Originally Posted by
fuzzball
Sorry, the above numbers are wrong. The ATSB loan was $40 million in 2003 and the net loss was $43 million.
So that was a $83 million deficit year (on revenue of, what 200M?) and management's hail mary was the merger. What happened next? 2004 bankruptcy, Banmiller, etc.
I say again: With the merger, none of our friends from AQ would be in the left seat of an A330 deciding where they're having ramen in Osaka tonight. So please don't describe the few wise men who organized against the merger as having been fuelled by hate, they were looking two moves ahead and wanted at least one local carrier to survive. Heck, as a newish guy I sorta thought the merger made sense, but when the numbers became available there was no ignoring the facts.
Hawaiian's later opposition to the merger had nothing to do with ATSB or losses as both airlines were bleeding. The primary reason was based on Hawaiian's opposition to Greg Brenneman and TurnWorks. Aloha wanted Brenneman. Hawaiian wanted their managers in charge of the merged airline.
As for whether everyone's better off now, well, Hawaiian folks ended up with a lot more seniority than Aloha folks who had to start over in 2008. Kudos to Hawaiian for hiring so many, but when you have people who were at Aloha 20+ years starting over as year 1 FO's it’s clearly one-sided