2015 Pilot Discussion.

[Silverflyer330]

RSP Termination - The Company has the authority to choose the timing of the termination and has informed the APA that it has taken the first step in the process, passing a corporate resolution to terminate the RSP.

 

[Claxon]

And what exactly was the bankruptcy judge affording you on the eve of your liquidation???
You sure you wanna go down this road with your trash can airline??? Lol. Parker happened to offer a few nickels for the scrap heading to the scrap heap and, well, here you are. You're welcome!

Enjoy the FISHBOWL. Soon a new month will come, and the fish will swim in a new direction. Counter clockwise to clockwise. Repeat each month......

 

[Claxon]

http://youtu.be/1d9Gm25cUqk

 

[Claxon]

https://vimeo.com/47695768

 

[Claxon]

Personally, I consider the Pointe to be among the most tasteless of these institutions now in existence.

How does anyone ever find his way around? It's too spread out. The rooms are gloomy. Rustler's Rooste is a trashy caricature. The oversize fountain in front of the main building is both ostentatious and garish. Enough said.

As I walked into the meeting room, a man was passing out fliers protesting the oversize salaries that America West chairman Ed Beauvais and president Mike Conway were still paying themselves despite the airline's catastrophic financial losses.

Since owning stock is a condition of employment at America West, there was a tremendous employee turnout.

By the time president Conway stepped to the microphone, the standing-room-only crowd was estimated at better than 1,200. The place was actually packed to the doors.

Conway wasted no time. He hit them right between the eyes.
"In the last nine months, we've lost $130 million," he said.
Everyone has known about the horrendous figures for a long time. They have had people in financial circles whispering for months.

For example, they prompted this report in Financial World this past March: "Is Phoenix-based America West Airlines about to file for bankruptcy?"

There's more. Every business magazine following the airline industry expects the failure of America West.

Another example:
"They're flying into oblivion," an analyst at a big New York bank told a reporter from Business Week. "It's only a matter of time."

The War in the Gulf, rocketing oil prices and the recession are three factors blamed for America West's losses.

Conway obviously knew about the fliers being handed out about the high salaries of the executives. It was important to talk about that immediately.

He made no apology for the money he and Beauvais were drawing.
"We're not embarrassed by the compensation awarded to us by the compensation committee," he said defiantly.

With bonuses, Beauvais' salary was close to $1 million this year and Conway's was listed at $432,000.

I had never before heard of something called a "compensation committee." As Conway spoke, I wondered if the compensation committee were allowed by Beauvais and Conway to consider the fact that America West's nonunion employees are the lowest paid in the airline industry?

Why do I always ask myself these questions when I already know the answers?

Conway was bullish on America West's future. But his strategy for success provided no encouragement to workers facing the possibility of furloughs.

"We will go as deep [with cuts] as necessary and do whatever is necessary to get this company back to where it needs to be," Conway told them.

Later, Beauvais took to the microphone.
"We're going to survive," he promised. "It may be painful, but we know what to do."

I had the eerie feeling as Beauvais spoke that his words might hold a double meaning. After all, no matter what happens to America West, Beauvais will fall to earth in a golden parachute with millions.

That's the beauty of capitalism, I suppose.
But stewardesses and workers who toss baggage and sell tickets will not fare quite so handsomely. This is why the chairman of the board is always able to show up in a new suit and smile confidently for the television cameras.

Because of Beauvais, America West has always been a mystifying operation to me. From the very beginning, there has been the question of whether Beauvais' overambition would sink the operation.

He is the ultimate high-wire artist.
"Some day I'd like to fly to the moon with a picnic lunch," Beauvais once said. "That would be the ultimate experience."

Beauvais once told an interviewer how much he admired Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle.

He cited one of his favorites quotes from Caen: "It's not only important that I succeed; it's also important that all my friends fail at the same thing."

Admittedly, the startup of America West and its rapid expansion have been a remarkable thing to watch.

But during the buildup, a series of uncommon events have taken place. They are enough to give one pause.

What comes to mind first is the strange odyssey of Earl P. Thurston, the America West vice president who decided to drop down to being a pilot again.

