Crain’s Chicago Business: Tilton’s Troubles
Crain’s has this piece about United’s current cash flow problems. In the piece, the author (John Pletz) states what is now common knowledge:
That’s far from the flight path Mr. Tilton, 61, envisioned when the longtime oil industry executive took charge of a struggling United in 2002. He expected to purge excess costs in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, then initiate a badly needed airline industry consolidation with a sale or merger that would send him into retirement with a handsome payday.
“That was Glenn’s plan — to consolidate,” says Mo Garfinkle, CEO of Virginia-based GCW Consulting LLC, who has advised Mr. Tilton and United. “The game plan now is to survive.”
So, this begs the question: How well is United now positioned to survive?
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United Retirees, Founder’s Daughter Recall Good Times
by Wayne Heilman
The Colorado Springs Gazette
When William “Pat” Patterson retired as chief executive of United Airlines in 1966, he declined a multimillion-dollar “golden parachute” payment and instead took his pension like any other employee, his daughter told United retirees in Colorado Springs last week.
“He told me that ‘I am going to take exactly my share because I can’t take millions when I signed the papers’” creating United’s pension plan, said Patricia Patterson Dudley, daughter of the late founder and longtime chief executive. “He never referred to the people who worked at United as employees. He called them his United family. ”
That atmosphere disappeared from the airline industry more than a generation ago.
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