ALAS, UNITED

     United Airlines announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday, December 9, 2002. That day in airline history will surely be bookmarked as the definitive moment that changed everything in American commercial aviation.
     But, as the slippery financial slope accelerated the parent airline into uncharted territory for the first time in 75 years, United Worldwide Cargo let it be known that for its part from now and into the future, (and beyond), it’s business as usual.
     UAL Cargo Vice-President Roger Gibson told Air Cargo News:
     “Cargo has been a solid performer. During the second quarter we assumed control of operations at a dozen additional cargo transfer facilities in North America to insure our standard of service that our customers demand. While revenue went up during the quarter, by 6% we were especially pleased just recently to score a record 8.1 million ton mile day, our best since 9/11.
     “We understand the challenge our cargo product and airline faces ahead. Yet cargo reliability has never been higher. While there is always room for us to do better in air cargo, we will maintain our service delivery and full product lines as we look for ways to better serve our customers and service partners.”
     UAL Cargo serves 134 destinations in 34 countries with 1,000 flights daily. More information at www.unitedcargo.com.

     United Airline’s failure in getting federal loan guarantees puts to rest once and for all the employee stock option plan ESOP as a way to do airline business. United stock, which once had been the most vaunted in the industry, has just been pounded into dust.
     Eighty thousand people at an airline once owned by Boeing, with a record of accomplishment dating back to the beginnings of recorded commercial aviation, has been gut-punched, first by September 11, 2001 and now by three people on a Washington panel called the Transportation Stabilization Board (TBS).
     The green eye shades and gartered sleeves of some banker-thinking mentalities have put what they believe or have been told is United’s ability to repay, above the future of the largest, employee-owned airline in history, a great transportation company, developed during more than 75 years of service to America and the world.
     “It’s a free market,” is what will be said. “United’s business plan was no good,” is what is already in the news, as quoted from some sources.
     We kept thinking what if Lee Iacocca had to go before these guys when he was trying to save Chrysler? At what point do we finally say that we cannot allow a company to go down?
     Couldn’t these men use their money to work change at United?
     Unlike other failures this year, United apparently was not doing business in the manner of, say Enron or other companies, which figured out a way to create and boost their stock market value with smoke and mirrors.
     Maybe the business plan is/was flawed.
     But, everything needs to be questioned including the politics of why United has been cut loose by the U.S. Government at a time of its maximum peril. What you hear and read right now must be viewed in historical perspective. That means, perhaps some time down the road, what really happened to United will turn out to be quite different than what we are told or believe we know, right now.
     When Pan Am had a B747 blown from the sky above Lockerbie, the flow of passengers which kept the carrier in business dried up, and before long Pan Am was gone. There was no offer of aid or bailouts to the carrier.
     Likewise the travail of carriers worldwide post 9/11 continues.
     When you think about it, in light of 9/11, Pan Am probably should have been offered what is now considered ‘new normal’ for businesses that are victims of terrorists.
     United Airline’s biggest fault after having flown so high, wide and handsome for three quarters of a century is that right now in spite of everything, and because of forces beyond control, she has come up just a little short of land.
     In the overall scheme of things, what United wanted—$1.8 billion, is chump-change next to the bigger dream of what this airline is all about.
     Maybe because it was never done before, no one really knew how to manage an ESOP airline.
     Surely, since everybody who worked at UAL owned a piece of the company, they should have been given some strong medicine.
     But at the very least, United deserves better from these bankers than the rude, even strangely cruel rebuff to their attempts at survival.
     Other carriers, it should be noted, mounted an effort to influence the decision to not support the United plan.
     Continental Airlines CEO Gordon Bethune was quoted in the NY Times:
     “I’m glad we won’t have the federal government subsidizing this competition.”
     Bethune, who writes books about himself should shut up already.
     Somebody once said that there is no such thing as a good debt or a bad mother.
     It is not too much, as an American born and raised on aviation in the 20th Century, to think of United Airlines as mother to us all.
     A Rhapsody In Blue is sent back to United.