Why Not Restore and More?

[KCKKen]

Goose,

My Local President is on the negotiating committee and he is working hard to bring back a good contract.

Glad he's doing it for somebody....... cause he sure as hell ain't doing it for us at MCI.......

My Male Bovine Fecal Matter detector melted.

 

[High Speed Steel]

Ken - you wrote:
... yet the TWU still does [bargain in good faith]. WHISKEY, TANGO, FOXTROT - OSCAR? My detector for bovine fecal matter broke itself when I read this line.

The TWU bargaining in good faith? After all saying the charades are prearranged for so long? How about going through the motions trying to fool the membership? No contract is cheaper for the company if delayed long enough.

You're due a drug test after that comment.

Hey Goose,

Never mind.......

 

[TWU informer]

Actually the TWU may be bargaining in good faith, and management may not be, but becuase the TWU has kept the ultra-secret negotiations policy running down the track, nobody that reads or post on these boards would know one way or the other!

I recently notice a statement in the latest "summary" of terms from the TWU....

There won’t be any ‘blame-blame avoidance’ taking place as it has in the past. As a committee our job is to bring back the most we can achieve and then let the members make the final decision.

WTF does that mean anyway?

 

[Bob Owens]

October traffic for AA was down 8% year over year. Load factor was down 1.5%. Capacity was down 7%

Domestic traffic decreased 11.5% YOY on 10.3% less capacity. Intl was down 3.6% on 1.1% less capacity.

Cargo ton miles were down 11% YOY.

Good thing AA pulled out capacity in September... September's drop was similar.


Bob, you can continue to fantasize about your $24B revenue number. Just be sure to reduce it by 11%.... and growing.

Once again you choose to ignore revenue and throw out figures that dont matter to the arguement. You are comparing apples to oranges. We all know that capacity is down, that's the point, thats what we needed, capacity is down but revenue is up,a win-win for the company. Produce less but charge more. If you sell 100 widgets for $1 your revenue from widget production is $100, if you cut production to 10 widgets and sell them for $10 you still get $100 but your production was cut by 90%, along with many of the costs. Reduced capacity causes scarcity and that gives the airlines pricing power, they can produce less and charge more and they have.

Total Revenue 3rd qtr2008 =6,421.0 2nd QTR 2008=6,179.0 1st QTR 2008=5,697.0 , so for the first three Qtrs of 2008 the company brought in $18.297 billion, thats more than they brought in for all 4 quarters of 2003 with 24100 less employees and 160 less airplanes.

3rd qtr 2007=5,946.0
3rd qtr2008 =6,421.0

So as you can see YOY revenue went up by nearly half a billion with less capacity, less traffic, lower load factors and less tonnage.

From Bloomberg; Nymex Crude Future 49.93, thats nearly $100 less than its summer high.


So once again you strive to misinform, sure we are producing less seats and flying less cargo but we are charging more for what we fly so an 11% reduction in capacity does not translate into an 11% reduction in revenue, but you knew that didnt you?

 

[TWU informer]

This is from the latest "summary" from the TWU M&R Negotiating Committee.

There won’t be any ‘blame-blame avoidance’ taking place as it has in the past. As a committee our job is to bring back the most we can achieve and then let the members make the final decision.

I dont know what blame-blame avoidance is but I bet Jim Little and the Courts don't agree with the members making the final decision.

 

[MCI transplant]

Glad he's doing it for somebody....... cause he sure as hell ain't doing it for us at MCI.......

My Male Bovine Fecal Matter detector melted.

<_< ------- Give it a rest Ken! Nobody out there gives a damn about your "detector", or anyone elses "detector" here at MCI!!!! :down:

 

[eolesen]

So once again you strive to misinform, sure we are producing less seats and flying less cargo but we are charging more for what we fly so an 11% reduction in capacity does not translate into an 11% reduction in revenue, but you knew that didnt you?

Call it misinformation if you want to, Bob, but even AA can't defy economic gravity: when supply exceeds demand, prices fall.

You're right -- it won't be an even correlation. Fares this year are higher than they were in 2007, and AA's charging for bags and raised a lot of the service fees. Revenue should net out close even with 2007.

Where I think you're way off is on how long that will continue.

I actually buy tickets, and it pretty much looks like prices are coming back down from their 2008 highs to 2007 levels. It will take a while to sort out the noise from ancillary revenues (buy-on-board, bag fees, award fees), but airfares themselves are taking a bit of a dive.

It's been pretty widely reported that corporate travel budgets for 2009 will be lower than 2008, and corporate travel departments all but slammed on the brakes in October when the banks started to melt down. Some companies have started to pull back on allowing transatlantic travel in premium classes (mine included).

As such, pricing has been falling in the premium cabins and even in the main cabin.

I bought a round-trip ticket to CDG in May for about $3000. I just priced it out with the same flights and on the same advance purchase timeframe, and it came out at $2400. In May, I was looking at $10K in business class. Today, it's $8K. In May, the idea of being able to buy coach and use an ExPlat upgrade to business was unthinkable. Today, there's no problem. And that's not just because it's winter vs. summer. I flew to/from SYD a few weeks ago on QF, and what's normally a full J cabin this time of year was only about 75% full.

I'm looking at flights to ORD tomorrow; what's normally a $2600 walk-up fare for a same-day return is available, but so is a $800 round-trip leaving tomorrow morning and returning tomorrow night. It's been that way for the past couple weeks. The best I'm usually able to book with 14 days advance is $300 round trip. Over the summer, it was closer to $450 round trip.

Those are just a few spot checks. The real story for AA will have to wait in January when the 4Q and FY2008 results come out.


