And they think they deserve ANOTHER multi billion dollar handout/bailout from taxpayers, another socialist handout for free, no strings attached at all, but won't commit to upgrading service or even keeping employees employed (considering their competence level, that's reasonable, a monkey on meth would do better).

Same story at United. Fly Southwest.

If one of these customer service crews was just found at the ticketing desk torn limb from limb by hand, customer service would improve instantly. A carry on bag full of sodas makes a great weapon, and drawing and quartering sends one hell of a message....just saying.

Just a side note, while airports screech at you to social distance every thirty seconds, airplanes are flying at capacity with zero possibility of any social distancing, instead you're forced to have physical contact with other passengers. Don't fly during pandemics unless it's absolutely necessary.

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.)

Oh yes, I remember last times, 2001 and 2008-9. They've used 96% of cash flow to buy back stock, now they want another. Oddly enough, it's the free market believers that insist they should get more free money instead of letting the market decide, and that's why our airline industry is one of the worst, most despised industries where customer service is non existent. Why waste time serving customers when the government will give you more money for nothing? Not for stocks, cash, promises to keep employees, promises to upgrade aging fleets, just free money. It was a near guarantee they wouldn't improve anything, but CEO compensation would skyrocket....and that's what happened.

I would be ok with bailouts if there were stipulations freezing ANY buybacks or bonuses, requiring improvements in service and planes, and ownership of the companies equal to the bailout amount accepted as collateral that transfers permanently if they don't meet all the stipulations or miss any payments on the loan, no handout. Not going to happen, so neither should a third bailout in under 20 years. Let them fail, service will improve.

Personally I don't believe in bailouts. If the business was screwing up badly enough to be in a position to collapse if there is a dip in the economy, they deserve to fail.

*travel

This is one of the reasons why I haven't flown since rhe summer of 1993.

Adding video to channels (Travel) - requested by ant.

Let AA die already. Unlike many other countries, there's no monopoly/"too big to fail" companies in the aviation industry in America afaik. It's not that hard to let other companies to absorb AA's passenger capacity, especially in 2020. The employees are "arguably" worth the tax payer support through unemployment/Covid benefits to carry them over, but that's it. All these tax money that goes to direct to the company (i.e. the executives/upper management) instead of to the employees (none-stock holding kind) is always bad policy (read: corruption).

Isn't the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace doing anything about this? Or does it keep it's focus on union busting and promoting the gig economy?