Where I work, when I first joined it was an abysymal place to work , morale was shattered after Lorenzo's
trip through Bankruptcy court and overnight abrogation of all union contracts, with pilots being told to like it or lump it, hundreds went out on strike, some to return after many years, many never did and were replaced by opportunists. scabs what ever you want to call them.
Most excess cash flow was redirected back into Lorenzo's pockets, or further wasted by his disastrous attempt to acquire Eastern, which if it had been done correctly and managed well would have resulted in a formidable airline. The only tactic's he knew however were slash and burn, unfortunately their mechanics tried to face him down and lost.
So, after destroying thousands more livelihoods he went back to
his 'running' of our airline in which he had no interest, a creature of the 80's and fan of the leveraged buyout <the movie 'Wall Street' was largely based on him and his croney Michael Milken>
We limped along through another bankruptcy, our actual operation was embarassing. I was a 727 Engineer at the time and spent most of my preflight working out the procedures, and legality of the copious amount of MELS. 70% of the aircraft I flew had at least one Generator a fuel tank guage and a pack fan
inoperative as well as numerous other defects.
A couple of incidents come to mind, arriving at the gate in the late
80's In July in Houston I was the first to board the aircraft and walked into an absolute oven the cabin temperature was over 150
degrees although unusually the APU was operative, both pack fans were inoperative allowing pack use only once airborne,
Ater requesting that preconditioned air be connected I was told there were no servicable A/C carts available . That was easy to believe, amazingly the Captain <one of our heroic strike breakers> accepted the aircraft in that condition and we set off to
Los-Angeles, I do remember never being in that hot an aircraft before or after, and that the cabin temp guage went off the upper limits of its range.
It took us two thirds of the flight to cool the cabin down, crew and passengers were in a miserable state, I certainly would have got off if I had a choice.
In the other incident the Aircraft we were given that day had one generator inoperative <and had been so for three weeks> in the 727 of course the APU cannot be used in flight eliminating that as an electrical back-up.
Also for all its complexity the electrical system was the the aircrafts big weakness, requiring significant
and immediate manual downloads with the loss of one generator
and massive downloads with the loss of two.
The inevitable happened of course and halfway to our destination
we lost a second generator, we were fortunate in that we had a severe clear day all the way to our destination and were able to
continue and land.
My only constant thoughts at the time were to get some right seat experience and get the hell out. After four years in the rear seat I
upgraded to First Officer on the 727, this was certainly a lot better
at least I was flying again and I loved that aircraft, it was a real thrill to fly, and best of all that was all I had to do, the Engineer doing 90% of the work.
I slowly accumulated the experience I needed to move on, remarkably though the airline started a slow but gradual improvement itself, mainly due to new, competent management,
aditionally in large part though, due to the sacrifices of the Employees. In fact things improved so much that I shelved my plan to go elsewhere, turning down an opportunity to work for an Airline I had pursued aggressively.
New aircraft started to arrive and I started to move up the seniority list, after another three years in the right seat of the 727,
I switched to the MD80 for better seniority for three more, then moved to the 757, and the 767 as they arrived, which i'm flying now.
In July of 2001 I was awarded a captains seat on the 737, finally
after fourteen years I was giong to upgrade, as there had been no expansion, numerous furloughs and minimal expansion this was how long it took, things really seemed to be going well.
I was asleep in my morning nap in Madrid on September 11th 2001
when the phone rang, the Captain told me of the incredible news
and I turned the TV on in time to see the second aircraft hit.
Over the next few days stuck in Madrid we tried to absorb the second shock of massive imminent furloughs, of course that long awaited Captains training class was immediately cancelled.
All very depressing, but on the other side of the coin I was senior enough to not be too adversely affected, and was able to stay on
the 76 albeit further down the list.
Probably just as damaging to myself and my peers was our signing off on a recent contract that, although increased salaries significantly, also allowed management to bring in unlimited numbers of regional jets, although I did not vote personally for the contract
the large number of strikebreakers still in the airline swung the vote in their particular base to an overall approval and it was voted in.
Despite managements assurances to the contrary they immediately started to replace a sizable portion of our flying with these aircraft, drastically reducing our upward progress as mainline aircraft went to the desert.
So good old days? I don't know, I come from an entirely civilian background and was fortunate enough to be hired by a major airline at 24 years old although I did work very hard to do that
there was never much merriment in the old days here but as time moved on and we moved into this politically correct world, contrary to many other peoples experiences our 'workplace improved dramatically' with our arlines improving operation.
Without being insensitive to our extremely unfortunate pilots currently on furlough, morale is on the upswing again as there does appear to be light at the end of the tunnel and we are one of the best managed American Airlines.
I still make a good living I hope that left seat comes back before too long, but I enjoy flying the 767 very much and have seen a good portion of the world in it, flying as far south as Rio De Janeiro
west to Tokyo and East to Rome, so its always interesting, although very tiring to do year after year, the occasional 757 domestic trip is a welcome break.
Having just turned 40 I have a few years left if my health holds up
to upgrade, and I hope they don't extend the retirement age.
I miss the older aircraft as well and they were more exciting and at least different in many ways. But I wouldn't want to go back to them now