I agree. I’m jealous of the UA culture. I think Oscar was a big key in that. Kirby is a smart dude but I hope he doesn’t kill the culture with “bottom line only” thinking.

I agree Oscar is the reason for the massive culture change at UA. I hope Kirby learned from him. Also Oscar will be head of the Board so if he remains engaged from that perspective Kirby will still need to watch what he does or the board will replace him.

Iv seen Kirby speak several times and says the right things.....but you and I both know what that is worth.

Kirby does dress up like Ke$ha though. While insisting he needs 81 seat RJs. Time will tell.

And yes, I am ashamed I know how to stylize “Ke$ha”.

As a UAL pilot I’ll say two things:

1. 5 years in at AA and thinking of jumping ship? Nuts. I love it here but wouldn’t give up 5 years of AA seniority to come here. No way. JetBlue, Frontier, Spirit, Allegiant; even SWA maybe but not AA. I think within 5 years AA will be a completely different place and my bet is you all will be happy. Airlines cycle at the top. Delta has had their day in the sun but I’m seeing signs of things over there getting all “Gummed”up next year. UAL is doing the right things and absent a recession, I see our airline rising but nothing will last forever and AA could very well climb above us in 5 years. Look at where we were 5 years ago!

2. Kirby is a smart network guy and that is what UAL needed in a terribly bad way. We already had hubs in great markets and wide bodies with tons of wide body orders. We just needed a mind that could connect the dots and put them to use where they maximized profit. Some of us were surprised to see 777s going to Florida and all over our domestic network this year but it has worked. He drove the decisions to add used narrow body aircraft and has put us in a position to take a ton of MAXs over the next 5 years with 321s coming as well. I’ll give him some slack for a while.

I left UAL for aa. 900+ retirements per year cant be beat. Ual has airport standby, always converting lc to sc, commuter clause sucks compared to aa, can only drop to 50hrs at ual and its megabase is SFO so unless you live on the west coast forget about it.

Not digging on ual, just showing that aa isnt near as bad as aa guys think it is. Plus no hat at AA. Now let me go back to figuring out what to spend my profit sharing on this year: tube socks or underwear.

Uhhh, SFO is a junior base, not a mega base. More pilots based in ORD/IAH/EWR than SFO and if my Atlas is still believable, none of those domiciles are on the Weat Coast. Denver is growing and IAD is growing as well. Not larger than SFO but getting junior. LAX/GUM/CLE stagnant

You people and your “facts”. You are right, sorry. How about mega vacancy base which would make LGA our mega vacancy base

This does not make sense.

1. Oscar is in charge as of now and 2. wait for the scope busting fear bombs once Kirby is at the helm.

Oscar is CEO but he is really just a figure head. Everyone at United knows Kirby has been running the show for a while now.

Oscar didn’t know airlines he was a train guy. The first thing he did was improve employee moral and any good CEO could do that. He then went shopping for N airline guy and that’s when Kirby stepped in. As soon as Kirby stepped on property United exploded. Our route network got immediately stronger our domestic presence was boosted and we opened markets all over the world and grew like crazy.

If Parker would have left and Kirby had become the CEO at AA I would be leaving UA to work there. UA had two investors take control of the board and Wall Street was demanding we close IAD/DEN and LAX. United would be in really bad shape right now. AA giving up Kirby was a mistake.

As far as Kirbys bravado on RJs.....who cares? He has to go through me to get them, and I know where my vote stands. I’m not scared, and neither are any United pilots, of a guy who wants to get rid of SCOPE, he can tak all he wants. I never understood why your group hated him because he was doing his job, all CEOs say the same thing.

MOP fair enough.

Agree ... if scope gets relaxed it’s out own dam fault ... he can ask and he can be denied .

Opportunity Cost - AA vs UAL?
 

Hold up. You’d give up however long you’ve been at united to go to AA if Kirby became AA CEO? [emoji848][emoji848]

If it wasn’t for Kirby we would be in really bad shape at UA right now. Between Tilton burning the furniture and Smizek bowing down to the pressures of wall street the amount of damage that was done to UA over the last 2 decades was dang near devastating. Put on top of that the two activist investors that got on the board......United would be a really bad place right now.

Oscar fixed the moral and finished the merger and Kirby got United back to growing and collecting its rightful market share. There are plenty of articles out there that describe haw bad things were and how good things are getting now. Kirby took an airline that was circling the drain and in 3 years closed the gap on DL in all metrics. UA is a proud company again and I think it will continue going in that direction.

