The list of mistakes is substantial. No doubt about that.
Problem is, despite that extensive list of mistakes, the AMR executives kept AMR out of bankruptcy, unlike the mistake-prone leaders of UAL, DAL, NWA, USAir (twice in three years) and a slew of smaller airlines. And CAL twice earlier in deregulation.
Who kept AA out of BK?
Lets see management claimed that they lowered operating expeneses by $200 million prior to going to the employees for $1.8 billion.
So management lowered their operating expenses by less than 1%, then the employees took a 25% paycut.
Sounds to me like the employees kept AA out of BK not the executives.
Sounds like management of every airline in the USA (except Southwest) has made numerous mistakes. Most of them so huge that they filed for bankruptcy and canceled their stockholder's equity.
Were they mistakes, or deliberate acts to cause a finanicail crises so they could bust down labor costs??
Both UAL and NWA had ESOP programs, so the stockholders who lost their equity, and paid record high prices for the stock, which in the case of UAL they could not sell,were pretty much employees. So they lost their equity and their pay. As for the other stockholders, most of the big boys were probably creditors also so they ended up selling the airline to the employees at inflated prices, then owning the company on the debt that the people they put in place ran up, a win win for them.
Most of these other carriers did not have the cozy position that AA had with its three company unions so even Delta, because of ALPA had to go the BK route to bust their pilots pay down.
So basically, it boils down to this: Management at every USA-based legacy airline (excluding, of course, WN) has made numerous stupid business decisions that have decimated their finances.
They did it intentionally.
Ya know, if your premise was that management at one or two of them was profoundly stupid and incompetent, that would be easier to buy. But management at EVERY airline is the reason for the current employee pain? Nope. Terrorism, overcapacity generated by WN and B6 and very expensive fuel (compared to recent history) all broadsided the executives of every airline. Yep, they made some mistakes, but those mistakes didn't cost anything like the three listed causes (Terrorism, overcapacity and expensive fuel).
The fact is that everyone knew that oil, which was at historically low price levels was due to increase, the impact of terrorism has been overstated and overcapacity is a myth.
Of course, recent articles are implying that NOT filing for Ch 11 protection is actually one of Arpey's bigger mistakes. I think it's a little early to call that one.
Well giving up 25% of our pay in order to aviod it was certainly our biggest mistake.