Originally Posted by
oldmako
What? Who exactly was happy that smizek was handed the keys? I submit only those not paying attention. I sure wasn't. The deified CAL management team was gone before the merger occurred. Infected? What was GOOD about UA pre-merge was infected post-merge is more like it. Don't you recall our FC pax all leaving in droves?
There are a whole slew of reasons why UA is in third place. In my mind, the damage done during the smizek era is number one. It will take time to repair that damage.
What I think he's saying Mako is that many of the UAL types were pleased that the supposedly better CAL management types were going to be in the drivers seat vs Tilton. Right before we actually merged I had a whole slew of UAL friends telling me to my face they couldn't be happier to be getting our management team.
I did try and temper their enthusiasm by warning them that the guy steering the ship at the moment was in no way comparable to the guy 2 steps previous not to mention that our Flight Ops leadership was a disaster. Not one CAL Pilot, except for some of our ass-kissing scabs, thought Smizek was a good leader at any point during his tenure. The dude had no business sweeping up garbage let alone running a multi-billion dollar corporation.
Basically it all ended up being a grass is always greener scenario that turned out way worse than either Pilot group could have imagined. We do have a well respected figure-head CEO who's a great front guy and a minority share holder president appointee who hopefully isn't in it for the quick buck.
I have my doubts as PAR Capital and Altimeter Capital aren't here to stick around for decades so we'll just have to wait and see.