Thurston and two other America West pilots, Robert J. Russell and Carl Wobser, were indicted in 1987 for flying 7,000 pounds of marijuana from Colombia.

They were caught when forced to land a subsequent flight from Chandler in their own DC-6 on Aruba because of low fuel. When officials searched the airplane, they discovered the three were carrying not only weapons but $47,000 in cash. The police were summoned.


Testimony in the case showed the three pilots were paid $1 million for the job. They were sentenced by Judge Paul Rosenblatt on November 11, 1989, to serve two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to import a controlled substance.

There was also the mysterious underreporting of America West passengers at Sky Harbor International Airport which resulted in the other airlines paying $900,000 extra in operational expenses.

Under investigation, it was learned that America West underreported its passengers from 1984 to 1989. The airline had handled nineteen million passengers and only reported fifteen million.

America West repaid the money, claiming as an excuse that the rule about declaring passengers was confusing.

This was discounted by Neilson "Dutch" Bertholf, the aviation director at Sky Harbor.

"We think the interpretation in the normal reporting process is one of long standing and not difficult to understand," he said.

An official from a rival airline was less charitable.
"It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out they were playing games," he said.

The recent expansion to Japan is an example of Beauvais' high-stakes gamesmanship.

Industry analysts estimated the cost of startup of $30 million to train crews and set up maintenance. Having started the flights at the start of the war, things got so bad, according to Conway, that America West once flew all the way to Nagoya with just a single paying customer aboard.

Beauvais has not stopped making flamboyant moves.
The latest is a series of television commercials by comic Jonathan Winters dressed up as General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. They began running this week.

Beauvais explained that he would have done the same with generals Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur after World War II.

Beauvais showed the Winters commercials to the meeting on two big screens. They are both hilarious. No doubt they are very expensive, too.

 

[Claxon]

Perhaps this might shed light on the understandable hiring of Prechilill, CB53, Cap'n Aux, Tony Anger.
Circus comes to mind.

 

[Claxon]

It isn't the first time Beauvais has put a town under his spell.
The airline Beauvais founded in Phoenix in 1983, America West, grew with the speed of a desert wildfire. Starting with three planes and a handful of employees, the carrier rode the booming Southwest economy to become the ninth-largest airline in the country, with 115 planes and 15,000 employees. New 747s flew from Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport to Hawaii and Japan, and Beauvais became an Arizona folk hero for bringing the state a low-fare airline whose rapid growth earned it international attention.

But on June 27, 1991, Beauvais's extended honeymoon ended in a nasty divorce. On that day, America West was forced into bankruptcy. By the time angry creditors managed to get the airline into court, it was in debt for more than $1.2 billion. As thousands of employees lost their jobs and the company stock they had been required to buy became nearly worthless, the success story began to look more like a horror movie. Beauvais, whose aggressive expansion campaign was widely blamed for overextending the airline, was pushed out of America West in 1992 in a behind-the-scenes coup by angry investors.

Today America West is back on its feet, bolstered by an infusion of $214 million from several large investment groups. But for bitter America West employees and creditors who almost saw their airline die, the glowing news accounts coming out of Colorado Springs are eerily familiar. In their eyes, Beauvais is no financial wizard--just a purveyor of black magic.

"The employees feel like they were left holding the bag," says Alan Crawford, a pilot for America West and vice chairman of the Airline Pilots Association local in Phoenix. Like most America West employees, Crawford lost almost all of the money he invested in the airline. And he says his experience with America West should serve as a cautionary tale for those in Colorado Springs who are lining up to jump on Beauvais's latest bandwagon.

"Ed Beauvais has burned a lot of people before," says Crawford. "History repeats itself."

America West's spectacular crash landing made headlines for months in the nation's financial press. But Beauvais has had little trouble crawling from the wreckage. Three years after losing his million-dollar mansion in Phoenix and being spurned by that city's civic leaders, he's comfortably ensconced in Colorado Springs--and again playing the role of the conquering hero. Since hitting town last year and taking up residence in a $251,000 home on Camel Drivers Lane, Beauvais has become a celebrity in the Springs, making frequent appearances at the exclusive El Paso Club and serving as a popular speaker at chamber of commerce forums.

