Newt, you don't know the half of it. The reason they need a bail-out? Two words, my friend: stock buybacks.

Back in '16, good ol' AA was ~$20 BILLION in debt. Yes, their DEBT was larger than the GDP of some nations. Bad situation, right? What to do, what to do -- HEY! I got it! Let's spend NINE FUCKING BILLION on stock buybacks. In doing so, they turned $5b in reserve cash into $550 million. Trump himself couldn't have fucked this up worse if he tried.

It gets worse. Here, I will quote from Forbes:

"The numbers boggle the mind. American Airlines spent nearly three times its current value on stock buybacks over the last six years."

It gets even worse from there.

Over the last ten years, AA spent ~$13b on stock buybacks. You know what their free cash flow was over the same 10-year period?

-$7,935 million.

That's not a typo. Their free cash flow, unique among all major airlines, is NEGATIVE. The number on their -negative- cash flow is greater than the -positive- cash flows of Jet Blue and Alaska combined.

Guess where that money went?

Shareholders? Nope.
Employees? Nope.
Improvements to the business as a whole? Nuh-uh.

If you guessed "The CEO's pocket", you win a $4 Snickers bar. If you also suspect that any bailout will end up in the same place, I'm throwing in a free Baby Ruth or an Abbazabba (your choice).

That's right: your tax-paying American ass is going to bail out these cocksuckers not to save jobs -- no fucking chance in Hell that's going to happen -- but to make Doug fucking Parker, an asshole of utterly legendary proportions who made $11.5 MILLION in 2019 thanks to those buybacks, even fucking richer.

There's not enough Prep-H in the world to compensate for that level of ass-fucking. And you WILL smile when you're getting raped, otherwise it's getting stuffed in your mouth afterwards.

(BTW: when they started this financial cocksuckery, AA was ~$60 a share. On Friday, it closed just below $13. Dough Parker still made money. The funds, including pension funds, who invested in AA @ $60? Not so much.)

Hopefully banned from American Airlines and it's affiliates for life.
*promote excluding those who think responsibility, rules, and laws don't apply to them.
Bye Felicia.

this feels much like what the airline industry is doing; recently I bought an American airline ticket or so I thought... the ticket I thought I was buying had a ton of ridiculous restrictions so I ended up paying another 30$ to be able to pick my seat, not get on the plane last, be able to use the overhead bin, ... and from there, they had charges for the premium seats which 5 years ago were first come first served

Your video, Why You Should NEVER Fly American Airlines, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Seth MacFarlane was supposed to be on American Airlines flight 11 on 9/11/2001. He missed the flight by 10 minutes because he was hung over and had the wrong flight time.

Having just watched the first Air Crash/Mayday episode again (American Airlines, Flight 1420) I'm rather glad to see that

They reported a study from MIT that found that the aircrews were more likely to fly into a thunderstorm at night, if they were running late, or if aircraft ahead had gone through the same thunderstorm. (Rhoda, D.A. and Pawlak, M.L., 1999).

Absurdity. So she was drunk and unruly and they land a plane to get her off.

Why not just let the attendants have tasers to "quiet" the problem passengers, and a roll of duct tape and some rope for them to wake up wearing?

No cell-phone pictures on an American Airlines commercial flight? Probably some bullshit rule associated with 911, the biggest clusterfuck of a coop of all time.

Back when airlines were more heavily regulated there was Rule 240: "an airline with a delayed or canceled flight had to transfer passengers to another carrier if the second carrier could get passengers to the destination more quickly than the original airline."

The rule is now obsolete, but most American airlines will still abide by it. While most airlines tend to keep this rule a secret, passengers who speak up (and sound like they know what they are talking about) can sometimes get reasonable compensation.

