AAPalmTree
Well-Known Member
What are the implications for UAL pilots when the company buys a part of Azul? What are the implications for Delta pilots when the company buys part of China Eastern?
Your enemy is not foreign competition. Lower priced foreign competition and state sponsored competition has existed for decades and it will continue to exist well into the future. The airline employees' enemy more accurately is their own airline management's concept of what is good for the airline, versus what is good for the employees. They will continue alliances, code shares, equity stakes, etc all in an effort to outsource growth to lower cost entities.
I've it before and I'll say it again, there is a whole new and growing passenger base in the previously third world countries that did not travel 20 years ago. The growth in that market is huge. The potential in that market is huge. Yet, the U.S. carriers are not tapping into it. They are too busy with capacity controls in the U.S. domestic market and across the Atlantic. Okay great, that is working for now but it is not going to be good for them over the long term as all these new entrants are gaining huge market share at their (and their alliance partners) expense.
It's not the world of 40 years ago where the vast majority of worldwide airline travel was in the small space between the Mississippi river and the eastern seaboard. You have to recognize that fact. The U.S. airlines have to recognize that fact. Companies in every industry have to adapt to the changing marketplace or they will perish. Failure to adapt to those changes would be what decimates* the U.S. airline industry.
Typhoonpilot
* I hate that word because it means reduce by 10% and is used incorrectly all the time.
I'll agree with management being another part of the problem. There are many, many problems the US airline industry will face.
*decimate:
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/09/does-decimate-mean-destroy-one-tenth/