"It's unbelievable how well Western Pacific is doing," says Colorado Springs airport director Gary Green. "It was something nobody could have predicted. This startup airline seems to be doing better than any other in the country. Our chamber of commerce for years tried to get additional air service here; now we've got it big time."

A few weeks ago Western Pacific announced that it's heading to the stock market, where it expects to sell 3 million shares and raise as much as $50 million. The carrier, which lost $1.9 million between May and August of this year and has yet to turn a profit, says it will use the proceeds from stock sales to add eight new Boeing 737s to its fleet and expand its reservation center. Investor interest in the offering is strong, and brokers expect the stock to sell out quickly.

"Every time something goes wrong at DIA, it's a buy recommendation for Western Pacific," says Scott Hamilton, editor of Commercial Aviation Report, a Dallas-based trade publication. "It's going to be a blowout stock offering. I think the post-initial offering price will jump dramatically."

 

[Claxon]

Great choice of airlines to join CB. Did Wobser give the seal of INTEGRITY on your app? Thurston?
Fascinating story of the CHIEFS flying their own drug laden DC6! What heritage! Perhaps the AA Flight Academy can display a model of the Aruba bound DC6.

 

[Silverflyer330]

The transaction was more complex than a simple sound bite will afford. The phrase  - a reverse merger with AWA/AWH considered the acquiring company for accounting purposes - was verbiage included on an SEC form which deals almost exclusively with accounting concerns (that is where did the money come from and how would money be handled by the new entity). That said, the SEC doesn't allow corporate officers to play with words so that when one thing happens management gets to claim that the opposite happened. If it were a straight AWH acquisition, then the SEC would have expected AWH to assume control of the bankrupt LUS/AAL entity and to go by the name "America West." However, it was determined that US Airways would be the name of the new entity (cost less to change AWA assets to US assets than to go the other way, plus US had the more generic name for a transcon / international airline). So, since the AWA name would be mothballed, the language included with the SEC filing was that AWA/AWH would be the acquiring airline (the accounting / money side) but the newly combined entity would go by the acquired company's name.
The facts of the reverse merger remain unchanged from the 2005 transaction:
1.    AWH shareholder received the largest share of the LCC stock
2.    There were no US Airways shareholders, but rather a group of unsecured creditors. These also received stock issued by LCC, but not as large a portion as the AWH shareholders received
3.    The senior executive team from AWA remained in positon, and most still hold those same positions with LUS and AA today
4.    Few of the LUS senior executive remained once their change of control packages had run their course. In fact, many LUS senior executives had fled well before the transaction occurred.
5.    The Crystal City headquarters of LUS were shut down entirely within eight months of the transaction. The senior executive suite on the eight floor of the Crystal City building was entirely vacant by the end of September 2005. That place had lots of private bathrooms with showers, a nice commercial kitchen with a Wolfe range and a Sub Zero refrigerator that only senior management had access to, until they fled.
6.    Nearly all non-operational business functions were moved to Tempe (Accounting, Payroll, IT services, Revenue Management, Marketing, Labor Relations, Legal, Purchasing, Government Affairs )

Geez, you kids love to rewrite history......




And number 3 is why we are the worst..................thanks!




When Parker spoke to the America West board before being named CEO, he remembers telling them the one area he didn't have much experience in was government relations, but he didn't think that was much of an issue for an airline its size.

But he was soon attending meetings at the White House, and he testified before Congress on Sept. 19, urging both direct help for airlines and loan guarantees from the new three-member Air Transportation Stabilization Board.

"We were the poster child for the ATSB program. We literally were an airline that could raise money before 9/11 but with the capital markets closed couldn't raise it," he recalled. "Without a loan guarantee we were going to find ourselves liquidating."

The $380 million loan guarantee was approved on a split vote, with a Treasury official voting no because he thought the government would end up on the hook for the loan. America West had the breathing room it needed to survive, and the federal government controlled a third of the company.

But profits were elusive, and the carrier sank back into the red in 2004 as fuel prices soared. The industry overall? A staggering $42 billion in losses from 2000 to 2005.

 

[Silverflyer330]

Footnote: Acquired America West Holdings (2004 rank: 678), Sept. 27, 2005. For accounting purposes, however, the company is treating America West as the acquirer.





