THE MORNING RANT: Awful Executives – United Airlines Edition; Airline Mergers Thwarted; NASA’s Electric Airplane Permanently Grounded

United Airlines’ CEO, Scott Kirby, runs a company that has over 900 airplanes flying thousands of flights per day, but he sometimes has to fly private because of his inability to operate a functioning airline.

He may not be capable of ensuring that he has staffing and crews to operate his airline, and he no longer really bothers with trying to get paying passengers to where they’ve paid to go, but at least he’s using his company to promote radical left-wing political activism, which I’ll get to in just a moment.

This past week, due to (another) total breakdown in the United Airlines system, Mr. Kirby felt the need to charter a private jet to get himself to his destination. What’s important to understand is that Scott Kirby is a very important person who absolutely had to get to his destination. By contrast, the stranded United passengers were just ordinary people trying to go on a dream vacation, or get to a job interview, or rush home to a dying loved one, or any of the other things that less important people do in their lives.

United CEO Apologizes for Flying Private Jet While the Airline Delayed, Canceled Thousands of Flights [NY Post – 7/01/2023]

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby apologized Friday for flying a private jet this week while passengers were left stranded by thousands of delays and cancelations this week.

Kirby called his decision to reportedly fly from an airport near Newark, New Jersey — where many of the delays and cancelations were occurring — to Denver on Wednesday “wrong” and “insensitive.”

“Taking a private jet was the wrong decision because it was insensitive to our customers who were waiting to get home,” he said in a statement, according to multiple outlets.

Like a true leader, Kirby tried to deflect blame for his airline’s meltdown by pointing the finger at the Federal Aviation Administration and at bad weather. But puzzlingly, the FAA and the weather picked on United more than other airlines.

The airline delayed and canceled more flights in the U.S. this week than any other carrier, which it blamed on bad weather and air traffic control shortages.

There were lots of headlines like these over the past few days, as the entire United system broke down:

“I just want to be home”: United Airlines Cancellations, Delays Continue to Multiply at Denver International Airport:
The airline canceled more than 700 flights and delayed nearly 1,400 in under a week [Denver Post – 6/30/2023]

Travelers Endure Another Day of Airport Agony. One Airline Has by Far the Most Cancellations [Denver Post – 6/29/2023]

It’s apparently the fault of the FAA and bad weather that Mr. Kirby’s airline is so broken that it doesn’t even know how to staff its operation. In fact, it can’t even figure out where its crews are.

United is offering triple pay to flight attendants who are scheduled off this weekend but agree to pick up extra flights, according to their union. The Association of Flight Attendants also said crews calling in for assignments have been put on hold for three hours or longer.

“The airline actually ‘lost’ crews in the system for days on end because there was such a significant breakdown in running the operation,” said Ken Diaz, president of the flight attendants’ group at United. He said the company scheduled summer flights “to the max” even knowing about air traffic control limits in the Northeast.

Does Mr. Kirby have the respect of his employees? Take a look at this picture from just a couple months ago of United pilots and ground crews greeting their CEO with their backs and posteriors. How inspiring!

Of course, Mr. Kirby is the product of a graduate program at an elite university. He has a Master of Science degree in Operations Research from George Washington University.

Scott Kirby earned $9.8 million dollars in 2022. The gate agents dealing with all the customers that United has left stranded in airports earn about $40,000 per year.

Since Mr. Kirby is an awful manager who is despised by United’s employees and its customers, just what does he have to offer? Naturally, he’s a globalist, left-wing activist pushing all of the usual globalist, left-wing nonsense.

He is promising that United will completely stop producing “greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, he is promising to put United Airlines out of business in service to the globalist, eco-communists.

To be fair, he seems to be doing a pretty good job destroying United, so his WEF puppet-masters should be pretty pleased with his performance to date.

And of course, he’s also all-in on the sexual part of ESG. He may not be properly focused on getting his customers to their destinations, but he is very focused on what they’re doing in their bedrooms.

'United Airlines Goes Woke': Tucker Carlson Blasts Airline's Push to Have Half of its 5,000 Flight Academy Students be Women or People of Color, as Former Air Traffic Controller Says It's Pandering to PC Culture [Daily Mail – 4/08/2021]

United announced on Tuesday that they will train 5,000 pilots this decade, including taking on applicants with no flying experience. Half of them will be women or people of color.

But Carlson said that United's executives were 'ideologues, suffering from an incurable brain disease called wokeness.' He added: 'Safety is no longer that airline's concern - identity politics is.'

The video of Tucker blasting United’s woke management can be seen at the link above.

The airline industry is now a cartel of quasi-governmental agencies that have been repeatedly bailed out by US taxpayers, and which have all the concern for their customers that you’d expect of such an entity. Quasi-governmental employees should not be making $10 million per year. In fact, no one who is failing at his job should be making $10 million per year.

