Trump Takes Airline and 17,000 Jobs

Spirit Airlines, an impish upstart that shook the industry with its irreverent ads and deep discount fares, announced Saturday that it has gone out of business after 34 years.

The ultralow cost airline that once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people said it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately.”

Although Spirit had gone bankrupt twice before, the company said high oil prices, which have been rising because of the war with Iran, made it impossible to stay aloft.

Make no mistake, Trump and Netanyahu are the ones who caused all of those people to lose their jobs. You might recall that a year ago, those two caused Iran's nuclear facilities to be bombed. Dimbulb Donnie claimed that Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated, but less than a year later, he felt the need to attack on the same rationale.

The price of jet fuel has nearly doubled and that drove Spirit under, because of his stupid war.

The ripple effect will spread far beyond those 17,000 employees and every last one of them who will now deal with the ramifications of sudden unemployment of Spirit's workers have one person to thank: Donald John Trump.

Fly the Fiendish Skies, If You Can

Flights are being cut back:

United Airlines plans to cut less popular flights — including mid-week and overnights — until the fall, in response to surging fuel prices triggered by the war in Iran, CEO Scott Kirby said Friday in a company memo.

Jet fuel prices have “more than doubled in the last three weeks,” Kirby said. US jet fuel prices rose to $4.56 per gallon on Friday, up from $2.50 on February 27, before the war started, according to data from Argus Media. That could cost United an extra $11 billion this year alone — more than double what the company has earned during its best year, Kirby noted.

And when you go to the airport, you might get groped by a goon whose previous posting was clubbing brown people. That there are over twice as many TSA agents as ICE agents doesn't matter to Grampaw Pedo the Sundowner.

Hedge Funds Ruin Everything That They Touch

Southwest Airlines will begin charging customers a fee to check bags, abandoning a decades-long practice that executives had described last fall as key to differentiating the budget carrier from its rivals.

Southwest, which built years of advertising campaigns around its policy of letting passengers check up to two bags for free, said Tuesday that people who haven’t either reached the upper tiers of its Rapid Rewards loyalty program, bought a business class ticket or hold the airline’s credit card will have to pay for checked bags.

The airline did not outline the fee schedule but said the new policy would start with flights booked on May 28.

“We have tremendous opportunity to meet current and future customer needs, attract new customer segments we don’t compete for today, and return to the levels of profitability that both we and our shareholders expect,” CEO Bob Jordan said in a statement.
...
The airline reached a truce in October with hedge fund Elliott Investment Management to avoid a proxy fight, but Elliott won several seats on the company board.

Thanks to fucking Elliott, there will now be no difference between SWA and every other fucking airline.

I don't fly as often as I once did, but I used to make an effort to fly SWA. Beside the free baggage thing, their employees seemed to care about their jobs and the customers. Encountering grumpy workers on United, American and Delta was a common occurrance; I can remember only one on SWA.

I've had flights canceled at the gate for both AA and SWA. For AA, we all had to line up at various desks to get someone to reschedule the trips. For SWA, we were all asked to just hang out in the gate area. A customer service rep then called us up by final destinations to give us new boarding passes. All of our bags were rerouted, too. No sweat, no hassle, just excellent customer service by people who cared about their jobs.

"Activist investors" have had a hand in turning airline travel into something to be endured. May they all be cursed, forever.

Herb Kelleher must be spinning in his grave. Thanks to that fucking hedge fund, the only difference between SWA and the others will be the paint jobs on the outside of the airlines.

"Bird Strike"

An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people onboard crashed Wednesday near the Kazakhstani city of Aktau, killing 38 people and leaving 29 survivors, a Kazakh official said.
...
Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said that preliminary information showed that the pilots diverted to Aktau after a bird strike led to an emergency on board.
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Mobile phone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball. Other footage showed part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft, lying upside in the grass.