AWA 10Q


Our obligations also impair our ability to obtain additional financing, if needed, and our flexibility in the conduct of our business. Our existing indebtedness is secured by substantially all of our assets, leaving us with limited collateral for additional financing. Moreover, the terms of the government guaranteed loan restrict our ability to incur additional indebtedness or issue equity unless we use the proceeds of those transactions to repay the loan, require prepayment if our employee compensation costs exceed a certain threshold, require us to maintain a minimum cash balance of $100 million, and restrict our ability to take certain other actions, including mergers and acquisitions, investments and asset sales.

 

[Claxon]

I roamed the internet for articles that might tell us who Thomas Gary Smith was and why he would have been mentioned in the "Drug Tug" case

On January 10, 1988 The Arizona Republic ran a story on fugitives and mentioned that Thomas Gary Smith aka George Earl Hannah was convicted in Massachusetts in 1978 for smuggling marijuana. He disappeared and next turned up in Michigan as Thomas Gary Vance. He was arrested in Sacramento California December 3,1987 in connection with a conspiracy charge. Three America West Pilots, Earl Patrick Thurston, Robert J Russell, and Carl Joe Webster part of this conspiracy which took place in 1985.

This smuggling operation was linked to Jaime Bermudez-Botero. These pilots were charged with using a DC-6 aircraft to fly marijuana into Texas, and Arizona from Columbia. The aircraft was registered to Desert Petroleum. The principle in Desert Petroleum was "Ralph Carmichael" which was an alias used by Thurston. The three pilots were released on bail, but Smith who was also arrested in this case was not given bail. July 15, 1989, Helmut B Bubbel, the owner of the Pump House Restaurant in Fairbanks, Alaska was charged as a co-conspirator. Bubbel's attorney, Edward Novak said his client had an outstanding military record and hadn't done anything wrong in his entire life. He was former Vice President of the Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Center. He was charged with meeting with Smith and Thurston to plan the purchase of the plane for $ 315,000.00. It was speculated that Helmut Bubbel had been, perhaps was a CIA operative.

Before Thomas Gary Smith and Helmet Bubbel's trial began in June of 1990, the three America West Pilots had accepted plea bargains that required them to be witnesses for the prosecution. It was decided that Smith was the key member of the plot. Smith's attorney was Bernie Segal from San Francisco. Prosecutors said Smith headed an arm of an international marijuana smuggling operation that was paying for Smith's defense and the prosecutors said that Segal had a conflict of interest. Segal moved to remove himself, but his request was not granted.

Earl Thurston, a former Vice President of America West was to be the government's star witness against Thomas Gary Smith The Judge was US District Judge Paul Rosenblatt. The three pilots, Thurston, Russell , and Wobser said they became part of the conspiracy because it was big money and a bit of adventure. All three were founding pilots of America West. Thurston, a Vice President, said the scheme took them from Thailand, Canada, Mexico, Columbia and Arube. Thurston had been a pilot with the CIA Airlines Air America. The three pilots were sentenced to two years and testified against Smith who was convicted. The Bureau of Prisons web site now says that the three pilots were unknown to the prison system and were never incarcerated. Smith, who was convicted, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Bernard Segal said Smith was just a middle man and prosecutors wanted to punish him because he would not cooperate.

So - now I thought I knew of two smuggling operations that Prosecutors had decided to link to John, These two cases were the Calvin Robinson case where the barge was seized under the Golden Gate Bridge, and the case where the three pilots from America West were arrested. Both cases on the internet claimed links to the CIA. This presents a problem for me, as I have never adopted a single conspiracy theory in my life. I believe the single bullet theory of the Warren Commission. I don't know or care about Roswell, but I think it is probably something innocuous. I know little about Iran- Contra, but intend to find out more. I don't believe the government spies on folks without a warrant. Life has been straight forward. Well, it must be taken for what it is.

I could not find much information about this case, but many years later Prosecutors chose this as their starting point for John's prosecution.


chapter 8

 

[EastUS1]

 
Umm...Just curious here (with all that clearly uncontrollable drooling) but "you'se" DO at least wear a bib when you're eating?...And are usually chaperoned to any public places by an actually responsible adult?
 