That said, most airlines today are shit and will do whatever they can to make an extra buck.
>> ^Sagemind:

Personally, I think overselling tickets should be cited as fraudulent.
If they offer a ticket for a 12 o'clock flight, and I purchase a ticket for a 12 o'clock flight, they better provide me with a 12 o'clock flight. That was the agreement and binding contract upon purchasing the ticket.
If I go to the store and buy a Sony TV and they give me a JVC, that's fraudulent, so how is this different? "Oh, sorry, we only had two Sony TVs but we sell four just in case, you my friend get the JVC, sorry, that's just our policy and the way we do business." (Bait and switch!)
I'm sure there is a lawsuit there waiting to be battled out. But everyone lets the airlines bully us because they need to fly - there fore the bully wins in the real world.
FUCK is the correct word when they fuck you over.

>>@bmacs27: marbles
Who flew planes into the WTC on 9/11? By the way, I read "Which Path to Persia".
Have you heard of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion?"



Haha, let me guess. You have a argument to make that the "Which Path to Persia" manual is fraudulent?

So is that 9/11 question troll bait or what? Who made all the abnormal amount of Wall Street put bets on American Airlines and United between Sept 6 and 7. And on American Sept 10 at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. Better yet, who sent US government made anthrax with hand written notes saying "Allah is great" to Congress men who were likely to oppose the Patriot Act?

Oh the alleged hijackers (courtesy of Paul Joseph Watson/Infowars.com):
Every single shred of evidence concerning the alleged 9/11 hijackers points to the fact that they were patsies controlled by informants working for the US government.
The US Special Operations Command’s Able Danger program identified the hijackers and their accomplices long before 9/11, but when the head of the program, Colonel Anthony Shaffer, tried to pass the information on to the 9/11 Commission, he was gagged and slandered and the vital information his team had passed on was ignored and buried.
Curt Weldon, Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, documented how the US government tracked the hijackers’ movements before 9/11.
Louai al-Sakka, the man who trained six of the hijackers, was a CIA informant. A number of the other alleged hijackers were trained at US air bases. In the months prior to 9/11, alleged hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi were renting rooms in a house owned and lived in by an FBI informant.
In a 2002 article entitled The Hijackers We Let Escape, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman documented how, “The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11.”
The fact that there were numerous Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists involved in the pre-planning stages of 9/11 is unsurprising given former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds’ testimony that Bin Laden was working for the US right up until the day of 9/11.

On the very morning of 9/11, the money man behind the alleged hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Indeed, even after 9/11, the so-called spiritual leader of the very hijackers who allegedly slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Anwar al-Awlaki, was himself invited to dine with Pentagon top brass mere months after the attack.

>> ^packo:

>> ^marinara:
that guys wife was held on 911

held?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#Death

For those of you who don't know Barbara Olson was on American Airlines Flight 77.

Olson was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 on her way to a taping of Politically Incorrect in Los Angeles, when it was flown into the Pentagon in the September 11 attacks.

Flight 77 was hijacked at 8:54. At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Olson called her husband. She reported that the flight had been hijacked, and the hijackers had knives and boxcutters.[3] She further indicated that the hijackers were not aware of her phone call, and that they had put all the passengers in the rear of the plane.[3] About a minute into the conversation, the call was cut off.[3]

Shortly after, Barbara reached her husband again. She reported that the "pilot" had announced that the flight had been hijacked, and asked her husband what she should tell the captain to do. Ted Olson asked for her location and she replied that the aircraft was then flying over houses. Another passenger told her they were traveling northeast. Ted Olson informed Barbara of the two previous hijackings and crashes. She did not display signs of panic at the time. At that point, Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

Politically Incorrect host Bill Maher left a panel seat vacant for a week following her death.