RUMINT is that the "bird" that hit the airliner was a surface-to-air missile. Which makes sense, as birds typically don't blow part of the wing off airliners. And the Russians are known to be somewhat trigger-happy.

But not only the Russians, it seems.

The Past is So Over; Aviation Ed.

Life as a flight engineer on the Concorde. Even if we see SSTs again, we won't see flight engineers. They were the last of the non-stick-monkey jobs on the flight deck to go away.

Fucking Over the Customers for Fun and Profit is What American Corporations Do

Southwest Airlines is to allow customers to reserve seats, scrapping the free-for-all of unassigned seating it has operated for 50 years.

The company said it also planned to charge for "premium" seats with more leg room, add red-eye flights, and redesign its boarding system.

The announcements came as the firm reported that profits plunged in the April-June period to $367m, down 46% compared with last year.

Chief executive Bob Jordan said the seating changes would "unlock new sources of revenue".
...
It had been known as a holdout in the industry for not hitting customers with extra fees for items such as checked baggage.

But its share price has dropped sharply over the last few years, as its profitability lags others in the industry.
...
"Although our unique open seating model has been a part of Southwest Airlines since our inception... this is the right choice - at the right time - for our customers, our people, and our shareholders," Mr Jordan said.

Shares in the firm rose more than 6% after the announcement.

Let's be clear about it: Jordan doesn't give a rat's ass about the employees or the customers. It's all about the share price. It's all about raping the customers as hard as they can to maximize revenue and please Wall Street.

MBAs and banksters have ruined this country. They've wrecked Boeing, they've made the other airlines into flying shitshows and now they're coming for the last airline that actually gave a shit about its passengers.

If you can't drive to where you're going, I respectfully suggest that you stay the fuck home.

Really Bad Lawyering, Guys

A troubling discovery last September on a Boston-bound plane received an unexpected response from American Airlines in a legal filing.

In an effort to not be held financially liable in a civil lawsuit in Texas, attorneys for American Airlines appeared to blame a 9-year-old girl for allowing herself to be secretly recorded by a flight attendant's phone in an airplane bathroom.

In a filing this week, the airline's attorneys say the harm to the child was caused by her “own fault and negligence,” and by her “use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”

American is throwing their insurance company's attorneys under the bus for this and claim this was an "error". Maybe so, but cripes, didn't anything think this through? Sure, blaming the plaintiff is an old strategy, but when it's a kid who was recorded by a perfert, who the hell thought that was a good idea? Did nobody foresee that the first thing the plaintiff's lawyers was going to do was print it out, highlight it, and send it to a reporter (or post it online)?

I can just hear the phone call from American Airlines/the insurer to the law firm: "Are you people really this fucking stupid?"

Some lawyer(s) going to be shown the door so the insurance company doesn't dump that law firm. If they haven't already.

Stay Offa the MAX

That's the advice from a couple of guys who once worked at Boeing, including a 737 project manager.

For the MAX 9, you'd need to avoid United and Alaska airlines. The MAX 8 is probably flown by those guys, along with Southwest and American.

Spirit flies Airbi, but then again, it's Sprit and you can be assured that there is no corner that has been left uncut. Which leave USAir, JetBlue, Amtrak and Greyhound for ways to get around and not have the chance of riding a MAX.

If It's a Boeing, Take a Greyhound

Here is a listing of Service Difficulty Reports for the 737 Max. You can run the slider down to a few hundred hours and see the problems with new airplanes and see things such as doors not assembled properly so that it took a strong person to move the operating handle.

The big customers are pissed.

“I am more than frustrated and disappointed. I am angry,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci told “NBC Nightly News” in an interview that aired Tuesday night. “My demand on Boeing is, what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house?”

United CEO Scott Kirby said that Boeing needs “real action” to restore its previous reputation for quality.

Boeing workers at its 737 factory stopped work on Thursday to hold a special session to focus on quality.

Great, a one day "safety standdown" that will really do nothing. Boeing has to change the cuture that it has instituted since Harry Stonecipher changed it from a company run by engineers to one run by beancounters.

