American protecting its turf

[tw]

Not only is Southwest Airlines cheaper. The company is also profitable. Since United, American, and Delta use MBA 'economies of scale' and other business school concepts; those airlines are losing money like sinking ships. Of course. How many executives even work as stewardesses - first learn how the work gets done. According to business school philosophy, such knowledge is not necessary. Those executives study spread sheets and read reports.

Other industries have the same anti-American attitude. Big steel got a mental midget president to put up illegal tarrifs - that only cost 20,000 to 40,000 productive Americans their jobs. Meanwhile, those big steel executives took pay increases as they continued to stifle innovation.

We have GM whose products (Cheverolet, Buick, Pontiac, Saturn, GMC, etc) are some of the world's worst with costs higher than Mercedes Benz, et al. They too will blame the unions, pension plans, unfair foreign competition, tax structures, etc all for problems like 'two extra pistons in every engine', inferior suspensions, poor gas mileage from 1968 technology engines, etc. Even with $100 million from the government to design a hybrid - 11 years later GM still would have no hybrid engine. Meanwhile GM promotes hydrogen as a fuel that even fundamental science says is not reasonable. But don't worry. GM's top executives have something better than Geico car insurance - golden parachutes and pay packages of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The same administration that refused to prosecute corporate corruption - refusing to even accept money from Congress to investigate corporate corruption. From these same people comes more corporate welfare. Today's Philadelphia Inquirer demonstrates how you punish and suppress the innovative so that big industry (and nearly bankrupt) companies run by MBAs will be protected.

American protecting its turf
For the traveler who needs a ticket today to fly between Philadelphia and Dallas tomorrow, the round-trip fare on American Airlines or US Airways could be as high as $1,100. But to make a next-day trip to Houston - a route of similar length served by Southwest Airlines - the cost would be $588.

That price difference - and what it could mean in revenue to American - helps explain why American is lobbying hard in Congress to keep a law that prohibits Southwest from offering its signature low-fare flights from Dallas to Philadelphia and other cities.

... American [Airlines] is lobbying hard in Congress to keep a law that prohibits Southwest from offering its signature low-fare flights from Dallas to Philadelphia and other cities.

The Wright Amendment, named for former House Speaker Jim Wright, a Democrat from Fort Worth, was adopted to help the then-fledgling Dallas-Fort Worth airport grow.

How to protect your jobs? Demand that government remove protections that protect only the anti-innovative rich. Best that could happen to air carriers is to have the big boys bankrupted - so that their MBA managers are replaced OR so that innovative carriers such as Southwest can expand profitably at will. One small problem. That is the free market which means no reason to buy politicians.

Screw Southwest Airlines. We have a recession to create. The upcoming recession appears to be right on schedule - starting with the president's tax cut, his insistence that we consume more energy, and of course that no one expected the levees to be breached. What's a few more laws to protect anti-innovative and MBA bloated (and Texas based) American Airlines.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by tw

What's a few more laws to protect anti-innovative and MBA bloated (and Texas based) American Airlines.

Southwest is Texas-based too.

American Airlines is run by shitwits, sure, I'm just sayin' not everything from Texas is bad.

[lumberjim]

something from texas just kicked the stinkin eagles up and down their turf last sunday.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Enjoy, Jim. Strut and crow....you don't have many chances.

The biggest difference between Southwest and American is the basic design of their systems. American uses the old school Hub and Spoke system where if you want to fly to Houston, you have to fly to Dallas then fly to Houston.
Southwest on the other hand will take you directly to Houston.

Most of the hub and spoke airlines are losing money hand over fist. Boeing is betting the Hub and Spoke days are limited which is why they chose to build the 787 rather than follow Airbuses move to super jumbo jets.

What the airline industry needs is a good shakeout as has happened to most deregulated industries. The problem is every time an airline gets in trouble and files for protection, someone bails them out with a refinancing plan.
The prime culprit in the refinancing is General Electric because although the airline is hemoraging money, GE is making a fortune selling jet engines, leasing planes and financing plane purchases.
Kinda like pimps.

[OnyxCougar]

How can one airline ask the government to tell another airline what they can and can't charge?

I don't understand that....

[xoxoxoBruce]

Campaign donations buy friends.

[wolf]

So, only some corporate entities are allowed to actually be capitalist?

This is that corporate welfare stuff we keep hearing about, isn't it?

[plthijinx]

Southwest Airlines saw the fuel spike coming and locked in on fuel rates for several years.....

Southwest is riding out the fuel price spike better than most thanks to some advance planning that will keep its costs lower than other airlines for the next five years. The airline gambled on fuel hedges and, for 2005, is paying just $26 a barrel for 85 percent of its fuel. Oil is now trading in the $65 range. Southwest has diminishing percentages of those hedges for another five years. So, it's not much of a surprise that Southwest stock jumped a percentage point on news of the Delta and Northwest bankruptcies.

article from here

[tw]

Southwest has other major advantages that are traceable to management with experience from where the work gets done. For example, their entire fleet is 737s so that every SW pilot can fly any plane in the fleet. Other airlines must have 737 pilots, 747 pilots, 777, and 757/767 pilots. And an entire support structure for four completely different aircraft. What a morass!

Even worse in places like American are both Boeing and Airbus planes. I suspect it even gets worse - for example different engines for similar planes. Who but an MBA would do this - buy planes based only on today's price for the airplane.

