Management Shake-Up and Layoffs (October 2018)
 

There was a report on Seattle Times regarding Management changes and layoff coming soon.

Seattle Time Article

I wonder what, if anything, we will see as cuts or changes going forward as passengers....

Jiburi

I read this article and thought: welp, they can lay off the entire revenue management team and just use the amazing, free advise here on FT!? :p

Hope the bean counter that basically wiped out "U" availability was one of them.

All evidence points to that bean counter being promoted going forward. AS has gone from "For the same price you just get more" to "We suck less" to "We're big boys now". About the only differentiator left is that their FF program isn't revenue based yet, which is offset by the fact that they've gutted the upgrade benefits and their partner network.

As a part of this reorganization process we made a difficlt decision to eliminate letter U. Or focs is on Yield and nfortnately that letter happened to be between Y and I.

Don't forget Basic Economy, coming in time for the holidays!

I hope there is no mercy for the soul that forced polenta & kale upon us for 3 years....

Having just enjoyed the food on Aeromexico yesterday, you should bow down at the feet of this soul and be eternally grateful that you weren't served something that Chef Boyardee would have been embarrassed to let out of one of his cans.

This might get me banned... but I liked the polenta served with the chicken I had yesterday. Bacon chunks & sauce from the brussel sprouts were the perfect addition. Alas, no more menus so no idea of what exactly it was supposed to be.

What kills me is that just about every time AS tries any service "enhancement", they take forever to roll it out, don't educate their employees, have far too many misloading/miscatering/exceptions, and then pull it leaving both customers & employees mystified as to what to expect.

I think that is what is happening is that AS is finding out that they do not need redundancy between AS and VX, especially at the executive level. The top levels at AS will be making hard decisions to streamline the upper (and most expensive) levels.

Come on... they should have known that before they even submitted the first bid, let alone completed the purchase transaction (and now 22 months beyond).

It takes time to eliminate redundancy. You need to wait until integration is complete until removing extra resources.

I am 100% positive that AS knew going into the merger that there would be cuts. That happens in every merger as the company right sizes the business going forward. It has just taken until now for them to analyze and adjust to their new business model. No matter what they are saying now, this will not stop at the upper management level. We will probably not hear about the rest, but it ill happen, although at a much lower % if the staff.

The top VX people and anybody that steered the ship were long gone as were nearly all the VX revenue management people who were looking for new jobs before the deal was even finalized. Very few people from the VX corporate side went up to SEA. As was mentioned AS considers any non unionized employee to be "management" and these are likely all long time SEA based AS employees which will be reduced. They will try to eliminate jobs of older works that retire and just not replace them. If there are not enough of them, they will find ways to get rid of the most expensive people and hope that some existing employees will be able to add that job to their own and take the same pay.

The only people from the VX side AS needed to keep were the flight attendants and pilots as they had nobody on their own staff that were certified to operate those planes.

AS does not consider all non-unionized employees management. I think someone is confused between exempt and non-exempt status. These reductions impact managers with direct reports or other employees at similar levels.

Theoretically unionized employees and customers should be cheering these changes. Cost cuts are coming at the top, while the front line employees that take care of customers have pretty much seen raises. The fact that The Seattle Times and FT can spin this negatively reflects the sad state of our social media driven culture.