PERCEPTION IS NOT ALWAYS REALITY

REGIONAL JETS CLOG SKIES
DELTA CONNECTION NUMBERS DISMAL

For many years I have enjoyed cooking for people, having dinner parties and inviting close friends to share in a good meal and pleasant conversation. After each meal though, a disturbing trend had developed; I was missing dinnerware after each soiree. I couldn’t figure it out. Was one of my close friends a kleptomaniac? Why would he or she need knives and forks or even plates? The whole thing was driving me crazy and it went on for years.

One evening after such an event the truth was revealed to me. As I was cleaning up, a friend of mine walked into the kitchen, rinsed off his plate and opened the dishwasher and carefully placed it inside. I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he always tries to help out after a big meal.

You see, I’m old school, I never use a dishwasher, hadn’t even ever turned it on or looked inside it. All those years, my friend had been filling up my dishwasher while I would use the sink. I thought there was a thief among my friends and all it turned out to be was a clean freak with a conscience. What a laugh we had, not to mention having to deal with some crusty old dinnerware loitering in my dishwasher.

Perception is not always reality.

There was a perception a few years ago that lots of money could be made by allowing regional jetliners and connection partners to take over a large bulk of our operation. And why not? Their employees were younger, less paid and could seemingly provide our customers with a leaner, quicker and more complete service than we could, being a larger more cumbersome legacy carrier. Their pilots starting out, made less than our ramp personnel, and were eager to take on the challenge. We even had training seminars showing us the inevitability of the process going forward. There were drawings depicting smaller planes ‘biting’ larger planes’ tails. The classes were sophomoric but, sadly, effective and we all bought into it.

Well, now that time has passed by and the process has played out, the reality of the situation is not what we wanted or expected. Most legacy carriers copied each other in the race to lower costs and save money. Larger aircraft were retired and smaller regional jets filled the void causing unintended consequences. Consequences that should have been anticipated and planned for but were conveniently ignored.

Regional jets carry fewer passengers and frequencies between cities were increased to move the same amount of passengers previously hauled by larger, legacy carriers. The skies became crowded and delays increased dramatically. These delays exponentially increased our misconnected passengers and bags, causing huge cost overruns, which because of lousy agreements between Delta and the connection carriers, were largely borne by Delta.

This grand scheme to save money by out-sourcing our product to cheaper connection partners has been a dismal failure with consequences that should have been anticipated by our leaders. The rush to save money in the short term has had devastating effects long term in our ability to provide a quality product to our customer. Our numbers are out of control because we have had little or no control over the product of our regional partners.

These mistakes were made by short-sited leaders chasing the almighty dollar for stockholders, investors, benefactors, and themselves. We, as employees, were ignored and left out of the equation. Passengers’ comfort and concerns were also ignored.

The perception was that our leaders knew what they were doing, had vision and a grand plan for our future. The reality is that they didn’t. The damage has been done and the consequences are permanent, both for us and the traveling public.

We need to protect ourselves from these roving bands of CEO’s and money hungry Boards’ of Directors by unionizing now. Who’s to know what new scheme they have cooked up for us in the future?

Let’s not blindly trust our new leadership team by thinking that they finally have it all figured out. We hope they do, but who’s to know? Let’s not let our perception of their skills get in the way of the reality of our situation. We should protect what we have and increase the potential of what we might gain by signing those A-cards today.