News and notes from around the interweb:
- American Airlines reports that the employment agreement for their Chairman and CEO Doug Parker has been terminated at his request though this doesn’t change his role at this time. This seems like a symbolic gesture to earn goodwill from the airline’s employees following on unilateral offer of profit sharing he’s trying to demonstrate that the company values its employees and management doesn’t play by different rules.
Parker will no longer be contractually entitled to receive a set level of compensation and benefits, but he will continue to be the company’s chairman and CEO, the world’s largest airline by traffic said on Friday.
- How authors are gaming Amazon Unlimited payouts
- Priceline’s CEO resigned over a personal relationship with an employee of the company
- Carlson is selling its hotels to China’s HNA, the parent of Hainan Airlines and a number of other air and travel companies. This hasn’t been a big story for me because it’s not industry consolidation, it doesn’t eliminate a player on the board. So I’m thrilled to see this happen — since that means Club Carlson hotels aren’t being swallowed by another larger chain.
- The TSA Is Struggling to Fix Its Internal ‘Culture of Misconduct’
While Livingston is in good standing with the organization now, he was punished and had his pay docked two levels by superiors for reporting clear violations he saw while on the job. Livingston said that similar tactics and threats are used constantly by the TSA’s leadership.
- Reader Mark Orlowski has a Marketplace piece on staying connected while on the road
- 10 tips to financing your next vacation
What do you think is going on with Doug Parker? Does this mean the legacy USAir junkers I’m still flying thru Charlotte will be upgraded sooner, or are the rest of the fleet coming down to that level?
After flying LAX-MIA on a 777 without Wifi, when JetBlue had a cheaper flight into my home airport with TV and wifi, I’m thinking of jumping ship sooner than when they cut our miles to nothing.
The TSA is a government agency, and as such is full of corruption and waste. Employees are not disciplined or fired for not doing their jobs, or just doing them poorly. So there is a culture of mediocrity, and agencies need to continue hiring workers to continue the cycle. The only thing governments do very well is get bigger and consume more resources. They almost never decrease in size.
I’m hoping that this allows Club Carlson to expand its hotel footprint. I think that HNA owns some hotels, and the cash that HNA can invest should enable expansion and modernization. As someone with both Club Carlson credit cards, I’m very happy that they didn’t get snatched up by a larger chain.
Nothing to do with Doug Parker’s symbolic decision to tear up his employment contract (he’s basically no longer contractually entitled to severance benefits if he’s ousted, which isn’t very likely), but it does seem likely that the “old junkers” you’re flying on in CLT will be phased out soon. AA is taking delivery of a new aircraft every four days (which seems astonishing to me), and they’re retiring more aircraft than they get. They already have the youngest fleet of the legacy carriers, and it’s obviously getting younger every day.
I was hoping that this meant the last of the big three liars was going to fade into the sunset. Alas, not the case. Too bad!