A Dave Carroll/ United Breaks Guitars Update: Song 3, March 2
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:
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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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