CO releases RASM figures with their monthly traffic. They showed a 10-12% increase for 2008 RASM vs. 2007 in both September and October. For November, they're warning it will only be 4-6%.

Even Southwest is extending fare sales out farther than they've ever done before, which says they're hurting, too.


For your sake, I do hope revenues do hold up. But that's not the indications I'm seeing as a buyer of travel.

 

[eolesen]

Just finished watching a presentation to corporate travel managers on European airlines --- here are the highlights:

* Most are projecting a 50% drop in industry profits for 2008
* They've seen an average of 10% reduction in business traffic vs. 2007, and expect 2009 to be worse
* Fuel surcharges which made up 10-15% of their 2008 revenue, and a lot of those surcharges are falling out of ticket prices as oil continues to fall.

As a group, they're less invested in the nickle-and-dime charges the US carriers use, so their revenue changes are going to be tied more to average ticket prices than that of the US carriers.

However... they also have seen less of a problem as far as oil price increases because they're collecting their revenues in Euros, which has not seen the same devaluation as the dollar, so it's probably a fair indicator.

Yesterday's NYT had a feature on fares dropping as well -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/business/25fares.html?hp
-- which pretty much confirms what I wrote on Sunday:

"The average one-way coach ticket bought in advance was $117 last week, down 13 percent from $135 in early July, according to Harrell Associates, a consulting firm that tracks airfares."

So Bob, it's possible that I was wrong.....

If the revenue drops being confirmed by the sources above are really indicitive of what US carriers are seeing, it's possible the RASM growth won't be able to make up for the overall drop in ASM's...

 

[Bob Owens]

So Bob, it's possible that I was wrong.....

According to Tom Horton, AMR has reduced their debt from $16.4 Billion in 3Q05 to $10.7 Billion in 3Q08. If I recall they owed in excess of $20 billion in 2003. So in the last five years they've been able to pay off half their debt, around $10 billion!

Wow, they paid down Billions in debt and still recorded profits for several of those years. That would be like you paying off half your mortgage and stashing a lot in savings as well in just five years.

How many people out there could afford to do that? Certainly not any rank and file employee of AA since AMR paid down that debt with money they took from their workers. Most of us have seen our debt increase over the last five years. I know of a few that even lost their homes and others that simply stopped paying and are biding time till the bank throws them out. Remember that as you go to work for half pay on Thursday!!

AMR has the money, everybody is cashing in, most never stopped, the question is do we stand on the end of the line and wait to see whats left over or do we demand what we should be getting?

Restore and more, and by "Restore" I mean adjusted to the buying power we had in 2002. Bringing my 2010 pay to the same nominal rate it was in 2001 is not restore-its a nine year pay freeze less nine years of inflationary losses.

 

[FWAAA]

According to Tom Horton, AMR has reduced their debt from $16.4 Billion in 3Q05 to $10.7 Billion in 3Q08. If I recall they owed in excess of $20 billion in 2003. So in the last five years they've been able to pay off half their debt, around $10 billion!

Wow, they paid down Billions in debt and still recorded profits for several of those years. That would be like you paying off half your mortgage and stashing a lot in savings as well in just five years.

Your numbers (and the faulty conclusions that flow from the mistaken numbers) are not accurate.

You're mixing and matching the "net debt" figures, which are total long term debt less unrestricted cash on hand. AMR has paid down some debt since 2003, but nowhere near $10 billion.

I also think your 2003 $20. billion figure is inflated - probably something your lap dog union retards told you.

 

[eolesen]

Good luck, Bob. I know things like basic economic principles just don't apply in your universe.

Maybe the Obamessiah will find some bailout funds for you, and deliver the restoration checks personally by chartering Santa's Sleigh and having the Tooth Fairy riding shotgun for good measure....

 

[TWU informer]

Good luck, Bob. I know things like basic economic principles just don't apply in your universe.

Maybe the Obamessiah will find some bailout funds for you, and deliver the restoration checks personally by chartering Santa's Sleigh and having the Tooth Fairy riding shotgun for good measure....

WOW! I was wrong about non-germane union expenditures.

It sounds as though Union Dues for Politics may pay off big afterall.

 

[Bob Owens]

Your numbers (and the faulty conclusions that flow from the mistaken numbers) are not accurate.

AMR has paid down some debt since 2003, but nowhere near $10 billion.

$16.4 Billion in 3Q05 to $10.7 Billion in 3Q08.

Those are Tom Hortons figures from the Flagship News. $5.7 billion in three years. So in three years they eliminated a third of their debt, not bad. On average nearly $2billion a year.

Like I said most of us have seen our debt go up the last five years.

I also think your 2003 $20. billion figure is inflated - probably something your lap dog union retards told you.

Correct, just like the $3.5 billion "Loss" they claimed, did you read the subtitle of this thread? I think the figure that Gless said was "$22 billion" but where do you think he got it?

 

[FWAAA]

Use whatever numbers you want to, Bob. No skin off my nose, since I'm not the one whining about how little I'm paid. But if you want anyone to take you seriously, attention to detail (and links where appropriate) is a good place to start.

 

[Bob Owens]

Use whatever numbers you want to, Bob. No skin off my nose, since I'm not the one whining about how little I'm paid. But if you want anyone to take you seriously, attention to detail (and links where appropriate) is a good place to start.

You want a link to the Flagship News? You could probably find the same figures in the SEC filings for those years if you dont trust my word. The thread was geared towards workers at AA, all they need to do is look at the bottom of Page 2. As for outsiders such as yourself I really dont care if you take me seriously or not. Apparently all this must be at least a little abrasive to the skin on your nose since you've resorted to snide comments. You seem to do that a lot when you cant factually discredit your opponent. You're getting more like Eolsen every day.