Originally Posted by
cactusflyer
The difference was that Delta and American had thought out at least some long term consequences of their decision, and AAG clearly hasn't, so Horizon will suffer a "death by stupid", since a completely run airline wouldn't be parking half it's fleet in the middle of a huge travel boom.
The complete inability of QX management to answer even basic questions like "how many airplanes will we have after this?" indicates to me that AAG made this decision entirely as an attempt to boost the stock price short term, and there was absolutely zero planning done beyond that.
I think the other big problem with how this company is set up is that all the management folks at QX want to be at AS, so they will say/agree to anything in the hope that they put in their 1 or 2 years, then get a "promotion" to AS, where it will then be someone else's problem. No one will speak truth to power, as we are now witnessing with the ANC base slow train-wreck... (how could we have foreseen not hiring all those out of work RavN pilots with enough time to train them up to staff ANC?! Leopards ate my face again!)
I don't see how this is going to do anything but accelerate attrition since no one wants to invest in "the sick animal" in the herd, and anyone with the means is going to jump ship ASAP, which is only going to accelerate this into a death spiral.
Only realistic way out is to start a real flow, staple QX seniority onto bottom of AS, and start process for integrating both into a single airline. The longer they wait, the worse this will get.