Remember when it came out that Boeing was outsourcing critical flight-control software to a company that paid its engineers less than burger flippers? Apparently, it is worse than that. Boeing outsources a number of sub-assemblies to other countries. Ones from South Korea look like precision instruments. the ones from a country about two hundred miles across the Yellow Sea to the west appear to have been hammered out by kids in the Kyber Pass and then dragged through the mud before crating them up.

I have heard that Boeing has a system in which anyone noticing a defect in something fills out a report chit. The thing is, there is zero incentive to find problems. Quite the opposite; a worker who files too many chits will find themselves in another (and not as good) job. It's sort of a Russian zero defects system: There's zero defects if nobody reports any defects.

Boeing is a fucking shitshow. Within the span of 25 years (1958-1983), Boeing certified the 707, 720, 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767. In the forty years since then, they've designed and certified two new airplanes, the 777 and the 787. They have nothing in the pipeline to replace the 737, which was 60% of a 727, anyway. Oh, they say they do, but it's not an active project, as far as I can tell.

To be fair, part of that is the fault of their customers who don't want to pay for their pilots' new type ratings. So they demanded that Boeing squeeze every bit of juice they can out of a sixty-year old design. But they didn't push Boeing to buy parts from third-world sheet-metal fabricators. They didn't make Boeing partially divest itself, that was the doing of Wall Street and the financial vultures, who don't care if Boeing slowly suffocates itself, as long as they can make a buck in the process.

Boeing, as I have commented repeatedly, began walking down the road it is on when it merged with McDonnell-Douglas and McD-D effectively took over the company. That was 27 years ago; changing the culture of Boeing will require massive reworking of the executive roster, which isn't going to happen. The company's board is made of the same level of compliant hacks as is that of the NRA.

Boeing is settling in to becoming a company that survives only on the Federal teat. The way Boeing is going, if you fly on a new full-sized airliner in fifteen or twenty years, it's going to be an Airbus.

Fly the Fiendish Skies of Alaska

It's Easier to Bribe Make Large Campaign Contributions to Politicians Than Build Good Airplanes

That is the essence of this long story about how Boeing has repeatedly made large campaign contributions to politicians.

I've been told that the CEO of Boeing has been making the rounds of the plants to try and rally the troops. But no new programs are being launched to improve inspections of work being done. No plans or promises to hire more QC inspectors. Just the usual management smoke, mirrors and fresh horseshit.

Along with upping the amount of cash going to the campaign coffers of strategic politicians, no doubt. At this point, Boeing is operating like a Russian corporation: Make shitty products and bribe the right people.

Fly in a recently-manufactured Boeing aircraft at your own risk.

Jeez, Boeing

Federal investigators say a door panel slid up before flying off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week, and they are looking at whether four bolts that were supposed to help hold the panel in place might have been missing when the plane took off.

The comments Monday from the National Transportation Safety Board came shortly after Alaska and United Airlines reported separately that they found loose parts in the panels — or door plugs — of some other Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.

The door was part of the fuselage made by Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, KS, which was Boeing's Wichita division until it was split off about twenty years ago in some of the usual corporate shenanigans after the MBAs and beancounters took control in the late nineties. The Wichita plant was the lead factory for B-29s.

Still, if there is a critical gizmo that needs bolts to hold it in place, shouldn't somebody be checking it? Hell, does somebody bother to check to see if the fucking wing attachment bolts are properly installed?

My suspicion is that this is the sort of shit that happens when the damned beancounters decide tha tthey don't need a lot of quality control, that they can give the workers a form to fill out with a checkbox for "check the bolts". After awhile, the box gets checked without thinking about it, because nobody is checking on the work.

Pretty fucking shoddy.

If It's a Boeing, Consider Not Going

Alaska Airlines grounded all of its Boeing 737-9 aircraft late Friday, hours after a window and piece of fuselage on one such plane blew out in midair and forced an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon. No one was seriously hurt.

