Originally Posted by
cheapoATL
While a newbie to this sight, (I mainly post on airliners.net) I have been involved in the debate over the FL takeover attempt last year and am familiar with Skornika's handling of the matter. I was one of the supporters of the deal, but hindsight works on both sides of the argument. (Maybe the FL takeover would have been a disaster, but the present situation is the only proof we have of the outcome of the YX decision)
Anyway, in reference to Brophy's performance, yes I agree not so good.
First of all, welcome to FlyerTalk
cheapoATL!
You made some good points. As you mentioned, Midwest is not going to win the PR battle with the restructuring. However, Midwest did go through a very similar situation back in 2002-2003, starting with the flight attendants strike and culminating with the near bankruptcy filing and eventual restructuring. For about a six month period there was a near steady stream of bad news about Midwest. She did a pretty good job of handling the media then.
The current situation Midwest finds itself in seems to be out of Brophy's league. The golden rule in PR is to release bad news on Friday afternoons because it has better potential to get swept under the rug or overlooked because most people aren't tuned into the news on Friday nights or saturdays. Yesterday would have been a perfect time to release the schedule cuts as Midwest already knew what they were going to be. Instead, Brophy appears to be a fan of the "drip-drip" affect. Bits and pieces of information are released here and there, with the news getting progressively worse. Maybe he plans to issue a big press release Monday morning trumpeting all of the cities/routes being trimmed.