Sen. Clinton questions airline merger mania

What does Hillary Clinton know about “Airlines”? Nothting! Or as much as she knows about Healtcare, equally nothing. All she knows, is lieing 7/24 wherever she goes. It is time, to get rid of the Clinton bunch, 8 years was already too much for everybody. Since 1989 we had for 20 years miserable Government. This has to end!

The airline industry isn’t supposed to be profitable! It exists to allow business to be transacted around the world at a low cost and operates under a “certificate of convenience and necessity”. The Airline Deregulation Act was devised as a way to ensure cheap travel by reducing air carrier costs. The idea is that by reducing barriers to entry you allow many poorly capitalized, low wage carriers to drive down yields across the industry. Eventually the low cost operation goes bankrupt but not before the damage has been done to the bottom line of the other carriers. The industry will realize extremely low margins and return on capital as a result. As we have seen recently, bankruptcies are then used to “recycle” labor at lower rates ensuring low cost travel.
Mergers rarely if ever achieve the synergies that the managements propose. The employees know that it means layoffs and years of turbulence. It’s more about returns for the management and large investors than anything else.
I believe that most people perceive little value in air travel, therefore they think the price of a ticket is high no matter what. The way it’s set up,the industry can’t win and the employees pay the price.

Any political opinion about the airline industry these days needs to be taken with a dose of epsom salts.

The air transportation system has ostensibly been deregulated to allow the market to bring prices down. However, when the market dictates that prices have to go UP, bankrupt airlines are kept alive to preserve “competition” and consolidation is hindered or even prevented. Which effectively means that they haven’t been really been deregulated at all.

We may be standing on the brink of a new age, in which the long vaunted American aviation industry erodes into perpetual insolvency.

This ‘anyone with a brain’ comment is so typical of people who totally lack one themselves. Absolutely clueless about how this industry works. The’greedy pr***ks’ he mentions have lost their pensions, had their benefits gutted, and seen their paychecks cut in half, including pilots. All to pay the cost of higher fuel prices and an endless pick pocketing by government who for decades have pillaged airline coffers at rates higher than they do for alcohol, tobacco and firearms. Where does this expectation come from that somehow a $49 ticket to go coast to coast should be the norm, especially when they get there they are going to turn around and think nothing of paying $200 a night for a hotel room just for a lousy bed or the same $49 for a meal and a drink. The cost to buy just one of these aircraft is enough to build the entire resort!!! Let alone the tremendous effort, infrastucture, technical experience and training as well as cost to put it in the air. I suppose we should just all work for free just for the priviledge to serve traveling morons like this!

Thank you for your great message Brian Bailey. It seems all American’s do is complain about the price of this and the price of that. I have 5 family members in the airline industry. My brother, a pilot, took a 39% pay cut. Two cousins, flight attendants, are working under 40%+ pay cuts for 5 yrs. I also have a friend who started as a flight attendant in 1983 making $25K. Today, 25 years later, new flight attendants make $15K-$25K. Name another job that pays less today then it did 25 yrs ago? Yet I just saw a ticket price round trip was Washington, D.C. to Portland, OR for $133. Personally, I really don’t care if an airline merger is good for the public or not. If its good for the employees, that’s what is important to me.

The main goal for airlines lately has been to reduce capacity to better meet demand. Mergers, if done properly, help this out tremendously. We have too many airlines with the same destinations all flying around in the sky about 70% full on average. With ticket prices, I believe a large airline can still offer competitive prices on tickets. The problem comes when LCCs with no realistic long range financial plan condition John Q. Public into thinking that $30 fares are the norm. If anyone here could see how much it actually costs to start the engines and taxi to the gate, you would be amazed how airlines could actually make ANY money at all.

Most airline employee wages have been driven down to market levels. The two big exceptions are management and pilots, of course you can also make an argument that it is market pay.

With the mergers, not only will prices go up, but, except in the short term, there may still be no profits and because the pilots will extract it all…because they can and that does not change with having a larger airline. As an industry with high capital costs and with pilot labor that is not easily replaced, the pilots call a strike, the airline capitulates to stave off massive losses, profits decline.

Until a solution if found for that conundrum, long-term industry profits will remain elusive (airlines that are ahead of the curve like Southwest, should remain profitable).

Jack, are you brain dead? Greedy P****s? People are flying all over the place for $49. That’s probably less than it costs you to fill up the tank of your car. I am an airline employee and I’m sick and tired of subsidizing airtravel for the American public with my pay cuts! I’m making the same as I did in 1992…are you?
What makes Americans feel that air travel is a right, and that the airline industry has to subsidize their travel? Airlines are a business like any other. They are there to make a profit, not to provide you with a free ride to Cancun! Do you want Exxon to provide you with free gas, GM to provide you with a free truck, a local builder to give you a free house? What do you for a living Jack? Are you willing to give away what you produce for free? If you aren’t, then pay the ticket price or drive!

Let see Jack about your statement. Northwest is losing money after bankrupcy, so is Delta. How do you propose they stay in business with too many airlines flying to the same place? All we will get is more bankrupt airlines. Maybe instead of merging they should just go the way of Eastern or TWA, out of business? Then there are no jobs and higher unemployment. That sounds so much better.

Before spewing off look at the facts - all the airlines except Continental, Southwest, US Airways, and Airtran lost money in the fourth quarter of 2007.

If this merger does not happen, whether or not Clinton is in position to stop it, the same number of airlines will not be around in five years - guaranteed. They have all been losing money for the most part since 2001 and it cannot continue as a viable business like that.

Anyone with a brain can se this is bad for the consumers. it means high ticket costs, and they may even charge for water. Mrs Clinton is right we need competition between the airline’s. Maybe the Gov’t should forget about helping the airlines out. GREEDY Pr****s