My friend's comments on the content itself:

I have never heard anyone be so full of shit before. Look at the NTSB site for their review of crashes. None of them are actually caused by 'co-pilot to afraid to speak up'. Most (almost 100%) are caused by parts failure or training error:

- using the aileron on an A320 like you would in a B767 . http://www.airdisaster.com/news/1004/26/news.shtml

- Birds flying in to the engine (Miracle on the Hudson)

- Entertainment system burning up (the new entertainment system they installed caught fire, smoldered, light the 'inflamable' fire protection on fire which burned so hot it melted the flight controls)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111

- Maintenance crew not putting an engine on right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191

- Shot down by russians:
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=09011983®=HL7442&airline=Korean+Air+Lines

Also, Korean Airlines hasn't had a crash since 1999. Also, throughout the whole of the 90s (where malcom says they were the most dangerous airline) had 6 crashes. Whereas Aeroflot had 13 crashes, I mean, American Airlines (the airline not all american airlines) had 6 crashes from 1990 to 2001.

So basically this guy is using the recent plane crashes to sell his damn book. What a douchebag.

Um.... thank you?

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Want me to blow your mind? Then tell it to whip out its penis, because I'm about to drop the logic, yo. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

Consider your mind fully serviced, guts everywhere, and brain testicles deflated.

Want me to blow your mind? Then tell it to whip out its penis, because I'm about to drop the logic, yo. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

Consider your mind fully serviced, guts everywhere, and brain testicles deflated.

Ah yeah
It's the fat joint right here
Here we...
This joint right here is dedicated to
Well, I'm not malicious
But all those whose words vicious
Talkin behind the back
This shit is wack
Here we go
You need to walk like a duck (walk like a duck)
Walk like a duck (walk like a duck)
You need to walk like a duck (walk like a duck)
Say what? (Like a muthafuckin duck!)
You need to walk like a duck (walk like a duck)
Walk like a duck (walk like a duck)
You need to walk like a duck (walk like a duck)
Yo Jorge, how do ducks walk?
Check it

Kurious was never one for ring around
The rosie, not Josey, but I mosey on down
To a meadow where the flowers stay wilted
So what I ain't hit as many skins as Wilt the Stilt did
It's like that, never labelled a wack
And yo, they choose behind my back to do the Duckville quack
My style is cool, sweet like a ???
But still (what?) you gossip like a bitch
Mental stimulation when I'm rollin with the rat pack
If you're frontin rock, get the doodoo out your knap sack
The fat track provided by the Beat' got you goin
'nuts kickin butts, underneath be when I'm flowin
I'm knowin, you frontin-ass ducks is gettin smeared
My crew rolls thick like a hillbilly's beard
Constipated Monkeys gettin to the point quick
Like my man Apache said: yo, get off (MY DICK!)

It's like that and - ah
Didn't go to Georgia, took the train to Alabama
On the midnight tip like Gladys Knight and the Pips
My sole intention bein to move the marrow in your hips
Family confusion's what motivates the rhymer
Got an aunt named Tom, uncle named Jemima
Kurious Jorge on the welfare line
Plus American Airline never prepared mine
Ears for the poppin, hands for the clappin
If I sense turbulence, commence to see the captain
Two strikes, your motion got a notion of funk
I must prescribe a mint (why?) cause your breath stunk
(Ill) I paid the bills, sent a check to my mama
If you try to wreck my mind, there's mad drama
I'ma deliver one worm for the hawk
Eliminatin quacks on the duck walk

I drop limes like you drop mescaline
Tabs on my tongue as I swung from the swing
And came up with that thing they call 'Walk Like a Duck'
Quite frankly don't give a fuck
Mama raised me humble, so I never ever label
Myself as the best, cause some of the rest got more flavor
But that's okay, beyond a shadow of a doubt
I got skills, I ain't conceited, but still might take you out
Half Puertorican, half Cuban, not Fidel
Castro, like an astro you know I excel
Time to sell mad units, scratchin on my pubics
Complicate confusion like a ?Nick Kubrick? on a Rubik
Who kicks the bubbles that allow the truth to surface?
I never will delete, so I don't defeat the purpose
Slapshot the gift like a hockey puck
Ha-ha, you fuckin duck