Originally Posted by
elitetraveler
Wow - $637 million is horrible
As the GAAP profit of $637 million included $142 million of gain on the slot swap, the more accurate profit figure would be the one that excludes such special items, and that would be $537 million. In either case, my post was in response to one that claimed that US earned $800 million in 2012, and that overstated the net earnings by 49%.
There's no need to resort to name calling when someone points out an exaggeration.
Originally Posted by
elitetraveler
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I don't think there are many people nominating Dougie for CEO of the decade or even year, but he has taken two distressed airlines with weak networks and cobbled them into an entity that has survived and is still at the table.
Aside from maybe Anderson and DL management, I can't see any other legacy carrier where one can show that their management team is streets ahead of Team Dougie.
AApologist Warning: This post is not to award Dougie - it is simply a statement of fact that he has done as good a job as anyone could conceive of with the cards he was given. If you want to hold the fact that he started from the weakest point of any existing legacy against him - feel free - but that doesn't reflect on his management ability.
There's no need to resort to name-calling.
Doug Parker has done alright with the poor hand he was dealt. No argument there. The unanswered question is how he plans to raise the pay of more than 30,000 US employees plus give improvements to AA employees and still earn any net profit.
Most of the record-setting $537 million net profit at US will be consumed bringing the US employees up to AA's payrates. Parker has promised improvements to the AA pilots and FAs and presumably will buy the other workgroups' approval as well, threatening the cost-cutting that current AA management fought so hard to accomplish over the past year.
The bottom line is that the combined entity is unlikely to be profitable given the large payraises promised by US management. Perhaps AA's creditors (which include AA employees) would be better served by emerging independently?