I’m not only proudly American, and proudly Union, I’m also an airline guy. So this bit of information from Jim Hightower intersects both of my worlds.
Hightower put together an article on his website called “Fixing American Airlines”. And I tend to agree with the man, on many, many things. He’s spot on here, as usual.
Anyone who’s paid attention to airline news has heard about American Airlines 757s losing rows of seats – they’ve literally come loose during flights. Scary as hell, right? I was just on an American 757 a few weeks ago, though we didn’t notice anything different… Anyway, American is going through their bankruptcy, and their CEO has said that not all maintenance needs to be done here – by US workers. It can be outsourced – you know, cheaper for the airlines.
So then the seats started coming loose. And… Well, let’s just see how Jim put it:
HA! Those in power want so much to slash costs – and send jobs overseas – that they will use anything to say American workers aren’t up to snuff. But in this case, those greedy executives at American Airlines were hoisted by their own petard.
Sounds like the greedy short-sighted outsourcers at American Airlines need to be outsourced, and those that truly care about the company need to take over. “Why?” you may ask. Because this is something people remember – for a long time. Don’t believe me? The Ford Edsel came out 52 years ago, but Ford still can’t shake the link between “Fords” and the “Edsel” being a lemon – and comparisons of “X is the new Ford Edsel” still continue to this day.
American had better come clean, or they won’t make it 50 years to even be made fun of!