American Airlines

Pretty much jives with everything I have heard from my friends who work (or have worked) for AMR.

Typical Doug Parker strategy - keep taking over bad airlines to make one larger monstrocity.

I think this is probably the most accurate article:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-airlines-us-airways-merge-to-form-worlds,31302/

FORT WORTH, TX—American Airlines and US Airways stunned the aviation industry Thursday upon announcing the two air travel titans have combined in an $11 billion merger that sources say will unite the industry powerhouses into the world’s largest and most complete pain in the ass. “Today we embark upon a bold and unprecedented new venture into customer frustration,” American CEO Tom Horton said of the historic alliance, which analysts predict will pose an immediate threat to rivals United and Delta in the air travel industry’s key areas of flight delays, lost luggage, and useless customer service. “When you take our general administrative incompetence and integrate it with our new partner’s long-proven inability to meet flyers’ needs in any capacity, you’ve got a brilliant new model in passenger aggravation and travel plan disruption. This truly will be the leading entity in the hassle industry.” Horton also confirmed the new multi-billion-dollar headache hopes to **** up more than 4,000 flights a day.
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I left AA in 2000 after putting in 20 years in the industry. Never looked back. The basic business model is cracked at the foundation. It is one of the most highly capitalized industries on the planet. That means the allocation of its assets must be well planned and minutes literally count. They insist on playing the price discrimination game to the limit but the revenue management system can only operate on the margin where the capacity plan leaves off. And that's the Achilles' heel. Their market is as opaque as they can make it but to consistently make a profit they need to be able to forecast demand to within a narrow tolerance that is impossible to achieve because of lack of information. There is no free market for airline seats providing price signals.

I envision a day when seats will be traded on exchanges or OTC and the airlines will become like commodity suppliers as we see in agriculture. Spot and forward contracts would naturally lead to the development of futures and options markets and for the first time in the industry's history the airlines and their wholesale brokers will be able to hedge against large swings in demand, just like agriculture and mining. It will make the airline business a very boring affair for investors but modest and reliable profits would become the norm.
 
From a labor perspective, there's no money in it. Pilots are willing to do that crap for free and the maintenance and miscellaneous continues to be contracted out for a bare bones greyhound service everybody loathes but continues to patronize. It's a great hobby, but that's about it. The rest of us need competitive employment that makes stable money and doesn't get pulled from under you just because the price of oil blinked a half a cent.

To each their own, but airline employment is never going to get better than yesterday. People have had that information now for decades. To continue to act surprised when things get worse decade after decade is on the proles really. Employer loyalty is for suckers.
 
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