The incident occurred shortly after takeoff and the gaping hole caused the cabin to depressurize. Flight data showed the plane climbed to 16,000 feet (4,876 meters) before returning to Portland International Airport.

If a time machine is ever invented, after the obvious, a prime mission will be to determine who the hell at Boeing thought that it was a good idea to merge with McDonnell-Douglas and whack them.

ETA: Boeing--Making Amtrak Look Good Since 1997.(tm)

SKREEECH!

On the morning of Jan. 26, as two Alaska Airlines flights from Seattle to Hawaii lifted off six minutes apart, the pilots each felt a slight bump and the flight attendants at the back of the cabin heard a scraping noise.

As the noses of both Boeing 737s lifted skyward on takeoff, their tails had scraped the runway.

Both planes circled back immediately and landed again at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Tail strikes happen occasionally in aviation, but two in quick succession was not normal.

Bret Peyton, Alaska’s on-duty director of operations, immediately ordered no more planes were to take off across the airline’s network. All Alaska flights not already airborne were stopped nationwide.
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Alaska’s flight operations staff quickly realized that a software bug was sending bad takeoff weight data to its crews. They immediately figured out a workaround and normal flying resumed.

That's some pretty good heads-up thinking by the folks at flight operations.

I imagine that, back in the day, there were graphs that spat out the V-speeds based on weights and the (what was then called) throttles were pushed all the way up for every takeoff. Reduced-power is also a noise issue, but to this old former-piston driver, I'd think the safest thing to do is jam those suckers up to the stops. I sure as shit would think that any jet flying out of Midway does just that.

We Are Lucky That There Wasn't a Hundred Dead People (and Two Wrecked Airplanes) at Austin

This is an analysis at the What Would Vannear Blog (now on my blogroll).

The conclusion is that only one of the players in this saga, the inbound FedEx 767, had the bubble, the flick, the big picture. Only that crew saw what was going on. Taxiing onto the runway and taking off in a really-low visibility situation is not a quick process. Apparently, in clearing the SWA 737 to take the runway, the controller forgot all about that, or, possibly, never knew that. The SWA crew followed the tower's instructions, apparently in the belief that the tower controller had the flick.

Which he did not.

Keep in mind that when the Tower cleared SWA for takeoff, FedEx was inbound at somewhere between 140 and 200mph, depending on its landing weight. If we assume 150mph, that means it was coming in at 2.5 miles a minute. When the SWA pilot reported that it was rolling, FedEx was likely a half-mile or less from the runway. If the FedEx pilot had continued its approach, it would have been on the runway before the SWA 737 had left it. That's considered to be a Major Bozo No-No, because of the patently obvious risk of a collision.

We don't need another Tenerife.

Fly the Friendly Skies. Maybe Your Bags Won't Get Stolen

A United Airlines passenger, who put an Apple Air Tag in her checked bag, located it next to the dumpster in an apartment complex.

With regard to SWA, see this:

Long telephone conversation [the other] day with a friend who is a Southwest captain. First problem was that all crew scheduling is by telephone (! really!) and it got completely overloaded. Seven to 10 hours on hold was common. He was next gate to one flight that was short one flight attendant and had three legal flight attendants on board who were deadheading. Tried to call scheduling to have one of them work the flight. Were on hold until the crew timed out.

Going through Denver he saw scores of baggage carts out in the snow - then was shocked to see that they were all full of baggage.

A friend is trying to get somewhere on Frontier and they are their usual shitshow. the airplane had to be returned to the gate for a weight and balance issue.

Southwest Airlines (and Boeing): Ruined by the Beancounters

(NB: I received this from a source. I was at first reluctant to run it, but it has since appeared elsewhere.)

One consistent feature of American corporations: Those run by MBAs and beancounters, as opposed to those run by people who know the relevant industry, are, in the long run, doomed to fail.

