Ya know Quokka, you're quick to throw around the words of 'incompetence', 'disagreement', 'confused & frightened' (last two clearly directed solely at me since I was by far the most vocal employee on this topic). The following is a copy of a portion of the ORIGINAL announcement, dated March 12, announcing the password protecting of the EMPLOYEE site to perhaps rebut your unnecessarily harsh words.

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"The change comes about as part of a company-wide effort to adopt industry best practices that enhance the security of corporate and personal information. Most companies require users to log in to internal Web sites.

Members of the public who visit alaskasworld.com will be directed to the Alaska Airlines / Horizon Air Newsroom on alaskaair.com. In addition to news releases currently available in the Newsroom, selected stories from alaskasworld.com will also be offered.

The “splash screen” that appears before users log in to alaskasworld.com will also include convenient links to the Paperless Employee Travel (PET) Web site, Alaska Airlines job listings and the Newsroom."
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The password protecting is strictly to enhance the protection of corporate and personal information, (see paragraph 1 in blue above) also that most other companies internal employee sites require a log in procedure, something that we all know that alaskasworld did NOT require for years.

Now would everyone please note the second paragraph in blue above where it clearly states that information and selected stories will be available in the Newsroom? This is neither 'incompetence' or 'disagreement' or even 'botched implementation'... rather it is the original plan.

I've never had an issue with information being put out to the public, infact I find our Alaska passengers here on FT to be, on the whole, very well read on our company. That is something that I applaud... Remember when we were in the process of revising our boarding process? Who did I (as one involved in that change) come to for information? That's right, it was y'all... I put out a public request here on FT since I knew how well versed and how passionate our folks here are on wanting to see positive change on something that affects each of you directly. I had page after page of suggestions and comments directly from you folks many of which were tested and some implemented after good results were apparent.

This FT forum is an invaluable resource for us to hear from you and for us employees who are here voluntarily (and always having to watch our comments lest we be considered to be speaking on behalf of the company) to provide additional information to our customers.

My issue has been, all along, the security of the internal employee site which has been wide open to public access for far too long. The internal employee-related portion of the site is for the company to provide information to it's employees as well as allowing employees to access their personal information.

Why is it so difficult for people to understand that there are (and should be) differences between the public access sites vs. internal employee work related sites?

Can we PLEASE put this topic to rest?