bigfatdaddy

Mmmmmmm donuts!

KonaJoe

He's dangerous because he knows airline operations really well?

Pilots...

Guppydriver95

What do you do? If not a pilot, why are you here, on a pilot forum?

KonaJoe

What a daft response. Pilots need to look after one another because no one else will. That includes getting a dose of reality when we need it. Some of the most asinine things I've heard have been from fellow pilots. Maybe it's because I am one and hang around other pilots all the time.

Kirby has been running the show for the last couple of years and has turned us from Wall St. schmuck to Wall St. darling. You might not care about things like stock price and financials, but rest assured, without both you can kiss any contract, profit sharing (all the things you care about) goodbye. Kirby took a risk with our growth, against Wall St.'s consternations, and it was a huge success. He's focused on growth and financials instead of a quick exit, which is why I'm cutting him some slack. I think it's pretty obvious that Kirby was always goal oriented--the goal being a major airline CEO, vs. a high-speed pass kind of guy. I think he's in it for the long haul. I don't see him leaving in 5 years with $30mil to go work for Texaco. The languages he speaks are solely Airline, Network Strategy, Prices. Oscar might not be an airline guy, but he is a seasoned business leader and can scope out (no pun intended) talent.

Scope is a huge issue, obviously, but they will only get what we give them. If Kirby wants scope, that means he's doing his job. Every legacy CEO wants scope. Calling him a "scope guy" is like calling a farmer an "irrigation lover" like it's some sort of insult.

Kirby is our best shot to keep us profitable. After that, let the MEC do it's job. That's what we elected them for. Worried about scope? Don't vote for it.

Vernon Demerest

This^^^^^^^Agree completely.
Many on here were in attendance at the Standards meeting a couple of months ago when it was rumored Parker was on the outs at AMR and people, including Scott were being talked to about the top post at AMR. He was flat out asked (and I get that he could have given a BS answer) about it and he said “Oscar took a chance on me and I take loyalty seriously. If you’ll have me, I plan to make United my last airline and retire from the industry as a United employee “.
Take that for what it is worth and consider the audience (bunch of type A instructor/evaluator/LCAs that dabble in cool aid consumption ) but he received the first ever standing ovation I’ve seen given to a executive management type from UAL pilots, ever.

fanaticalflyer

Nicely put! So sicking of hearing from negative pilots that the world is ending by Kirby taking over the helm. Should have not been a surprise. He is going to continue the increase in market share. Unlike past managements, we are growing to profitability and doing it wisely (sound aircraft purchases and employee hiring). So sick of hearing guys talking about not enough pilots and too much senior manning. The senior manning is now at respectable amounts and we will always have that moving forward. This is the Smartest way to handle manpower costs where we aren't paying salaries and benefits for the entire year. With that said, I'm not drinking the kool-aid either. I agree that it's the MECs job to take care of the rest. Todd Insler's group has done an unbelievable job this past 4 years. Better than any other MEC for the past 25 years, by a long shot. I'll place my money on his group getting the contract we want done the right way. I'm hoping Kirby understands how much Munoz's approach with great people skills translated to high morale with results. Can't see Kirby going beyond 2020 to finish this contract with so much goodwill on the line.

detpilot

Great, but how does Southwest do so well without "irrigation?" If he's so forward thinking, why not figure out how to say with no uncertainty

"every aircraft with a business class or higher will be flown by United pilots and staffed by United flight attendants. We'll work with the unions on a fair pay scale, and the cost increases will be more than justified with the improvement in the core product."

Be the guy who creates a better product, not the one who makes it cheaper (regarding aircraft smaller than 118 seats).

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

baseball

Instructor pilots and LCA's are suck-ups. I don't have a problem saying that, and if they were being honest they would tell you they are careful as to what they say in these LCA meetings and in front of management, and I've been doing this 30 years, and I've never seen one "rock the boat." Cooperate and graduate is how I see them. They keep saying..."we're doing X because this is what we're doing." Never challenge management.

OK, here's the deal. If Kirby wants to get a standing ovation from the pilots he's gonna have to say this: " I promise not to attempt to attack scope language." I know it's a sacred cow, and I am not going to try and sacrifice it, not on my watch." He says that, and I'll stand and clap.

If he won't protect my sacred cow, then I may not want to protect his.

O2pilot

Because Southwest is a point-to-point airline. They get most of their revenue from people flying direct flights.

United is a hub-and-spoke airline. We get most of our revenue from the network effect of connecting people. We literally have 100X possible flight combinations compared to Southwest. If you want to go from Chicago Dallas, you can go on United or Southwest. If you want to go from Madison to Paris, etc. you can't do that on Southwest. Multiply every International destination we have times the number of cities we serve domestically and it starts to make sense.

For the network effect to work, you need feed. Southwest doesn't need it. The cost of a feeder network doesn't make sense for their business model, just like Jet Blue, because they aren't big enough. Far smaller than Southwest.

We need an express operation. The added benefit is tremendous. Kirby wants to build out the network. He needs feed to do that. We need that feed too. So we are in a precarious position. Unfortunately, we were burned previously, so we aren't going to budge one inch.

Bottom line is I will keep an open mind when we get a TA, but I won't make blanket comparisons to airlines like SWA or JB because they aren't the same animal.

But I will just ask people to think about this....if ALPA could wave a wand and wipe out 1/2 of the UEX operation, would management try to fly A-319s and guppies on those routes, or are they not economical for larger planes. If we wiped out that flying, would we gain more flying? Or would we just lose out on connecting passengers and maybe lose some other flights because we don't need as many hub-to-hub flights.

If we added more regional flying (to cities we'd never fly to on mainline) does the mainline grow and does that benefit us, knowing it is entirely possible its not economically feasible to do that flying in-house without a b-scale.

How do we add flying that we would never do on the mainline, that grows the mainline, keeps our profit sharing checks high, and keeps the profit level at the airline sufficient to pay our industry leading contract? Because I believe what most of you believe. I don't want to give on scope, but I also want the company to be so profitable, we get a much better contract.

So how do we do that?

Grumble

Smisek was an incompetent ass (along with Znotins and a few of those other hold over who’ve been shown the door) who wanted to cut costs to profitability. While Kirby may dream about growing, he’s not about to let the airline he and Oscar built crumble because of something like labor strife or allow Wall Street to start questioning his leadership. He knows you gotta spend money to make money.

Oscar also isn’t leaving and will be in a position to fire SK if things start going south.