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Cultures Clash at Merging Airlines
US Airways and America West jets prepare to take off from the Phoenix airport last week. The airlines announced a plan to merge.
(By Matt York -- Associated Press)
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"That touchy-feely culture only goes so far," said Roach, who left the company in 1984 but has followed it closely as a San Francisco-based airline industry consultant.
Roach said many employees turned against the man chosen to lead America West out of Chapter 11, William A. Franke.
"Bill Franke was -- is -- very much a numbers-MBA kind of guy," Roach said. "And the employees grew to loathe him. This is not a dump on Bill Franke. He had a very difficult situation, and he saved them."
America West emerged from Chapter 11 in August 1994 after a partnership, which included Continental Airlines, invested $214.9 million in the company.
A month later, America West announced that its flight attendants had voted to be represented by the Association of Flight Attendants. The pilots, mechanics and others employee groups also turned to unions.
By the late 1990s, the employees often were at odds with management. And passengers noticed a deterioration in service.
"They had a lot of operational problems," S&P's Synder said. "I remember flying them in the summer of 2000. You'd get to the airport and you'd look at the monitor and you'd see the flight was delayed by two hours. It was frustrating, especially late at night."
Franke retired, and Parker replaced him on Aug. 22, 2001.
A month later, after the terrorist attacks, America West trimmed its flight schedule by 20 percent and cut 2,000 employees from its payroll.
The airline may not have survived the post-9/11 slowdown in air travel, Parker has said, without a $429 million loan guarantee from the federal government.
Parker set out to restore the airline's image of being friendly to customers -- and employees.
"Doug Parker and his team are extremely competent managers," said Aaron J. Gellman, a professor and transportation expert at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