This is the view of a SWA pilot on the SWA Pilot's Association Facebook page:

Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) Voices From The Line: Larry Lonero

What happened to Southwest Airlines?

I’ve been a pilot for Southwest Airlines for over 35 years. I’ve given my heart and soul to Southwest Airlines during those years. And quite honestly Southwest Airlines has given its heart and soul to me and my family.

Many of you have asked what caused this epic meltdown. Unfortunately, the frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow motion train wreck for sometime. And we’ve been begging our leadership to make much needed changes in order to avoid it. What happened yesterday started two decades ago.

Herb Kelleher was the brilliant CEO of SWA until 2004. He was a very operationally oriented leader. Herb spent lots of time on the front line. He always had his pulse on the day to day operation and the people who ran it. That philosophy flowed down through the ranks of leadership to the front line managers. We were a tight operation from top to bottom. We had tools, leadership and employee buy in. Everything that was needed to run a first class operation. When Herb retired in 2004 Gary Kelly became the new CEO.

Gary was an accountant by education and his style leading Southwest Airlines became more focused on finances and less on operations. He did not spend much time on the front lines. He didn’t engage front line employees much. When the CEO doesn’t get out in the trenches the neither do the lower levels of leadership.

Gary named another accountant to be Chief Operating Officer (the person responsible for day to day operations). The new COO had little or no operational background. This trickled down through the lower levels of leadership, as well.

They all disengaged the operation, disengaged the employees and focused more on Return on Investment, stock buybacks and Wall Street. This approach worked for Gary’s first 8 years because we were still riding the strong wave that Herb had built.

But as time went on the operation began to deteriorate. There was little investment in upgrading technology (after all, how do you measure the return on investing in infrastructure?) or the tools we needed to operate efficiently and consistently. As the frontline employees began to see the deterioration in our operation we began to warn our leadership. We educated them, we informed them and we made suggestions to them. But to no avail. The focus was on finances not operations. As we saw more and more deterioration in our operation our asks turned to pleas. Our pleas turned to dire warnings. But they went unheeded. After all, the stock price was up so what could be wrong?

We were a motivated, willing and proud employee group wanting to serve our customers and uphold the tradition of our beloved airline, the airline we built and the airline that the traveling public grew to cheer for and luv. But we were watching in frustration and disbelief as our once amazing airline was becoming a house of cards.

A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown Leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become. We could see that the wheels were about ready to fall off the bus. But no one in leadership would heed our pleas.

When COVID happened SWA scaled back considerably (as did all of the airlines) for about two years. This helped conceal the serious problems in technology, infrastructure and staffing that were occurring and being ignored. But as we ramped back up the lack of attention to the operation was waiting to show its ugly head.

Gary Kelly retired as CEO in early 2022. Bob Jordan was named CEO. He was a more operationally oriented leader. He replaced our Chief Operating Officer with a very smart man and they announced their priority would be to upgrade our airline’s technology and provide the frontline employees the operational tools we needed to care for our customers and employees. Finally, someone acknowledged the elephant in the room.

But two decades of neglect takes several years to overcome. And, unfortunately to our horror, our house of cards came tumbling down this week as a routine winter storm broke our 1990’s operating system.

The frontline employees were ready and on station. We were properly staffed. We were at the airports. Hell, we were ON the airplanes. But our antiquated software systems failed coupled with a decades old system of having to manage 20,000 frontline employees by phone calls. No automation had been developed to run this sophisticated machine.

We had a routine winter storm across the Midwest last Thursday. A larger than normal number flights were cancelled as a result. But what should have been one minor inconvenient day of travel turned into this nightmare. After all, American, United, Delta and the other airlines operated with only minor flight disruptions.

The two decades of neglect by SWA leadership caused the airline to lose track of all its crews. ALL of us. We were there. With our customers. At the jet. Ready to go. But there was no way to assign us. To confirm us. To release us to fly the flight. And we watched as our customers got stranded without their luggage missing their Christmas holiday.

