First of all, I want these guys to succeed, but I cannot figure out what they can't understand about if you're going to structure your turnaround with putting the majority of your assets (international, primary domestic hub, exploitation of huge O&D potential, etc.) in Philly, then the place must work. Last night, I fly Express from White Plains (suburban NYC) to Philly. 30 minutes late, which happens, but I get onboard and see there are only 4 of us, at 5:30 on a Monday. This is an airport within minutes of one of the largest concentrations of corporate HQ's in the country (IBM, Xerox, GE, Pepsi, etc.). We land in Philly, and taxi to the gate in F. It's the end one, where it widens out to accomodate 3 gates in a common area. The point being, it isn't remote. We sit 10 minutes, as the pilot announces that he can't get anyone to come out and park us. 10 minutes (meanwhile, they're selling 45 minute connections). I make my way to my connection to PBI. We board on time, and proceed to take a 30 minute delay, caused by late loading of bags. Here are these poor guys and gals, taking draconian pay cuts to try and save their jobs, and by extension, the company, and the ground people, who no longer even have to cater these planes, operate like that. The company's apparent failure to recognize the simplest issue they have, which is to rectify the dysfunction at one airport, simply shows they are two dimensional, as well as clueless. My heavens, it's management 101. They should have made that airport a separate division, and hired, or assigned a hotshot as President, or whatever, with full autonomy to do what's necessary to make it work. What I continue to see is (a) evidence that the people who run the airline very likely don't fly it much, and (b) they appear to work overtime to make a difficult situation hopeless. I don't think I have ever seen an employee group work so hard to save a business, while the management group just continually sits there, missing the obvious. If you're Southwest, you just hang out across the field and wait (every time I go through that place I count more orange tails over there). Clueless.

First of all, I want these guys to succeed, but I cannot figure out what they can't understand about if you're going to structure your turnaround with putting the majority of your assets (international, primary domestic hub, exploitation of huge O&D potential, etc.) in Philly, then the place must work. Last night, I fly Express from White Plains (suburban NYC) to Philly. 30 minutes late, which happens, but I get onboard and see there are only 4 of us, at 5:30 on a Monday. This is an airport within minutes of one of the largest concentrations of corporate HQ's in the country (IBM, Xerox, GE, Pepsi, etc.). We land in Philly, and taxi to the gate in F. It's the end one, where it widens out to accomodate 3 gates in a common area. The point being, it isn't remote. We sit 10 minutes, as the pilot announces that he can't get anyone to come out and park us. 10 minutes (meanwhile, they're selling 45 minute connections). I make my way to my connection to PBI. We board on time, and proceed to take a 30 minute delay, caused by late loading of bags. Here are these poor guys and gals, taking draconian pay cuts to try and save their jobs, and by extension, the company, and the ground people, who no longer even have to cater these planes, operate like that. The company's apparent failure to recognize the simplest issue they have, which is to rectify the dysfunction at one airport, simply shows they are two dimensional, as well as clueless. My heavens, it's management 101. They should have made that airport a separate division, and hired, or assigned a hotshot as President, or whatever, with full autonomy to do what's necessary to make it work. What I continue to see is (a) evidence that the people who run the airline very likely don't fly it much, and (b) they appear to work overtime to make a difficult situation hopeless. I don't think I have ever seen an employee group work so hard to save a business, while the management group just continually sits there, missing the obvious. If you're Southwest, you just hang out across the field and wait (every time I go through that place I count more orange tails over there). Clueless.

Deel, how about a little clarification. What delayed your USX flight, weather, mechanical, crew? Again you said that the second flight was delayed for late baggage. Why? Weather, or was that the last flight of the evening to your destination? Perhaps they held it so another flights' passengers' luggage could load. I don't mind taking the company to task but a little background here may help.

Sass,the delay on USX was not a problem. Late in the day, those flights are often running behind. My point was, knowing that, a proper ground operaton would have been waiiting for it, to expedite any late connecting customers. Instead, the opposite occurred. They "lost" it, and even though it sat a few feet from the most heavily used part of F terminal, in full view, they couldn't get anyone to just come over and park them (which on the Dash 8's, requires a boot on the prop). As for the PBI departure, the weather was clear, we had about a 60% load, including 6 open in First (not including 2 off duty pilots, who were in there), The airport was surprisingly uncrowded. You could hear them opening and closing the cago hatches below. What it appears to be telling us is that they have little or no supervision of the ramp. When Bethune took over Continental, he had similar problems in his hubs. They started giving a Ford Explorer each month to the employee who, as part of the team, contributed most to reducing delays. You cannot fix this airline if you don't fix Philly, especially now that they have made that facility the centerpiece of the whole operation. They appear unable to comprehend that, or incapable. It is so obvious, which is why I suspect senior management doesn't fly the line. For openers, when it gets confrontational with the help, these guys start using their passes on other carriers, so they don't get hassled. Then, the company is in the DC area, the equity is down south (via CLT), and the money is in New York (meaning they would fly the Shuttle). Philly is not in their travel plans. As an example, when Wolf was there, I am quite sure he either traveled by private plane, or on UA from Dulles to his home in France.Even this bunch should be able to see, that in addition to things not running well at PHL, you have to be out of your mind to start selling 45 minute connections, which they are doing more and more lately.

