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Am I crazy for thinking that perhaps some (I said some) of the airlines are doing normal cost cutting under the pretext of the "impact of 9/11"? (and when I say normal, I by no means intend to down play to pain etc. of lossing a job).
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No, you are not.
And the sad thing is, people should have seen a downturn coming. The airline industry is and always will be cyclical, and you would think the "talented" management would realize that.
So what did that "talented" management at United do when they were flush with cash? Instead of doing something smart, like retiring debt or saving it for the inevitable downturn, they pissed it away on stock buybacks (for a stock that's now worthless), trying to acquire another airline that even Warren Buffett couldn't make money on, and by starting a fractional jet scheme.
Remind me again why these folks are worth millions of dollars?
And yet, a guy who finally just got to taste his dream gets furloughed while the folks who made the management blunders get fat golden parachutes.
This story kind of reminds me of Crash Davis from Bull Durham, where he's talking about his two weeks in the bigs.
Except Crash was a fictional character, and this guy isn't. You really gotta feel for him.