A Dave Carroll/ United Breaks Guitars Update: Song 3, SOON
We love Dave Carroll, the executive-embarrassing, guitar-grieving Canadian arts legend and social media stick-in-the-eye to United Airlines. Dave, in such a fun and good-natured way, has so far delivered 2 of 3 well-aimed rocks between the eyes of the past-its-prime corporate Goliath. His stones, of course, would be United Breaks Guitars Songs 1 and 2, which have together garnered almost 8 1/2 million views on youTube thus far. We haven’t caught up with Dave in a while, so an update is definitely in order.
See, here’s the thing about Dave: There is just so much witty irony swirling around every part of his fractured relationship with United Airlines. Ah, yes … witty irony! let’s start there:
• In the online world, the guy who softened up United Airlines for Dave — Dr. Jeremy Cooperstock — is also a principled Canadian with over 10 years of telling the embarrassing truth about United in his own venue. (Apparently, when these guys are tooling around the northland on Air Canada, everything’s fine; but put them on a United flight and guitars get broken, fenders fall off the plane, stewardesses have geriatric seizures, etc.)
• Delivery of Song 3 of the UBG trilogy is set for release in 2-3 weeks’ time. Even if it’s a few days late, his on-time performance is no worse than United’s for baggage arrival. Look for a bluegrass flavor in Song 3. (By the way, there was a lot of bluegrass in Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy. Coincidence? I think not.)
• Speaking of bags, United was not content to break Dave’s guitar. Last October, on a different flight, they lost all his bags.
• Dave tweaked United so decisively that the only response the airline’s PR flaks could come up with was to say that the guitar-busting event “struck a chord with us,” which is a lazy bit of non-apologetic lameness that they have repeated ad nauseum since then in every public response.
• Dave only ever wanted United to pay for fixing his guitar, that’s all — a small sum ($1200) that amounted to little more than cigarette money for John Tague. Now, with all of the resulting deals for concerts, albums, guitars, cases, t-shirts, iTunes, and media appearances, Dave and his employees (“Big Break Enterprises”) are all filthy RICH. Word is, he may still be a volunteer firefighter in Halifax, but he responds to scenes in a Taylor-designed, 12-string, bass-model Hummer. With spinners.
Finally, Dave appeared on ABC’s The View in January. Here’s the clip, in case you missed it:
Tale of the Tagues: An Airline Story, Part 2
[Read first » Tale of the Tagues: An Airline Story, Part 1]
After his first departure from ATA, John Tague and two partners started The Pointe Group, an airline consulting firm with presence in both New York and suburban Washington, D.C. Tague’s only two consulting engagements as an ex-ATA executive were short, almost simultaneous, and quite unusual. At the request of a west coast investment bank, he became the consulting CEO for two ailing regional airlines: Air South, based in Columbia, South Carolina and, a few months later, Vanguard Airlines, based in Kansas City, Missouri.
It wasn’t clear to industry observers at the time how a single CEO was going to simultaneously nurse back to health two struggling airlines that were located 850 miles apart. One analyst, George Hamlin of Global Aviation Systems in Washington, D.C., likened the airlines’ plight to “two drunks staggering down the street trying to hold each other up.”
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Tale of the Tagues: An Airline Story, Part 1
When John P. Tague was promoted by United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton to the post of President last month, it signaled an ironic rise in the career of an executive who may have been instrumental in the downward spirals of four failed airlines.
John Tague, born in 1961, is the son of Irving T. Tague, a memorable figure in U.S. aviation history who got his start as a Pan Am ramp worker in Alaska and was well-known later for leadership at three legendary U.S. carriers: Pan American, Hughes Airwest, and Midway Airlines.
Irving Tague worked his way up through the management ranks at Pan Am, eventually establishing himself as a master planner, scheduler, and economic analyst. While at Pan Am in the early 1970s, Tague’s skills as an operations manager were evident to principals from the aviation consulting firm of Simat, Helliesen, and Eichner (SH&E), who at the time also had billionaire businessman Howard Hughes as their client.
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Daley and Tilton: Broke and Broker
In his letter to the Chicago Tribune on August 7, Mark Warchol of Hickory Hills gets to the point concerning Mayor Daley’s $25 million gift to United Airlines: It is corporate welfare, pure and simple:
“While the City of Chicago has laid off employees and is forcing others to take days off without pay, it’s disturbing to see that Mayor Daley is doling out $25 million dollars in corporate welfare to United Airlines.
“I think it’s great that United Airlines wants to move from Elk Grove Township to the Willis Tower.
“I would like to move into a larger space myself, but I know that when and if I do move, it will be money out of my pocket; not at the taxpayers’ expense.
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The Strategic and the Myopic
While United applies itself to the important problem of insufficient employee load factor on Chicago-area expressways, the number three airline in Denver (Southwest) is spending strategically to acquire its number two competitor (Frontier) and move within single digits of United’s market share in that important western hub.
Southwest EVP Ron Ricks explains the anticipated “Southwest Effect” in Denver, including expected impacts on Frontier’s employees, in the company’s blog on last Friday:
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