411A Why don't you wake up and smell the coffee instead, your ignorance is pathetic.
The World’s airlines lost $12 Billion (U.S.) last year. This is how the people who's arses you have so firmly attached to your nose, demonstrate the depth of their suffering.
"Oh poor me chief airline executive!!, why do my employees always ask for more, can't they see my suffering!!"
'Conquerors of the Skies' don't fly economy
Top male airline executives party in lap of luxury
May. 16, 2002. 12:03 PM
By Susan Pigg
Business Reporter
Some of the most beleaguered chief executives in the world start converging on an exclusive Pennsylvania resort today - many by private jet - to play golf, ride horses and raise countless glasses of single-malt Scotch to brighter skies ahead.
The opulent annual gathering of this old boys club, composed of more than 125 top aviation and aerospace executives from around the world, may appear unseemly given that battered airlines lost a combined $12 billion (U.S.) globally last year - more than they've made in profits in their entire history.
But old habits die hard. And the Conquistadores del Cielo - Conquerors of the Skies - has too rich a history to let little details like appearances ground a good time.
"It's a chance to exchange ideas, but it's very social," said one U.S. airline industry executive lucky enough to have made the guest list for the gathering, which was held last year on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. "The toughest decision you have each day is: Am I going to go sail fishing or scuba diving, am I going to play golf or am I going to go shoot trap or go horse-back riding or jeep riding?
"You're talking aviation all the time. And it's with some of the legends, the kingpins, of the industry. I've told friends of mine, `If you get invited, do not miss it.'"
Few Canadians make the cut. It seems that no Canadian Airlines chief executive was ever invited before the carrier was taken over by Air Canada. Even Max Ward didn't make the list.
Canadian Don Carty is a regular, but that's because he's chairman and chief executive of the world's biggest carrier, American Airlines. Air Canada president Robert Milton has attended in the past and is invited to this year's gathering at the posh Nemacolin Woodlands Resort and Spa in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania.
The surroundings speak volumes. Nemacolin has its own 1,188-metre private airstrip, two PGA-championship-rated golf courses, a 32,000-square-foot spa facility, equestrian centre with 30 horses, regulation polo grounds, shooting academy and the $2 million Paradise Pool with a swim-up bar. Room rates range from almost $300 to $3,000 (U.S.) per night.
"You talk about heavy metal flying in - the Global Express, BBJs (Boeing Business Jets) - if you're an aviation buff, it's awesome," just watching attendees arrive and depart, said the industry executive, who spoke on condition that his name not be used.
In fact, virtually no one talks publicly about the gathering, for fear they'll raise the ire of fellow members - or, more importantly, send up a red flag to governments fearful about even the appearance of collusion.
"I saw no big business deals coming down. There very well could have been," said the industry insider. "But there was some serious cigar smoking, drinking and poker playing well into the evening.
"It's like when men go out for a drunken night. You're sworn to secrecy. From what I saw there, the female gender is not acceptable."
The Conquistadores del Cielo originated in the late 1930s. That's when legendary aviation pioneers Jack Frye, president of then Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA), aircraft manufacturer Donald Douglas, of Douglas Aircraft Co., and William E. Boeing, who founded the aircraft manufacturing company that's now synonymous with air travel, decided that the growing industry needed a club of sorts.
In many ways, the Conquistadores has been a barometer of the hurly burly airline industry. Well-respected stalwarts such as Juan Trippe, the founder of Pan American Airways, the United States' first international airline, have been members. One of its more colourful members is brash lawyer Herb Kelleher - renowned for his love of cigarettes and Wild Turkey - who has moved up through the ranks as the highly profitable company he started more than 30 years ago, Southwest Airlines, grew in stature.
And every year there are the "newcomers'' - the guys who've risen to the top in an industry prone to cyclical ups and downs, such as David Neeleman, the founder of New York-based JetBlue, who is a Morman who doesn't drink coffee, let alone scotch.
"The guys who started it were swashbuckling kind of people," said another airline executive who's been to many gatherings over the years. "Today everything is quite moderate by the standard of the old days."
The Conquistadores gather twice a year. Only members converge on a Wyoming dude ranch each fall for a few days to hunt, fish, golf "and tell lies," said the airline veteran.
Each spring, the Conquistadores gather at a different resort and each member is allowed to bring a guest or two - invitations that are highly coveted in the industry, and hard proof that your career has taken off.
"You meet a lot of people," Continental Airlines chief executive officer Gordon Bethune told Fortune magazine last year of the annual pilgrimage to the A-Bar-A Ranch in Wyoming. "You fly-fish, play tennis. They do rodeos, ride horses, drink too much, drink too much, ride horses, drink too much. Did I mention drinking?"
There are believed to be just 125 to 165 Conquistadores in the world - some of them now retired from the day-to-day business - all of them chosen by a board of fellow members "as they achieve levels of leadership."
That could prove problematic for the old boys club over the next few decades, as the few women in senior management at major airlines around the world move to the top.
Just last year, Colleen Barrett became the highest-ranking female in the U.S. airline industry when Kelleher stepped down and she took over as president of Southwest.
"I was asked by a female reporter if I'd crash the Conquistadores," Barrett told a Knight-Ridder reporter at the time. "It might be fun and would make a lot of headlines. But I can't think of anything more boring."
Keep playing that violin while the city burns 411A....