I believe that our new CEO Bob Jordan inherited a MESS. This meltdown was not his failure but the failure of those before him. I believe he has the right priorities. But it will take time to right this ship. A few years at a minimum. Old leaders need to be replaced. Operationally oriented managers need to be brought in. I hope and pray Bob can execute on his promises to fix our once proud airline. Time will tell.

It’s been a punch in the gut for us frontline employees. We care for the traveling public. We have spent our entire careers serving you. Safely. Efficiently. With luv and pride. We are horrified. We are sorry. We are sorry for the chaos, inconvenience and frustration our airline caused you. We are angry. We are embarrassed. We are sad. Like you, the traveling public, we have been let down by our own leaders.

Herb once said the the biggest threat to Southwest Airlines will come from within. Not from other airlines. What a visionary he was.

I miss Herb now more than ever.

Nashville International Airport Sucks, and So Does Southwest Airlines

A Fcontinuation, of sorts, of this post.

I believe that it was thoroughly unreasonable of the Nashville Airport cops and SWA to insist that passengers whse flights were canceled leave the secure area.

This is why:

I've been in a few airports in my time. They all have one thing in common: Most of the retail operations, restaurants, bars, clothing, toiletries, books, pillows, travel blankets, etc., are in the secure areas of the airports. They are the places that stranded travelers need. The non-secure side, where the baggage check and baggage claim areas are, may have something along the nature of a row of vening machines to a coffee shop, primarily to sell to people who are waiting for incoming passengers. The operations in the non-secure side have very little of what a stranded traveler may need.

Pushing the stranded travelers out of the secure area was a rank display of inhospitability and a demonstrantion of uncaring, if not inhumanity.

Which may be typical of Nashville. I don't know, I've never been there and I'm less likely to.

(So much for that fabled Southern hopsitality.)

Fly Southwest and Go to Jail

The holiday travel woes for a group of passengers on Southwest Airlines appeared to include being told by a police officer they could be arrested for trespassing if their flight got canceled and they refused to leave an area of Nashville International Airport.

A TikTok video shared by passenger and Nashville resident Amani Robinson, 20, shows an officer telling her mother and a fellow group of passengers standing in line on Christmas that they need to leave "or you will be arrested for trespassing."

Fly the Fiendish Skies

From Dave Barry's Year in Review:

As the busy summer travel season gets underway, commercial aviation is severely disrupted across the nation because — this is a recurring problem — large numbers of people who have purchased tickets from the airlines are showing up at airports expecting the airlines to actually transport them to their intended destinations. “They keep giving us their money,” states a baffled airline-industry executive, “and we frankly have no idea why.”

Southwest has its own self-generated problems:

Southwest Airlines has declared a state of operational emergency at Denver International Airport (DEN). This started late on December 21, and applies until further notice. Long story short, the airline doesn’t have nearly enough rampers at the moment, which is causing huge issues. ... In a memo to employees, the airline reports receiving “an unusually high number of absences.” The airline states it has an obligation to customers and to fellow employees to safely and efficiently run the operation, so the airline has declared a state of operational emergency.

What does this entail? 

• Employees alleging illness will be required to provide a doctor’s note on the first day they return to work, indicating when the doctor was seen, and confirming that the employee was unable to work on the days of the claimed illness; telemedicine appointments don’t qualify, and failure to comply with these requirements will be considered insubordination, and will lead to termination 
• The company is denying any requests for personal absence, and ramp employees will be required to work their usual shifts; failure to comply will also result in termination 
• The company will apply mandatory overtime, regardless of an employee’s status; if an employee refuses to work overtime, they’ll also be terminated,

Because nothing says "we love our employees" like mandatory overtime and forcing them to get a doctor's note if they have had a cold. The commonsense rule of "if you're sick, stay home" doesn't work for SWA, which doesn't seem to care if the rest of its emplouyees and the traveling public get sick.

This, boys and girls, is why cmpanies get unionized.