The fact that left-wing CEOs such as Scott Kirby have such a privileged sense of self, and no respect for customers and working class employees, is typical of the entire globalist elite.

It’s a miracle that airplanes still fly reliably considering that the airlines are led by well-credentialed imbeciles who don’t have the leadership skills to even make sure that their facilities are staffed or that its software functions, and who clearly think of their mechanics, flight attendants, and other staff as nothing more than annoying expenses.

Airline Mergers and Alliances Are Meeting Headwinds

Brace yourself, because I am about to offer some praise for the Biden administration, without snark or sarcasm.

The Biden administration is seeking to block the Jet Blue / Spirit Airlines merger, and it had a recent victory in blocking American Airlines’ partnership with Jet Blue for being anti-competitive.

American and JetBlue Airlines Must End Alliance, US Judge Rules

American Airlines Group must end its alliance with JetBlue Airways Corp a federal judge ruled on Friday, agreeing with the U.S. Justice Department that the arrangement means higher prices for consumers and ordering the companies to part ways within 30 days.

I know that all the principled “free market” purists throughout Conservative, Inc. will be heartsick that Jet Blue and American cannot operate as a cartel to fix prices, but if I am a bad free-market conservative because I prefer competition over cartels, so be it.

The decision represented a victory for President Joe Biden's administration, which has taken a hard line on consolidation and tie-ups in the aviation industry. The Justice Department, six states including Massachusetts as well as the District of Columbia sued in 2021 to unwind the deal announced in 2020, calling the "Northeast Alliance" a "de facto merger" of the American and JetBlue Boston and New York operations that removes incentives for them to compete.

"These two powerful carriers act as one entity in the northeast, allocating markets between them and replacing full-throated competition with broad cooperation," the judge wrote.

Be it Monster Tech, or the airlines, or so many other industries, once they have merged into a non-competitive oligopoly, they become tools of the globalist left and an impediment to personal freedom.

I would advise Republicans to make anti-trust a priority going forward if they don’t want to see working class Americans start voting Democrat again.

NASA Abandons Electric Airplane Project

h/t to friend-of-the-blog George MF Washington who alerted me to this story:

NASA Kills Its Electric Plane’s Flight Plan, Citing Safety Concerns

NASA said today in a conference call with reporters that it would not ever be flying its experimental electric aircraft, the X-57, citing safety concerns that are insurmountable…

“Safety concerns.” Yes, a lithium-ion fire is pretty terrifying when it happens in an electric vehicle on a roadway. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, a lithium-ion fire means you’re in a race between burning to death or dying when your electric plane crashes into the ground.

The X-57 program will wind down without the aircraft ever going up into the sky.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has promised to make United a zero-emission airline. Was he counting on this technology?

So how much taxpayer money was wasted on NASA’s electric Flying Unicorn X-57 project? According to this article at Aviation International News (NASA Wraps Up X-57 Program Without a Flight) more than $87 million of taxpayer money was spent. But was it wasted?

Although the X-57 program failed to achieve a flight test, NASA said the project succeeded at its primary goal, which was to share what it learned with regulators and the aviation industry to help develop certification standards for electric aircraft.

Let me translate. For $87 million NASA has learned that the certification standard for electric airplanes is that they should not be certified for flight. Shocker.

Songs of the Season

Tomorrow is Independence Day! Let’s celebrate American independence with a little Revolutionary-era music: “Soldier’s Joy”

My grandpa played Jimmie Driftwood music for me when I was a little child, including this old tune. As I learned American history, the lyrics of this song fell into place.

Some Continental soldiers on the bivouac
Were playing stud poker in a mountain shack
But every vigilante threw down his hand
When the Captain of the Guard gave a sharp command.

{chorus}
Jimmy get your fiddle out and rosin up the bow
Johnny tune the banjo up we’re gonna have a show
Billy pass the jug around to Corporal McCoy
We’re gonna have a tune called Soldier’s Joy.

The girls in Boston are dancin' tonight
The gall-derned Redcoats are holding them tight
When we get there we will show them howBbut that ain't a doin' us no good now.

There goes General Washington
He's got his horse in a sweeping run
The barefooted boys are a beggin' to fight, and
We're gonna cross the Delaware River tonight.

Old Burgoyne in the wilderness
Got his army in an awful mess
The farmers got mad at the British and Huns, and
Captured ten thousand son of a guns.

John Paul Jones in an old tin can
Scoured the ocean like a fightin' man
The British said Paul are you ready to strike, and
Paul said I'm just beginnin' to fight.

General Washington and Rochambeau
Drinkin' their wine in the campfire's glow
Big Dan Morgan came a gallopin' in,
Said we got Cornwallis in the old Cowpens.

Wake up buddy have you heard the news
Grandma Britain got an awful bruise
The Redcoats cried and cursed Yorktown,
While the band played The World's Turned Upside Down.

“Soldier’s Joy” (Jimmie Driftwood)

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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