Financial news services such as Bloomsberg News have long been reporting SW smart move to hedge fuel prices. However I did not know they signed contracts for five years. Who in SW earned a substanical bonus?

[mitheral]

I don't know who cam first but WestJet here in Canada sounds like SW's twin. They also only fly one kind of plane and have a serious fuel price advantage from hedging.

[tw]

We have hardly begun to address symptoms of MBA school trained management - whose mentality is based in concepts also found in the 1970 Kremlin. Is American Airlines, et al in trouble only because they did not buy futures in fuel? Is it only because they fly a hodge podge of aircraft? Of course not. Problem due to MBAs who cannot innovate - do not come from where work gets done successfully (just like a mental midget president). People who are there because you (the residents of PA) will even reelect Sen Santorum - approve of what will be discussed below.

We continue with other symptoms of industries run by MBAs. If you have been reading real news, then you know the airline have dumped their pension funds onto you. It is a scam that MBAs pushed onto the American tax payer - having bought politicians as the S&Ls did so many decades ago. They knew we are so naive - so busy reading fiction and worshipping false idol gods as to not notice the world of reality - and another scam.

Let's say you work 30 years in a company. That company promises to pay you AND setup a pension fund. How much must be in that pension fund at the end of 30 years? Let's say that pension fund should be worth $100,000 at the end of 30 years. Therefore the company must put $1000 in that fund every year. No problem as long as that $1000 arrives every year. But if the company has a losing year, and does not want to admit it, then they play money games. They just 'forget' to put that money in on some mythical spread sheet game that they will make up for that shortfall years later when the company is profitable.

Gamblers d0 same in Las Vegas. Somehow the pension fund ends up short of cash until the stock market booms for a short time. Then the company claims they have made up the $2billion shortfall - and you 'feel' the problem was solved.

Legally this is not suppose to happen. But these 'gamblers' are MBAs who know how to 'cook the books'. Even worse, they got the big seven (now big four) accounting firms to approve of these games.

Ok. Sooner or later, the house of cards is going to collapse. Having learned from the S&L crisis, these MBAs don't want the government to pass laws to 'fix the problem' later. So they got the problem solved (masked) before you would see the scam. They created a government insurance company called Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).

As an MBA educated top executive, when my company should have declared bankruptcy (to eliminate the anti-American, anti-innovative me - to fix the problem), then instead, I short Pension fund contributions. I call it an outstanding debt or some other spread sheet game. I play money games so that I remain on the payroll and so that stockholder value drops years later. But nobody notices until after I am gone with plenty of termination benefits.

When the Pension funds are later found short, then my steel company or car company drops the entire pension fund into the PBGC. The US government then sells more treasury bonds overseas to mortgage America's future - to pay for my games of corruption. No problem - because Americans approve of this that George Jr is doing.

BTW, America's S&P 500 companies have been underfunding pension funds since 2000 - when a mental midget president took power - making corporate welfare an American tradition. You of course knew that ... or why not?

So many Americans so hate America as to even reelect the mental midget president - some by not bothering to vote - which is a vote for the incumbant. So again we have corporate welfare. I, as an anti-American executive of the company, walk off with $hundreds of millions. Thank you. You get stuck for the underfunded pension. Your kids get struck with the largest debt in the history of America and of the world.

Return to American Airlines whose top management remains. We have simply made it even easier for American Airlines to go deeper into debt - and not have that debt appear on the spread sheets. Show me a top executive who has to pay back those $hundreds of millions. You are the sheep - scumbag - who can be lied to by the Rush Limbaughs. For if Rush was a patriot, then he too would have told this story.

Rush would have told you how the mental midget president said nothing as American Airlines dumped $6.6 billion dollars onto the American taxpayer. Notice not one American Airline executive took a pay cut or paid back their entire salary, bonuses, stock options, benefits, golden parachute promises, etc. You (plural - a reference to most Americans) don't read. You (plural)actually say the propagandist and mental midget president supporters (ie Sen Rick Santorum of PA) are doing a good job.

Did you even know how American Airlines, essentially, got another free $6.6 billion from the government? Notice how incumbant politicians remained silent partners - another reason why buying politicians is so profitable - and why Republican power brokers don't like honesty from people like McCain.

Remember, these same anti-American airline executives got the mental midget president to give them something like $8 billion after 11 September - for free and with no strings attached. How many other ways will they get more government welfare for free? Of course, you knew about that George Jr gift to selected airline companies?

Its simple. Pennsylvania residents vote back well over 90% of their incumbents - because PA residents (generally) don't read, because their only news comes from local gossip newspapers and TV stations, and because they worship spin doctors like Rush Limbaugh. PA residents so hate America as to endorse another $6.6 billion of corporate welfare - and more to come - to American Airlines. Patriots would have long demanded the bankruptcy of American Airlines complete with removal of executives who come from MBA schools - who don't come from where the work gets done. But that requires PA residents to be informed.

Your benchmark. The US government gave American Airlines another $6.6 billion in corporate welfare. Did you know about this? If not, you are the problem as defined in the above example.

There is no reason, other than outright and intentional negligence, for you to not know of the PBGC and of those so many $multi-billion corporate welfare payments to coporations such as American Airlines. They have been that unproductive and therefore that anti-American for that long.

Meanwhile, Southwest is profitable for more reasons that hedging their fuel. Its called being product oriented or not being an MBA. Provided above is but one example of why those MBAs exists. Are you defined by this example?