This whole situation just seems fake to me. I've been following the stock, reading the business related articles, and reading this thread for quite some time now.
For an airline the size of Pinnacle to loose a few million dollars during a transition period is more or less a "Break-Even." When FedEx bought Kinko's, which costs millions and millions of dollars, that transition period showed FedEx to have a loss. Nobody panicked as it was clearly explained by Fred Smith. Excluding the one time fees of this transaction, FedEx was profitable. No big deal.
Same with Pinnacle, excluding the one time fees of streamling 3 airlines into one, and a move to downtown Memphis...the airline isn't in financial trouble. When it's all said and done, Pinnacle will be back to normal, and with greater synergies than before.
What is troubling to me, is the CEO is literally scaring the $hit out of everyone. What CEO does this? One that purposely wants to send the stock price in the toilet? (He did a good job with that!) One that wants to deliberately send the business in bankruptcy perhaps? Hmmmm.
For the past few years we've seen high oil price bring up the CASM exponentially for the 50 seat market. Some routes are profitable, while the majority are not. It's no secret at all that the Legacy carriers as a whole, want to shrink down the utilization of their 50 seat jets.
If I was a pilot at Pinnacle right now, I would be holding the CEO accountable for why on earth he hasn't exercised the option, yet, to have the pilot cost income from Delta be set to the actual cost (as clearly outlined in the ASA). If this option isn't exercised, then of course the airline will be less profitable, or in this case, a loss.
Sean Menke knows deep down inside that the pilot group will NOT take a paycut, not 1 red penny.....especially after negotiating for 5 loooong years. If the flight attendants give up 10 %, what is that? A buck and a half per hour? The rest of the employees dont' make up any cost savings as most are barely above minimum wage. The leadership restructing leaves the airline with paying out massive golden parachute packages in the millions.
This whole thing is a fraud, I smell a rat. There's more to this story, my guess is Delta is directing this to save face, by creatively, yet legally, shrink down the utilization of the 50 seaters, simply because they aren't profitable.
Meanwhile........Phil Trenary and Doug Shockey are living it up at a 5 star resort in the tropics, blowing their millions........