Looks like it can only get worse with the lowered morale factored in. But what the heck, might as well stick it out. Its not like I have too many choices out of PHL that don't involve cattle calls.

The inefficiencies of PHL have been well documented here. I agree that putting all "eggs" in the PHL basket is a major risk. Especially when on-time scheduling and customer service will be differentiating factors in which airlines survive, and which don't.

I can only imagine what the forced pay cuts have done to an already unmotivated workforce in PHL. US can squeeze the rank and file in PHL's paychecks....but the rank and file can easily squeeze US out of business.

I try to avoid PHL at all costs, but unfortunately on US it's very hard to do so.

... They "lost" it...

that has been my impression of the "real" problem at PHL.

when things are fine, they're fine. if anything gets out of alignment for any reason - weather, mechanical, whatever - each delay adds up and gets worse.

once you are out of sync there, it gets worse. i had a very foul experience once because they could not get anyone to load the baggage. there had been weather to the west, so equipment was delayed. but, once the equipment arrived, they had to get a gate... once all that was done we sat in plane ready to go and waited for 45 minutes - probably longer - for someone to show up to load the luggage... and then we were late enough leaving that we could not get clearance for takeoff because we were behind cargo (fedex?). we were the only passenger flight still trying to get out of PHL, and we were less important than cargo. the pilot apologized profusely, explained that weather + PHL ops were the issues, and that he had never seen such a debacle before either.

apparently, at PHL, there is a lack of capacity, information, focus, motivation... something! and once anything gets delayed, it cascades because the resources are either doing something else or are not properly directed or motivated. don't know who runs that operation or how to fix it, but even the US people in PIT said that the PHL ground operations were a longstanding problem, and they were not surprised at our story.

yeah, if you want to make PHL a centerpiece of the airline, fixing ground ops will be a major piece of the airline success puzzle.

(of course, once we got to PIT, we spent the night rather than making the connection - obviously - and the crowning insult of the night was watching the entire special services desk staff hop on their golf cart and drive away leaving us w/ the poor gate agent who had way too many people stranded... it looked like shift was over, special services desk was done, and they went home, leaving a whole bunch of unhappy people and one overworked gate agent... but that is another story, the one time in my life that the US staff REALLY dropped the ball and made me consider another airline! But, I got over it and made US1 that year anyway. hit the target the week between xmas and new years, just under the wire!)

i do wonder if brass fly their own airline. i gather that they must do so, because i know people who have met US brass (in FC) over the years.

Of course, I think you are right that a lot of them may fly shuttle the most, which is a different and well-run operation... that skips right over PHL.

deelmakur,

I used to be inclined to give US the benefit of the doubt on their decision to emphasize PHL with all of its disfunctionality over PIT (I figured they thought that PHL's east coast location made it more attractive to fliers than PIT). But why they've never gotten the PHL operation under control has mystified me. All they give are promises.

You're absolutely right. This is a management problem. If it takes some a**kicking, they have to kick some a**. They should have made fixing the problems a prerquisite to committing to PHL. Then they might have some recourse.

They probably think that the innate nastiness of the PHL workforce will bring down Soutwest's reputation for friendliness. That's not much of a business plan.

All they ever had to do was put the place under special management. Treat it like a division, with it's own CEO, who would have extraordinary power to make decisions on the spot. The way it is now, Philly is a "living organism", where they have put 80% of their primary assets. It cannot float, and have them survive. Loads are awful, yields worse. The latest CFO just hit the bricks, presumably because from his window he could see the bus the rest of them won't know hit them. I repeat, clueless.

The PHL situation alone will sink US Airways. PHL was certainly choosen to be the centerpiece of their strategy because of very high O/D numbers, not because of operational efficiency.

This isn't a new or recent problem. It's a problem that has been identified and discussed to the Nth degree with no solution. :mad:

You are right. It's their biggest market, and as an O&D location, it's one of the very biggest and best in the country (although the proximity of NYC, and especially EWR, probably impacts international opportunities). Where I'm going is not to beat the dead horse about what a dump the operation is, but instead, that it's not they can't fix it , but rather, they don't, because they do not believe anything is wrong. That is a management failure of catastrophic proportion.