Be kindly advised that this latest of yours sadly marks a step backwards from even:
 

 
....I use LARGE INDELIBLE INK PENS to color...... I especially like RED & GREEN.

 
 
No matter, I suppose, after all: "YOU IS WICKED CLEVER"...just ask "you'se"...Right?
 
Umm..."you'se" again omitted "Dude" though, so perhaps some remedial study of the intricacies of "intelligent" discourse and the english language in general might be kindly suggested....Or; "you'se" can just keep both hands fully fisted whilst mindlessly pounding on your poor, defenseless keyboard

 

[Phoenix]

 
No question, however truly tragic that is, since the very same management even brought the infamous "purple tu tu"/"Gangnam-style" corporate...umm... "culture" to the "crossover". It won't matter for them while their pocketing as many millions as possible before things go bad, but anyone who even imagines that the currently "world's largest airline" will continue to be so (without major changes upstairs) suffers from severe delusions.
 
nycbusdriver: "This AWA management team catch Delta?  Not in this universe." No joke there.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVgjcyH4Ghk
 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wp-xumQCew

 
 
 
At least Doug was dressed as someone cool.  I am not aware of anyone cool wearing a purple tutu... Just saying.  

 

[EastUS1]

 
 
 
At least Doug was dressed as someone cool.  I am not aware of anyone cool wearing a purple tutu... Just saying.  

 
The purple tu tu even washed out of USAF pilot training, which presumably caused some degree of persona trauma, so what could anyone decently expect afterwards in life?

 

[CallawayGolf]

Geez, you kids love to rewrite history......
And number 3 is why we are the worst..................thanks!
When Parker spoke to the America West board before being named CEO, he remembers telling them the one area he didn't have much experience in was government relations, but he didn't think that was much of an issue for an airline its size.
But he was soon attending meetings at the White House, and he testified before Congress on Sept. 19, urging both direct help for airlines and loan guarantees from the new three-member Air Transportation Stabilization Board.
"We were the poster child for the ATSB program. We literally were an airline that could raise money before 9/11 but with the capital markets closed couldn't raise it," he recalled. "Without a loan guarantee we were going to find ourselves liquidating."
The $380 million loan guarantee was approved on a split vote, with a Treasury official voting no because he thought the government would end up on the hook for the loan. America West had the breathing room it needed to survive, and the federal government controlled a third of the company.
But profits were elusive, and the carrier sank back into the red in 2004 as fuel prices soared. The industry overall? A staggering $42 billion in losses from 2000 to 2005.

Not re-writing history at all. The airline that would continue after the merger/acquisition was US, but for "accounting purposes" the actual surviving financial entity was to be AWH. The name and operating certificate would be LUS but the "reverse" was true when it came to AWH whose accounting/financial systems would be treated as the going concern relative to the bankrupt LUS airline.

Never once did I state that the necessary cash for the merger came from AWH. They had more than LUS, but certainly not enough to fund the transaction, complete the merger and settle the LUS debt which was about to sink an airline with $8B in revenue. The cash came in from investors who believed the project barbell plan was worth the investment, so long as Doug Parker and team were tagged to run the combined airline. The new LCC would be built on cost-neutral labor contracts (AWA rates), the AWA reservation system, the AWA IT support model (as opposed to outsourcing to EDS), the AWA approach to competing with the low cost carriers (hence the stock symbol LCC), the AWA approach to system operations (Jeff McClellan's version - may he rest in peace - not Kirby's) and the comparatively lower cost of running a company from Tempe vs. DC. The new LCC was hitting most of the financial targets as forecast by Parker, and exceeding many of them, until the 2008 oil spikes.

No matter how you slice it or doggedly stick to the single factor that the US Airways name survived, AWA brought the surviving airline business model and the management team to the new LCC along with a smaller flight / route network, while LUS brought people from operations and maintenance, along with aircraft assets, stations, and a significantly larger route network.

Since Doug Parker is far and away the longest currently serving airline CEO, beginning with AWA in the role in 2001, he certainly seems to have the support of the shareholders he reports to.