Quick push of the easy button and that goes away. Dangers of being wholly owned. I know.
No prob. There's a guy in the crewroom in DTW every once in a while who will jump up and down telling guys something similar and he thinks that things can never change. I get the feeling a lot of our pilots in the crew room don't know how corporate America works. Sounds like you get it.
In our spot our success depends on the willingness of other DCI carriers to bend over or stand tall. They bend over then we get flushed. They stand tall we take their planes. RA's grand master plan of playing whipsaw.
My opinions:
I really think RA is done trying to push around Skywest/ASA. They will give them a final offer and let them deal with the numbers. Does anyone really think Skywest can't weather RA pulling their flying down in accordance with the contract? Furthermore, anyone think United/American won't cozy up to them afterwards? I think the whipsaw is dead for a little while.
Don't mistake my words, contractors are contractors and a low bid will win, but no one in management is stupid enough to think what's happened for the last 8-10 years can continue if 1,000 guys aren't lined up out the door trying to pay for their freaking job. Besides, none of us are any younger, and if I was single and still had debt I'd be out of here so fast for some of these foreign gigs that have called.
Guumball got handed this mess with a few other Delta higher ups and their future depends on Endeavor's success. In their typical double-think world, they absolutely believe this thing can and will succeed, and if it doesn't after the 1st quarter then they will absolutely have never believed this would work and they are here to manage the wind down successfully. I get the impression Guumball and Barry the sub commander are absolutely convinced all the numbers make sense and we are just a quarter away from good things.
I also know these are corporate baboons and stand for nothing, and were selected because they can be convinced of anything given the right sales points.
Really though if we just look the wrong way RA could flush us if he really wants.
I don't know if that's true, it's possible, but I think RA and Guum realize 90% of people here now will be gone in 3 years, if not sooner. They aren't concerned about the attitude and then killing Endeavor because of it, I think they are experimenting to see if the regional side can actually function like a real airline. Honestly, even Mesaba wasn't this well run, Pinnacle never made an effort to run the company like an airline so I usually just skip over the Trenary Triage. If Guumball can keep us running and staff us, and the costing comes out where Delta believes it will, we'll be fine no matter what the other airlines do. Clearly Guumball believes in it like any good management stooge.
Skywest/ASA aren't in our position. They aren't penniless with managers who bet the farm on a purchase they didn't fully understand, and thought growth was always good. Skywest didn't lock into a downtown building in MEM they couldn't afford and whistle through the graveyard as everything came to a head with Colgan, and oh yeah since you never cared if the MES SAABs were parked on a long term basis, Delta parked them immediately. ASA controls it's future because of those contracts from years whence, at least until they run out and I have no idea when that is. Even if they don't, those pilots will move on just like ours before a furlough is needed. We're down something like 1,300 pilots now, more than one third of the pilot group? Trying to hire kids we fooled from UND? Phht. I wish we had ASA's problems.
