Get this, American, Delta, NW, others: double ticket prices. Get the friggin riff-raff off the planes (customers and sky hags alike) and bring back the days when flying meant travel in style.

Oh, yes: if you have a two year old child? Stay home! Unless (s)he needs a kidney transplant and is on the way to the Mayo to get it, DRIVE, or get the grandparents to fly.

The air is meant for those of class, courtesy, style, and money. Not for the budget-conscious “traveler,” – these folks are best served by that American icon…GREYHOUND.

Remember: Your management has truly placed the burden of “saving the company” on your backs, and while making you bleed and suffer, have awarded themselves millions in bonuses and other perks – and for what? From my vantage point (the faithful customer), all I have seen are: no meals for coach; increased security hassles; frustrated employees faithfully performing their duties; static or slightly more expensive fares; increased delays both on the gate and on the tarmack. Nothing has improved for the customer!

When you go back to the negotiating tables, send a clear message to your union bosses that you demand your lives back – a reasonable living wage, a useful training schedule, and most important – improved insurance benefits. If the management balks like your VP of HR has done in recent news articles on CNN.com, then demand he give back his 2007 bonuses and perks as “a sign of good faith negotiating”. Remember – I am willing to bet 500,000 ff miles that no currently employed AMR executives have taken any cuts in insurance benefits or salaries since consummation of your last labor contract.

American Airlines Employees are simply the best – head and shoulders above Delta, USAirways, and NWA. You guys deserve much for the way you have handled yourselves over the last 5 years, and your company management has demonstrated in the press that they are simply arrogant, greedy little people that treat you with utter contempt – not giving one thought to the fact that you guys might have families to support. At the next Union Negotiations, test their statements – if the company has to become more competitive, then make the management match any employee concessions IN WRITING – if you guys have to give, then they have to give too. The idea of “good faith” negotiating has gone the by the wayside.

AMR recently called me to ask for my opinions on how the company could improve itself. My answers were: 1) Increase Employee Pay 2)Provide Increased Training 3) Management needs to become more conscience of their appearance in the press – right now, the AMR management looks pretty bad in the public’s eyes.

I stress employee improvements (pay, training, etc) because YOU ARE AN AIRLINE! I may not have an MBA, but I have enough sense to know that if you run a hazardous business (flying is inherently dangerous) then high employee moral and strong employee knowledge of safety procedures are paramount to avoiding hazards and accidents, as well as taking appropriate steps to save lives when accidents happen.

GOOD LUCK GUYS! FLY THE FRIENDLY SKIES!

Why the heck is TSA targeting a white, middle aged grandmother when they can’t begin to stop the flow of illegals swarming over our borders?

Another good reason to not fly as often next year. The Year of the Rat, 2008 says:
The clash between fire and water will also bring accidents related to fire and the airline business is in the category of fire element. As such, it is observed that the year of the Rat seems to experience more air disasters. A typical year with many aviation disasters is the previous Rat year in 1996. During this year, there are over 20 major airplane crashes including the U.S. TWA Boeing 747 crashed in July, 1996 killing 230. Looking at the immediate last Earth Rat year in 1948, there were also quite a numbers of airplane crashes including the hijack of a Cathy Pacific airplane in June, 1948.

“When I fly, I always take Delta… That’s because they pay their pilots the most money… You don’t want to fly with unhappy pilots.”

Johnny Carson, Tonight Show monologue, 1981

Traversing race, culture, gender, education level and socio-economic standing is the desire to be happy. It is the most powerful force buried at the center of the human soul. An individual’s “happiness” is directly linked to how life unfolds relative to expectations. Hopes and dreams in a mate, family, friends, social standing, or a career are just a few areas that can fall short, meet, or exceed expectations.

