I thought I'd give AC the benefit of the doubt until these 2 "tid-bits" from this article:
1 -- "Crellin doesn't rank the baggage meltdown as a low point in his career. That title is reserved for the seven airline crashes he's worked during his long career. US Airways had five. The former PSA, where he started, suffered two."
AND
2 -- "He jokes that he's still finding his way to the restroom at the airline's Tempe headquarters."
Regarding #1: Why, oh why! the heck would he even bring up 7 crashes that occurred at airlines that he happened to be working at, at the time? I don't get it. What is this? A "poor me" attitude? Look at all I'VE been through? I wish someone with more psychology training could explain this -- I mean, he REALLY has very little, if anything, to do with the crashes he's talking about -- in fact, one of the PSA crashes was caused by a general aviation aircraft , which was a COMPLETE accident on the side of PSA and completely out of their control! -- so while these may be low-points for him personally, to compare these to the Christmas meltdown -- HUH???!!! What do you call someone that can't take responsibility for something -- or even if he couldn't have done anything about the Christmas meltdown -- or at least apologize for what happened as the person responsible for the division, and when asked about it, brings up something as morbid as airplane crashes -- that he couldn't have had any control over, even if he had wanted to? And frankly, in either case -- luggage or crashes -- he never once mentions that he learned anything from these. Wow. And what does this mean for the new USAirways? That unless we have a crash, don't blame Al? Unbelievable.
Unless he's just horrible at giving interviews, I'm really having a hard time as to what Doug sees in this guy...
And point #2 -- he resorts to bathroom humor -- how immature. It's obvious that this guy's priorities are whacked. Oh, yeah, the article says "jokingly". C'mon. It's not funny. On some other threads of this board there have been discussions about what's really important, what's really a priority, in this merger -- and that we all have a BIG job and probably shouldn't bring up trivial things that we can control and solve on our own -- and this guy goes and tells the press that he has trouble finding the bathroom! And we trust him with the "bigger and more important" parts of the integration? This isn't funny; it's scary.
I have a ton of respect for Doug Parker, but I sincerely question his choice in AC for this incredibly important position within the airline.
Argh!!!!!