For anyone who is still out there acting like Vasu is our savior.... or maybe you just need a laugh. Gotta admit, it's a little funny to read knowing that not only did they know this would happen, they bragged about how they weren't going to dick it up
While both Delta and United announced aggressive cutbacks in capacity this spring, American ended up going in the opposite direction. The airline was also, for whatever reason, slow to explain the reasoning behind their actions.
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Vasu: So, we look at this situation and the natural reaction is to say okay, things are really bad, demand is really uncertain, we need to hoard cash, take out as much expense as possible, shut down hubs, etc.
But I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told our board. That is – this way of thinking is the friggin’ case study of AMR.
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Vasu: American neutered its ability to actually generate demand.
As a result, whenever there was a recovery, American could never participate in it. It structurally surrendered an advantaged position to its competitors. Because it was just so hell-bent on cost take-out.
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Vasu: Right. It (AMR) had so much debt and all this other stuff. And what it did was – all of this eroded everybody’s will. It eroded the will of the frontline team, of management, of investors, everybody.
If I could tell [CEO] Gerard [Arpey] anything – I’d tell him, “Grow the friggin’ airline.”
But the only way to do that was to NOT shrink. Grow at DFW. Don’t shut down St. Louis
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Vasu: So, here’s the deal. All of this that we are going through today. It sucks. But this is how I describe it to my team: this is like win or crash. And we sure are not going to figure all of this out by cutting at a greater rate than the other airlines.
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Everybody understands how precious this opportunity is and we’re not going to f#&% it up.
But hey, trying to explain all of this is hard. Let’s face it. We’ve burned a lot of credibility
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The airline that figures out a way to not furlough people, particularly pilots, ....they are going to come out of this on top.
https://www.planeperspectives.com/20...nes-vasu-raja/