Tragic irony of high expectations is the possibility they will not be met hence a greater risk of an unhappy life. Throughout life expectations are created and destroyed. Over the course of a lifetime a common pattern emerges where expectations follow a trace akin to a bell curve. Zero at birth, peaking mid-life, and diminishing as one passes the “mid-life crisis”. With this knowledge one might conclude the key to happiness at any point along the curve is to simply lower your expectations. Unfortunately expectations are often set as a result of something external to or as a result of something the individual did or did not accomplish. Print, video, and other environmental exposure are powerful influences. Performance in academics, sports, social life, college and graduate school play an important part of setting expectations. Success indexes life’s expectation curve higher while failure drives it lower. A driven, successful, highly capable person who has climbed the ladder to Chief of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General will have radically higher expectations than a person who flunked out of high school, smoked dope for three years before setting a lifetime career goal to become a forklift driver at the city garbage dump.

Business leaders recognize it’s essential in a market-based enterprise to have happy employees. “Best man or woman for the job” does not imply the one who has the highest level of capability but rather the person whose capabilities and expectations most closely match the duties, responsibilities, and compensation the job has to offer. Management must balance the need for competence against cost. When a business cannot meet employee and customer expectations balanced against revenue, it will fail. When an entire industry finds itself in this situation, the entire industry will fail.

In the airline industry an unprecedented percentage of unit revenue and unit expense is outside control of management. In 1978 pricing power was wiped out with passage of the Airline Deregulation Act. During the 1990’s the Internet matured making it almost impossible to gain a revenue advantage over a competitor. Awash in red ink it was no surprise the chainsaw was wielded at labor in an attempt to reduce costs following the Dot-com bust of 2000 and the events surrounding September 11, 2001. It was the perfect storm. Luckily the airlines had resources in place to deal with the tragedy. For the last 35 years a Washington D.C. based think tank funded by the airlines, Airline Industrial Relations Conference, has existed to achieve one objective: Control airline personnel cost. How well have they done? In a word, phenomenal. I will illustrate the fruits of their labor with their crowning achievement…………….. Airline pilots

In terms of inflation adjusted dollars, Airline pilots today earn less than half of what they did 35 years ago. The unit of work can be measured by flight hours, duty hours, hours away from home, Revenue Passenger Miles, Available Seat Miles, or most importantly, revenue generated per pilot.

Industry hyperbole: Pilots are paid way too much. Look at the hourly wage. Look at how little they work. Seems like a whole lot of money to pay someone for a part time hobby.

In reality if consideration is given to opportunity cost, time value of money, true number of hours required to become and work as a commercial pilot, risk in terms of not completing a career for any number of reasons, including getting killed; The economic justification is not substantiated to become a commercial pilot even if the career goal is attained.

Industry belief: There is not now nor will there ever be a shortage of people willing to work as pilots at any wage.

True fact. Nor will there ever be a shortage of people willing to be Professional Ball players, or Firefighters or CEOs at any wage. The question is this: Will the industry be able to attract and retain the level of competence required at any wage? The answer is no. At the current Federal minimum wage you would not be able to consistently find competent Professional Ball players, Firefighters, CEOs or Airline pilots.

Industry stance: Pilots don’t get paid minimum wage and planes are not falling out of the sky.

The current national manpower pool of airline pilots came in with substantially higher career expectations, thus capability than what will be the next generation airline pilots. Airlines now operate on borrowed time during the transition. It will take years, perhaps a decade for current pilots to retire and or leave the profession in significant numbers before the damage to safety will be acknowledged.

Industry opinion: Statistically we are enjoying an era of unprecedented airline safety. There will always be some level of risk to flying.

A time bomb is being built as airlines focus on lower expectation pilots. As the industry continues the “race to the bottom” airline leadership will confront a pilot labor pool decimated to such an extent that safe, reliable air transportation will no longer be feasible within the cost structure they created. As the next generation pilots take command we will see much more of what is now just the tip of an alarming iceberg: Unthinkable missteps by incompetent pilots resulting in massive loss of life and substantial hull losses. Recent events such as the Helios 737 crash, the West Caribbean MD-82 crash, the American Airbus A300 crash, the Northwest Pinnacle CRJ crash and the Delta Comair CRJ crash are examples are inexcusable errors that should have never happened. Safe air travel was built by minimizing identifiable risk. The industry has become complacent with the current level of safety and is willing to accept increased risk in an effort to reduce personnel costs.

