Bob Crandall rips legacy airlines a new one

Starting off by telling American, et al to stop blaming OPEC for their losses because they lost money when oil was a lot cheaper, the former American CEO turns up the heat from there.

Crandall, certainly American’s best CEO every, then shoots down other straw men of the modern legacy airlines, such as calls for more consolidation.

His answer?

More regulation.

Three decades of deregulation have demonstrated that airlines have special characteristics incompatible with a completely unregulated environment. To put things bluntly, experience has established that market forces alone cannot and will not produce a satisfactory airline industry, which clearly needs some help to solve its pricing, cost and operating problems.

But not necessarily regulation just like that of the old days.

He calls for things like a national transportation plan.

But, he goes far beyond this, even.

Who could imagine a former American CEO doing things such as:
• Calling for a rejection of the hub-and-spoke system;
• Calling for all flights under 300 miles on rail corridors to be replaced by high-speed trains.

It’s a long but HUGELY interesting read.

That said, some of his ideas of labor costs have no chance in hell until airline CEOs have contracts expressly banning them from getting bonuses.

And, the old, regulated days meant higher prices and fewer people able to travel.