Kudos EMBFA, what a great post.
I can remember being proud to work for USAir, and then USAirways. At the time of the Piedmont and PSA acquistions, that is when things started to change for my generation of employees. I started to see the resentment between the 2 newly acquired airlines and the "original" Usair. In retrospect however, it was not the first time the resentment splintered the company. The acquistion of Mohawk by Allegheny created the first major fracture. To this day there are still old Allegheny and Mohawk employees that keep the "rivalry" alive.
The company has a major roll to play in the rivalry. With every acquistion it was the same story, "we're going to take the best from both...." which never happened. PSA employees and passengers dealt with the arrogance of the east coast businessmen as we plowed through the company and removed anything that remotely resembled PSA. Management thought they new better how to run and airline than their counter parts of the much smaller PSA. What managemnet at that time did not realize was the loyalty of the passenger base. Not to worry, US erroded the loyalty and passenger base. Not only did we remove anything the failty resembled old PSA, we removed the passengers, and eventually EVERY city served by PSA that US did not serve prior to the acquistion.
PSA employees were and are bitter that the smile had been not wiped, but smacked off their faces both literally and figuritively. Did/do they have a reason to be bitter? He!! yes!
Enter Piedmont, the speedbird that was going to be taken over by railroad. At first they were thrilled that US came to their "rescue" and staved off the hostile take over attempt by the railroad. They soon learned that their rescuer had properly planned for a rescue, or its aftermath, much like Emperor George and his Iraq debacle. rescue plan/exit plan....no plan.
We again were taking the best of both companies to make one big happy healthy prospersous company. Who remembers Mirror Image? How much of the mirror reflected Piedmont? Not much from what I could see. Computer systems were scrapped or retained on a whim. "Ours is better" Better?
No...not better, just more comfortable, it's what we're used to, so it will stay. Yeah yeah yeah, we know CARE is a superior product, but it's out of our comfort zone, so we will retain PACER and all y'all will make the necessary adjustments.
The Iconic Ed merged the two carriers into AL and jumped ship. Oh I'm sorry, thats not how we refer to his exit in the "family". We refer to it as his retirement after all of his hard work of bringing the 3 airlines together. He left us with somebody incapable of managing a regional, let alone an up and coming "global" carrier. Global because we now had PI's plumb LGW routes from Bwi..(eah Bwi, remember?) and Clt. For those of you not familiar with the demise of our international service, let me refresh your memories. We sold our slots to BA and entered into a wetlease arrangement which was supposed to benefit both carriers. Well, things didn't go smoothly with BA, we somehow alienated them, and we lost the routes and the wetlease, this after we spent the 400 million that the gave us.
I wont even begin to elaborate on the Wolfe era. I'm sure the majority of you remember what that had to offer the employees.
So, somewhere along the way, we lost our sense of "family", inpart because of the way management has handled ALL the mergers. No matter who is in charge at the time, their way is always the best way, regardless of what the truth may really be. That is probably the only consistency in management over the decades at what is now know as the NEW USAIRWAYS.