go ahead!" . Maybe she thought I was bluffing but it was a hell of a gamble on her part! Prior to picking up the phone to call the CEO the next morning (I suspect he would have responded to my attempt to contact him as our alumni tend to accommodate one another), I checked my son's mileage balance and the "adjustment" was reversed and his mileage was indeed correct so I let it slide. If this is how they treat the best and most loyal customer base, I can't imagine how they treat the rest. I don't think I have set foot on one of their planes since and I fly more than most Americans.
When we handed huge checks to the airlines after 9/11, we should have put a message on the back of the check stating that by endorsing the check the payee agrees to fly on schedule, be respectful to their passengers (who are their customers), maintain their equipment and deliver quality service. I don't think that's an unreasonable request. I wonder how many of them would have cashed the check?

[427TJ]

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When we handed huge checks to the airlines after 9/11, we should have put a message on the back of the check stating that by endorsing the check the payee agrees to fly on schedule, be respectful to their passengers (who are their customers), maintain their equipment and deliver quality service. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.

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From management's point of view it is too an unresonable request. It costs money to do all that and the CEO, top managers, Wall Street banks, board of directors and major shareholders all DEMAND a return on investment. If management spends money on all that stuff then there's less money, maybe no money for executive bonuses and paybacks to those powerful interests that are invested in the company. There is INTENSE and RELENTLESS pressure on managment to keep costs as low as possible and that pressure is passed on to the traveling public through BS of the kind you experienced with your frequent flyer miles. If you want a cheap seat then you have to forego everything you mentioned. Oh, and don't expect airline employees to be all smiles after their several pay cuts and all the BS that is pushed down on them from management. (Sh!t flows downhill.) Imagine yourself being hammered RELENTLESSLY by your boss or management to work harder and harder and longer and longer for less and less money.

Senator McCain will win in November and he is a strong proponent of foreign ownership of U.S. airlines and he does not like airline pilots. Once a Chinese (or other nationality) investment group buys a major U.S. airline then the dismantling of the airline's labor unions will begin through forced strikes or just unilateral pay and benefit cuts. There are plenty of hungry workers, foreign AND domestic, ready to walk right in and take over. I was just in Oakland yesterday where the Kaiser Permanente nurses are on strike. The hotel is full of scab nurses flown in from all over the good old USA and they are going through training in the hotel conference center as we speak. (Hmm, security guards everywhere too.) I saw that as an example of what could easily happen to me, a unionized airline pilot. Foreign ownership is inevitable and someday you'll board your flight and there will be two nice foreign pilots who speak ragged English and foreign cabin crews who also struggle to communicate with you. Hey, it's the cost-effective way. The Holy Grail of airline managers is this equation: Cost = 0. In other words, 100% profit is the dream of every business owner, especially airlines with tight profit margins in good times and razor-thin proft margins, if any, these days. If they could just get employees to work for free then managers could go to sleep at night with big smiles on their faces. As labor falls out of favor with the American people we get closer and closer to Cost = 0.

Having said all that, skyrocketing fuel prices might kill off affordable flying before foreign owners can replace the unionized workers so my point could be moot.

For the record, my employer refused the post 9/11 government bail-out money.