Originally Posted by gloopy

Right. We're running a tight ship, but its also during the absolute easiest time in the history of the industry (including the much ballyhooed regulation era) where the difference between absolute genius and complete incompetent management teams is merely a matter of how many billions in profit you're making ATM.

You could literally pull someone out of a phone book and make them CEO and whisper to them "just sit back, relax, **** and don't touch anything and here's your 8 figure salary" and run a profitable airline in almost every casen in this economic environment. The floor of the performance envelope right now is merely one of less profits but still mad profits in all but the train wreckiest of examples.

As for the product, its good but could be better. Not one jetbridge without awesome air and not one station without adequate tugs and towbars. FC meals need improving IMO and we're not where we need to be WRT reliable connectivity and IFE. More work needs to be done with the boarding process. D-0/door closed early needs to be more balanced than it is.

And short sleeves with ties makes ppl wonder why their plane is being piloted by computer programmers from the 70s.

Originally Posted by Tailhookah

Pilots are the best CEO’s.... riiiight. One thing I’ve learned is to not take any business advice from pilots. And I’ll not ever expect to get any flying skill advice from Ed.

Ed did inherit a well oiled machine from Richard. We all agree about that. But Ed has shown great skill in running the Big D and I only shudder to think where we’d be with Parker or Munoz. Delta is kicking ass because Delta is run by a great team... not because they’re running on cruise control.

Originally Posted by Gooner

True, but that does not excuse the unbelievable amount of capital that has been burned on questionable buybacks. We operate in an extremely capital intensive business, a billion goes along way to solve lots of problems. Not sure we’ve solved many by spending +$5billion on buying stock, unless it comes to overcompensating a very small group of employees.

Originally Posted by Tailhookah

Pilots are the best CEO’s.... riiiight. One thing I’ve learned is to not take any business advice from pilots. And I’ll not ever expect to get any flying skill advice from Ed.

Ed did inherit a well oiled machine from Richard. We all agree about that. But Ed has shown great skill in running the Big D and I only shudder to think where we’d be with Parker or Munoz. Delta is kicking ass because Delta is run by a great team... not because they’re running on cruise control.

Originally Posted by gloopy

I agree and that's not what I said. I didn't say that anyone could produce the exact same numbers. Only that this is, by far, and I mean to an extent the likes of which we've never seen in this industry or even credibly anticipated until it happened, the best time to be in this industry including running airlines at this current time.

I agree that other management teams would be making less money than ours in almost every case. But they'd still be making a ton of money, including a random CEO lottery where anyone sitting at CE's desk with an unplugged phone and the door locked would still be "running" a profitable company (just not as profitable).

We're making hay while the sun shines and that's great; the sun has never shined as bright on this industry ever, and odds are overwhelming that it won't last forever. When it changes, and it will, airlines will rue the day they burnt back billions instead of saving for the next rainy decade. But as Jerry Seinfeld says, "that's tomorrow guy's problem".

Originally Posted by OOfff

You can’t really “save” a bunch of billions without becoming an acquisition target.

Originally Posted by mispoken

One person we don’t hear from often is our rep on the BOD. Or do we? I don’t often hear any reports from that individual in the usual Union communications. It would be interesting to hear his “inside” perspective. Although I imagine those meetings going something like this;

“Hey, Mr. Union Rep, we’ll be right back”

Originally Posted by OOfff

You can’t really “save” a bunch of billions without becoming an acquisition target.