Originally Posted by
scoonee
American may be cooked. I don't know, I don't understand the business well enough. But I certainly wouldn't look to Scott Kirby for insight on the subject. As Ben Schlappig said in that blog, "It’s what [Kirby] wants the narrative to be."
Kirby has taken UA from being worse than AA to several standard deviations better. He's good at talking smack and spinning narratives, but he can back it up.
Originally Posted by
Kacee
My opinion? There's no hope so long as present management remains in place. The fact that the board isn't doing anything to replace management suggests there's a big problem there as well.
This has been the issue with AA since Crandall. The board has been a rubber stamp to some incredibly bad leadership.
Originally Posted by
niji248
It's pretty obvious what Scott Kirby is doing. He's petty and revengeful, and he's practicing "if you repeat the lie enough times people will start to believe in it". AA has made many terrible mistakes in the past decade, and the management is for sure at fault. However, I don't think AA is in a irreversible course of doom. United may be riding on a high last year, but they've already started cutting unprofitable European routes. On top of that, United still has that pending big labor contract negotiation which is bound to drive up its cost and United's PRASM will go down in the coming years. Of course these are not things Scott Kirby is talking about.
I don't think that he is saying that AA will go under, just that AA is getting left behind, and possibly irreversibly so.
Some of these decisions are permanent or take decades to undo. UA's Isom-equivalent, Smisek bailing on JFK is still hurting UA. AA let DL eat it's lunch in NYC, no coming back from that. With the latest gate allocations in ORD, UA seems poised to give AA one final kick between the legs; AA won't go away at ORD, but UA will keep poaching away high value customers, leading to AA cutting frequencies, leading to more defections etc etc.
Originally Posted by
moondog
He never seems to denigrate Delta, unless I've missed it.
DL has been the clear #1 for a while, both financially and operationally. Kind of hard to take pot shots at that without looking foolish. In addition, AA is both his former employer and a clown show, so it's both personal and easy.