Support the industry and commit to one major airline

[Aero_Engineer]

I just raed this, I agree with some of the things he says but not all of it, judge it yourself, here is the link:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9342052/

Armen

[alphaone]

Well it started off good until the part about "the self fish labor unions draining the airlines" when in fact the labor unions represent the skilled employees which are the airlines themselves.

[SteveC]

[ QUOTE ]
...."the self fish labor unions...

[/ QUOTE ]

Ummm......shouldn't that be "shell fish"?

[Mike Lewis]

Well, the thing about committing to one major airline: well, that's good in theory, but here's the reality:

In both the military and in my last job with a major company, I had no control over carriers. I had to use the comany travel agency, and THEY decided which airline I flew on and my routing. And even if I wanted to pay the difference for a more sensible and direct route, it was against the rules.

Case in point: Instead of flying from New York to Florida via Delta with a single layover and arriving at noon, I flew Northwest via Detroit, MSP, AND Memphis. I got to Florida at 10 PM. Why? Because the Delta flight was $20 more. Now, I got about $75 per diem for that day, which was shot because I spent all of it in airports and airplanes; had I gotten there at noon, I could have gotten a half a day's work in. Therefore, the company spent $37 to save $20.

The BULK of my travel is business, and I've flown all of the majors, depending on which one had the cheapest rates at that particular time.

When I travel on the very occasional personal travel, we fly Northwest, assuming they fly to that destination.

What gets me is everyone is concerned about losing their frequent flyer miles if NWA goes tango uniform. I'm concerned about the impact on community; NWA is Minnesota's largest private employer. No NWA means my town, Bloomington, will suffer greatly, as a lot of the local businesses (restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores) count on business from the airport. Less passengers and less airline employees means less business for them. Less business for them means less revenue from taxes, which means my property taxes will go up or my services (schools, parks, etc) will suffer.

So I cringe when I hear people worry about losing their frequent flier miles; I'm worried about losing my community...

[PGT]

Every summer I travel to Europe, I usually go with NWA (love that friggin airline) but this year I went with united cause it was $100 chaper...mistake cause it sucked. Anyway, Im trying to say that I do think its worth sticking to one airline, expecially when the service is great.




[ QUOTE ]
Will they get you to Des Moines to see Grandma at Christmas? I think not.

[/ QUOTE ]

I live just north of des moines and I know exactly what they mean

[Cruise]

That's funny.....nowhere in that rag of an article was anything mentioned about unrealistic, greedy upper management.

I read in USA Today....today.....that the Delta CEO stated the upper management wouldn't take their bonuses this year. WOW...NO BONUSES...Guess that's what happens when you're BANKRUPT. However, it said nothing about upper management wage consesions. Go figure, let the little-guy absorb the salary cuts.....hell, that 20% won't hurt when you're making $80K a year. You should be able to make it on $60K. Just imagine how hard it would be on upper management to take that same pay-cut from their $1 million dollar salary. What were we thinking.......how would they be able to survive on the meager living wage of ONLY $800K a year.

So, yes....I see his point about the greedy labor cost/ unions.....we should all just work for free. After all, don't you want to be a team player and help out upper management?

[Kingairer]

I liked the article. Didnt really have in reality in it!, but i liked it.

[Kingairer]

Maybe thats the answer!, Make the people feel sorry for us. Hmmm....Maybe run smear ads against other carriers like our politicians do during elections.