So to answer your question if it wasn’t for Kirby I may not have a choice but to join AA. If Kirby was given the reigns at AA and he grew it like he did at UA, AA would have been an unstoppable powerhouse. AA would be fighting DL at the top and UA would be shrinking to profitability while closing hubs:rolleyes:. A down turn would have killed us.

Putting down the UAL/Kirby kool-aid for minute might not be a terrible idea. I’m not sure the demand for the United brand is anywhere near the demand for the Delta brand right now.

But if United really is this highly coveted, desirable, industry force that pax can’t imagine flying anyone other than United, please excuse my ignorance for not seeing it.

You would have “no choice but to join AA” I would love to know what Pilot Recruitment’s reaction would have been in this dream scenario when you called to tell them mismanagement at UAL was forcing you to come over and when to expect to see you in one of their newhire classes.

I didn’t say any of that......

If I had less than 5 years seniority at AA I would consider jumping ship. 900 retirements/year at an airline with major issues or 600 retirements/year at a thriving airline growing 5% year after year. Seems like a no brainer to me. AA’s last stronghold was bought out from under them with the LATAM deal.

Parker either fights back or burns the furniture for the next decade. He never seemed like a manager who likes growing the airline organically so I’m guessing AA flounders to the point of being a deep #3 and then announces a merger with JetBlue or Alaska to save the company. Seniority battle ensues, etc etc. It’s the only play Parker knows and it makes the guys/gals at the top very wealthy.


I think Jamie Baker said it best a couple years ago...
“We all remember a time when United couldn’t punch its way out of a paper bag, when they were the perennial last-place member of the big three,” Baker said, as he questioned American CEO Doug Parker. “What I’m being asked right now from investors is whether American has now simply stepped into the shoes that United once occupied.”

“Maybe that is simply the construct of the industry going forward,” Baker said. “You’re going to have one chronic outperformer, let’s call that Delta, in fairness. You have the silver medalist, let’s call it United, and then inevitably American brings up the rear. So, how do you push back on that?”

American executives have already spent much of the call outlining American’s favorable prospects and Parker did not reiterate them in response to Baker’s question. Rather, he declared, “We vehemently disagree.”

Baker, seemingly unimpressed, wrote in a July 31 report that, “American did a poor job defending its longer-term potential as part of the Big Three construct.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2018/08/06/has-american-slipped-behind-united-to-become-the-number-three-airline-a-top-analyst-says-it-has/amp/

I’m not a Parker hater per se (he’s a CEO that does CEO-y things...that’s his job). But he’s not particularly good at running a highly competitive airline. He’s OK-ish at muddling through, and that was just fine at AW and Airways. But now that the industry has consolidated, the company needs to be thinking ahead. Time for Parker to go and get replaced with someone with a little boldness and vision.

Just re-read your post. You are correct you said closed the gap on Delta with the regards to METRICS. I mistakenly just read closed the “gap on Delta”. I appologize.

I’m still not sure what you meant by “if it wasn’t for Kirby you may have been forced to join AA” were you implying that if UA went under you would have a job at AA waiting for you? Anyways I’m probably reading too much into that. I won’t derail things further. Carry-on.

You are correct if United went under I wouldn’t expect AA to just hire me. It was tongue and cheek and just a flip on this thread title.

https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=AAL&p=D&yr=1&mn=2&dy=0&id=p67355148351

And the downtrend continues.

For years and years UA couldn't hit its rear with both hands despite having a great network. Most unhappy group of pilots I'd ever had on the jumpseat. Maybe now is their time. I never liked Scooter, but he seems to be doing well there-maybe it was low hanging fruit that others mismanaged.

In the end everyone has to make their own career decisions because they live with the outcome.

A few guys that left US Airways now wish they had stayed, but they thought it was the best move at the time.

I sat next to a guy commuting in 2012 or so that had just resigned from UAL to retire at number 50 in XX years and instead quit and went to a ME carrier to work in their training department.

Then Oscar was brought in and suddenly they found their rudder and starting rowing again.

You just never know.

You can drop down to zero now. An LOA was put out about 2 years ago.

Don’t disagree about chasing the seniority. Reserve is hit or miss. Yes we have field STBY, but as a full time reserve, I’ve only done it twice-also hit or miss. We need improvements in our reserve rules. I don’t know what your commuter policy is, but I don’t have a problem with ours, two flights, can’t get on the first, call scheduling-sometimes they positive space you, sometimes they call in a reserve.

I’m not sure what you mean by mega base. You can go pretty much anywhere in the system within 6 months now.