Delta Airline's Tense Relationship with Its Employees

4. How did the deregulation of the airline industry in the late 1970s influence labor relations at Magic Carpet Air?

Another reason the airlines’ employees disagree about adding seasonal workers is because Southwest is also in another contract negotiation that may mean freezing pay scales to prevent company lay-offs. It seems unfair to add more employees who will also be looking for a piece of the monetary pie. These labor relations issues are new to Southwest, and for the first time the company’s problems, and not their great customer service, are putting them in the spotlight. To overcome this, the company will need to tread gently and find ways to successfully negotiate with their unions (Maher, 2014).

Delta Airlines is the largest airline carrier on the Atlantic Coast. In terms of scheduled passengers carried they were world’s largest airline with 277.6 billion in 2013. Also the second largest

In 2003, Don Carty, a chairman and the chief operating officer of American Airlines resigned to avoid the company from entering bankruptcy (Wong, 2003). Prior to his resignation, Carty spent 12 hours with three of the union’s representatives to discuss new contracts. These new contracts included five instead of six year contracts and a new cash incentive plan (Wong, 2003). The unions he negotiated with were the Allied Pilots Association, transport Workers Union, and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (Wong, 2003). In the provided video, Don Carty addresses two challenges he believes is driving the airline industry. The first challenge of being able to find an accepted price that both the consumers and the suppliers can agree on as fair or at a level that brings in profitable traffic to the business. The second challenge, relating to the air traffic industry, in finding a better way to conduct labor relations in the airline industry without the help of American government agencies.

Delta’s Top Managerial needs to implement a strategy that will help eliminating the weaknesses of the company to improve its overall performance or the company will simply decide to continue its current operations without making no changes. If it decides to proceed to no change, then it will have chosen a stability strategy that is the most

In 2008, the senior management team at Continental Airlines, commanded by Lawrence Kellner, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, convened a special meeting to discuss the firm’s latest quarterly financial results. A bleak situation lay before them. Continental had incurred an operating loss of $71 million dollars—its second consecutive quarterly earnings decline that year. Likewise, passenger volume was significantly down, dropping by nearly 5 percent from the prior year’s quarter. Continental’s senior management needed to act swiftly to reverse this trend and return to profitability.

A “first come first serve” basis seating system gives the airline a competitive advantage regarding the efficiency of pre-boarding and boarding procedures. This way complications arising in seating are eliminated which allows for quicker departure time. Low-employee turnover has given Southwest the competitive advantage of allowing employees to build a relationship with passengers who fly frequently and saving costs of training programs. In addition, low-employee turnover has given Southwest the competitive advantage of securing a sense of trust with their employees, which increases work productivity by their employees wanting to work harder to the best of their ability and focusing on the shared sense of commitment Southwest enforces in its policy. This allows employees to enhance the overall operation by being able to share responsibilities and functions among one another, giving Southwest the competitive advantage of their employees being multi-functional, which lowers the cost which arises from having to employ people to undertake specific operations. The rapid rewards program gives Southwest the competitive advantage of giving their customers a fueled incentive to continue to fly with Southwest to receive free tickets and flights, which allows

This report provides an examinaion of the current structure, performance, stragergy and management of Delta Airlines, along with an industry analysis of the airline industry. The report uses current and past financial and statistical data for the company along with other up to date material to determine Delta's current market position and future potential.

Southwest Airlines represents a rather unique organizational force that has driven the company to success since its inception in 1971. One of the most unique features about the organizational structure is that it is largely decentralized and employees are openly welcomed to express their opinions on a wide range of organizational issues. However, despite the "hands off" management strategy, the company consistently ranks as one of the top airlines in regards to customer complaints; in 2008, for example, the company received 0.25 complaints on average for every one hundred thousand passengers who used the aviation services (Triangle Business Journal, 2009). This analysis will look at some of the organizational factors that have contributed to the success of Southwest Airlines over the course of the last few decades.

In this paper Learning Team A will explain how Delta Air Lines (Delta) has been affected by the economy, giving details about the positive and negative externalities as well as the shifts in price in elasticity of supply and demand. We will discuss how quantity demanded and quantity supplied has changed due to price changes and technology innovations. We will discuss how government regulations create surplus or shortage of airline flights.

From the humble financial portfolio as a crop dusting outfit in the mid twentieth century, to the multi-billion dollar portfolio of a major airline in the twenty first century, Delta Air Lines has risen as a successful business. The airline industry is directly affected by outside economic conditions and is also cyclical in nature. These factors make it very difficult for airlines to make predictions to stay financially afloat. Delta has ridden the bumpy path of the last twenty years and managed to survive. In the past twenty years there has been many events that

In the first year of operation, Southwest was experiencing cash flow problems. While other companies may have begun layoffs, the President of Southwest went to the ground service people and discussed the issue with them. Together, the company set a goal of decreasing the turnaround time for at the airport gate from 55 to 15 minutes increasing the revenue capability of the airplane. Having found a way to increase revenue without losing any people, the ground service crew felt like a valuable part of the team and the President of Southwest did lay anyone off. (Smith, 2004) In the second instance of potential layoffs, revenue passengers became scarcer in the wake of September 11, 2001. To help the company through the crisis, Southwest asked employees to take a pay cut instead of having to

The Airline industry has experienced continual problems with rising costs with both fuel and maintenance which has caused them to increase their fees to the consumers to pay for those rising costs. This paper will help explain what an airline such as Delta does to help alleviate such costs without forcing its consumers to flip the bill through high fees that consist of tickets, baggage fees and food. The costs of doing business in aviation today have spiraled out of control making it very expensive for both airlines and the

As with all airlines, Delta’s recent performance has been significantly impacted by industry shifts and external events. Terrorist attacks and escalating costs have significantly impacted Delta’s profitability in recent history (Rivkin 4). The company has also been losing valuable market share to the low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines throughout the southeast and specifically in the lucrative Florida market (Rivkin 8). JetBlue also began encroaching on key Delta routes, and this seems only likely to increase (Rivkin 9). Despite this, Delta has still performed better than any other legacy carrier (Rivkin 8). Still, recent history has brought several changes to this legacy carrier, and the company has turned its attention towards new competitive strategies.

In the last decade, Continental Airlines has had a spotty track record. The airline twice filed for bankruptcy, realized diminished performance culminating in a $613 million loss in 1994, and was ranked dead last in industry indicators such as on-time performance among the major carriers. During these years, employees at Continental had undergone several series of layoffs and withstood both wage cuts and delayed wage increases in an effort to slash Continental’s costs. The result of these efforts was a demoralized workforce and a corporate reputation that put Continental near the top of Fortune’s list of “least admired” companies.