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.

 

Crandalls strong point is he actually wanted to make money running an airline. He was no angel then and he isn't now but he wanted to run a business and not gut it. Many companies, not just airlines, have had the gut and run management a return to management that wants to and has the ability to make a profit running a successful company is past due.

 

Heyas,

While a fearsome negotiating opponent, Crandal was a brilliant manager and thinker. Three colossal innovations that are directly attributable to him are computer reservations systems, frequent flyer programs and yield management.

With a few ISOLATED exceptions, he had, and still has no peer in the business. He forsaw the trainwreck of de-regulation, and tried to warn everyone of its consequences.

De-regulation was started by a kid in the CAB almost as a joke, and mistakenly taken up by Kennedy as "quick hit" to show that all democrats weren't for Big Government.

You simply cannot have low margin, high captial expenditure businesses completely de-regulated. They self-destruct because of loose money and destructive competition by entities with no responsibilty to serve "the public good". All one needs to see are the attempts to de-regulate other utilities like power (the CA power fiasco of a few years ago) and telephone (RIP ATT/MCI/Worldcom, etc, etc).

Nu

 

Yeah, but like it or not we're stuck with it. They're never even going to consider re-regulation. And if the government even so much as offers one red penny to the airlines right now you'll have a tea party breaking down the doors to congress.

 

I am not sure that I have ever seen that written in a rule-book. I think what you might be getting at is that each party live up to what they have promised. That means that they are not fraudulent in their dealings. If they lie/steal/cheat then they have broken their end of the deal and been involved in fraud. But there is no "requirement" that capitalists be "ethical."

There are many moral deficiencies that I find repugnant (GREED is one of them). But greed is not anti-capitalist. Again, fraud is a legal issue; greed is a moral one.

 

"Exactly my point; it will be imperfect. Even if you assume that "they" (government) will not be self-serving then you are still counting on government cronies to set up the entire top-down controlled system that takes years to make any changes to new market forces. It is always inefficient. The market can more quickly adapt to the changes than can the government "smart guys." Again, that is if you trust the government to be benevolent... and I don't.

Which begs the question... why is this industry any different? I will grant you that the safety/seniority issues is difficult to tackle. But as an industry, why do we (good "conservative", flag waiving, Constitution swearing pilots) not trust the free market to handle the difficulties? Why do we, like Crandle, look to the government to fix it?

And I do agree with you... the government will continue to "muddle" in the airlines and not allow the market to fix the problems. The problem is that we identify the current "de-regulated" system with the free market... which it is not. Thus we throw the failings of the airline system at the foot of the free market and ask for the government to step in and fix the issues. Yet the free market would tell you it has not been able to work... the government has been in some state of control from the very beginning of the whole industry.

 

Sooooo, let me get this straight.............

The government wants LESS regulation with airlines,

but MORE regulation with healthcare ?