Industry objective: Replace human capability with technology. Over the last 35 years the modern airliner has been loaded with safety features in an attempt to idiot-proof flying. If we can teach Homer Simpson to run a nuclear power plant we can now teach his twin brother to fly a jet plane.

Flying is a dynamic environment requiring considerable judgment and intervention beyond the capability of technology. Members of the Airline Industrial Relations Conference need to dispatch with the NTSB Go Team so they could see first hand the true fruits of their labor. The severed body parts and blood splattered airplane wreckage. The stench of burned human flesh and charred remains at the crash site of Delta Comair 5191 in Lexington, Kentucky. They should be required to console the loved ones of those who were killed. Only Airline Industrial Relations Conference members would attempt to quantify why such a hull loss is acceptable. Air Conference members should be held accountable for manslaughter, or if they fully understand what they have done, murder. Safety of the flying public needs to take priority over trying to staff airline cockpits with the cheapest human resources the industry can find. The Simpson’s is just a cartoon.

Interviewing people from every walk of life for three decades he understood what made people tick. If he were alive today, Johnny Carson would not be flying Delta or any other airline. He would not be able to find any well-paid happy pilots. The leaders of the airline industry have won and the flying public has lost. And it was all for what? $5.

My most recent airport horror story occurred at O’Hare, where I had just made a presentation at the airport Hilton and was on my way to Oklahoma City for a 2nd meeting that day. I had on a nice suit with a camisole underneath (not to be titillating, just the facts). I was traveling with a colleague, a cool 71-year old gentleman.

Going through security, the TSA troll asked me to remove my jacket. I told him it was my primary garment and would not take it off to reveal my underthings.

He sent me to get patted down by the female guard. She asked what she was screening me for (ie., did I make the alarm go beep) and he says cryptically, “I’ll tell you later.”

Now of course she thinks I am a terrorist and pretty much performs a cavity search in the middle of all airport-goers. The pat down includes unbuttoning and opening my jacket, as well as flipping over the waistband of my trousers. I have now revealed my camisole, control top stockings and the color of my underwear to everyone.

I have bare feet and yet she asks me to lift each foot while she wands underneath. What might I be stashing in my false bottom feet?

I either almost got arrested or had an aneurysm, I was so upset and mortified in front of the world and my colleague (who was trying to retrieve with great difficulty all of my belongings, laptop, suitcase, purse, shoes, jewelry in the bowl, etc., from the conveyor belt while I was being violated). Instead, I took the Bing-Zen approach and kept mum long enough to make my way to the Admiral’s Club lounge for an early gin and tonic.

And yet journalists keep sending in stories of how they sneak contraband and weapons through airport security.

WTF?

Believe me, service we receiving now has nothing to do with money we currently pay. My flight to WAW cost slightly over $1000 in economy class for round trip. I think that’s fair price for holiday period. Lufthansa gets same money for that flight but offers you 1000% better service. My return flight to JFK was 100% great Lufthansa experience. And again, they work for same money as Delta!!! American airlines are getting worse and worse every year. Service sucks, food quality too – I would afraid to feed homeless dog. Flight attendants are too often unpleasent and with overwhelming feeling that they can act like jerks, only because after 9/11 it’s easy to put complaining passenger in trouble – with one call to homeland security.
And yes, we should complain, keep complain as much as we can, complain to executives, to media, online. Otherwise they will keep doing things as they do now and laugh straight in our faces. I don’t care how much Delta employees make per hour/per year. It’s free country, you can always look for better job. Did anybody in the airport cared recently about how much you make to feed your family?