The announcements were lame, underwhelming, and totally predictable. Announcing that you are spending all your cash reserves on stock buybacks is, quite simply, beyond the pale. That was the real announcement. The rest was window dressing.

The only reason to buy back a chunk of underperforming stock is to have the dual effect of bribing institutional investors to allow our crop of underperforming airline executives to keep their jobs and to increase the value of shares paid to execs, BOD, and our illustrious chair, who is still under contract for 2 more years after his departure.

This is corporate raider stuff, which is ironic, because I thought that Elliott were supposed to be raiding us, but it turns out the raiders were inside the house the whole time.

So choose your poison, not that any of us will get to choose. At this point, I am willing to take a chance on the unknown rather than this group of criminals.