Originally Posted by
oldmako
Please excuse my skepticism. It's not my intention to micturate on your barbeque. I got hired in the late ESOP days. Unicorns, rainbows, all that, and was convinced that UA was going to be different. Nothing but a big plate of bonhomie! Most of the old guys were non-plussed and told me why. They were ultimately proven right.
Prior to UA, I was the lucky recipient of wonderful treatment by several other aviation enterprises. Only ONE of which never went Chap 11. Several simply went right out of business on payday leaving the employees holding the bag as creditors.
It's in my DNA. I hope for your sake that it won't be shoved into yours in the future.
Skepticism is great, my philosophical heart burn is when you get reflexively pessimistic. There’s a pretty important difference, and although I reckon in your heart of hearts you understand the nuance, many people happily consume and regurgitate other peoples’ opinions as their own, without the benefit of having weighed and balanced the competing ideas that lead to the conclusion. When a guy like you can sow humor, wit and charisma into his arguments, it helps people swallow an idea that is largely devoid of nuance (all management is bad), that reduces our ability to accurately assess what is going on.
I know you understand that Kirby is a different animal than Tilton or Smisek, but your posts don’t reflect that. And as for your beef with TI, I don’t know him personally, but I still haven’t heard or seen anything to indicate he is a bad faith actor.
when everything is a threat, nothing is a threat. That’s where reflexive pessimism gets you. So while I really appreciate your posts as “one take of what’s happening,” I think a lot of people mistake your op-eds for the gospel and become unable to distinguish their frustration with unintended (small) LOA disparities in rewards, from the fact that we are realistically doing WAY WAY better than we should be for a year of sub 50% loads and never before seen cash burn.