Crandall has been stating this for a few years now. Wish I could remember where, but he had an op-ed piece in one of the major newspapers (I am thinking WSJ) about three or four years back stating almost the same thing. So this is not a sudden change for him.

One thing to remember as well that when Bob Crandall was running American, he had to do what was best for the shareholders - ie. minimize costs/maximize profits. So while the "B" scale was terrible, I do not view Bob Crandall as evil in the same way as Lorenzo was. Someone pointed it out earlier, Crandall actually ran a successful airline, Lorenzo killed Eastern and tried to kill Continental.

Hopefully we will see some good things come from this.