Do any of the business reporters and editors have any critical analysis skills, or are they content to regurgitate the pap their corporate masters feed them?
I love the pass he gives management. Even if they were saintly, the outcome would be the same? What a free pass - absolution regardless of your mismanagement.
Labor does not fare so well. Even though we are well-meaning (but perhaps misguided) folk, we must sacrifice, or be sacrificed, for the greater good.
This column has two glaring omissions. U has a major labor cost advantage vis a vis WN (the CWA website does a very nice analysis), yet remains unprofitable. U has other major cost advantages vis a vis WN via BK.
Also missing is the difference in the WN business plan, and the big 6 plan. WN is profitably cherry-picking high-density routes, and shunning marginal ones. Pre-deregulation, it was public policy (that is to say, law backed with federal tax dollars) for middle and small-town America to have easy access to air travel; air travel being correctly viewed as an economic engine (compare CLT or DAY pre-hub to post hub). At deregulation, that commitment did not end overnight, but there has been a steady retreat from it. WN is taking full and legal advantage bypassing smaller markets.
So now the question becomes do we want service to the smaller markets, or allow a 'free' marketplace to bypass those markets.
There has been a deafening silence in the public policy arena on this issue, because while the pols like WN fares, they still want Pierre and Des Moines serviced.
And will any facts like these find their way on the corporate tout sheets? Probably not.
