Welcome to The Now

 

 

Between whistleblowers showing up dead and members being lost in space , I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner : Boeing bosses are staring down the barrel. The twists and turns of the past week paint a picture of managers badly wrong-footed by the depth of fury among workers who tossed out a 25% pay increase deal and launched strike action. "They probably didn't think that we had enough people for the strike," Kushal Varma, a Boeing mechanic, told Reuters. "But this is a movement of people who are willing to put their livelihoods on the line to get what's fair." With little time to regroup, and pressure mounting, management enters a fresh week of talks to contain the crisis at the $97 billion U.S. aerospace champion.  A week ago, Boeing executives believed they'd done enough to secure the pay deal with around 33,000 workers in Washington state, the heart of the company's global manufacturing operations, according to two people directly i...

  And not just because people complained about their cramped seating .

... especially after hearing some of the things coming out of the mouths of pilots , such as: “The truth is, we’re exhausted. Our work rules allow us to be on duty 16 hours without a break. That’s many more hours than a truck driver. And unlike a truck driver, who can pull over at the next rest stop, we can’t pull over at the next cloud.” “At some airports with really short runways, you’re not going to have a smooth landing no matter how good we are: John Wayne Airport; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Chicago Midway; and Reagan National.” “There’s no such thing as a water landing. It’s called crashing into the ocean.” “I’ve been struck by lightning twice. Most pilots have. Airplanes are built to take it. You hear a big boom and see a big flash and that’s it. You’re not going to fall out of the sky.” “There is no safest place to sit. In one accident, the people in the back are dead; in the next, it’s the people up front.” “Please don’t complain to me about your lost bags or the rotten service or...

... you might as well do it like this guy .

Here we go : The negotiations represent the latest efforts to consolidate the struggling airline industry, which lost $60 billion over the last decade as fuel costs soared and the number of travelers fell. Both companies have been vocal in calling for greater partnerships. Of the major airlines, only the low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines turned a profit last year. And analysts have said that despite the steep cuts in capacity by all the airlines in the last couple of years, there are still too many airlines chasing too few travelers. A combination of United and US Airways could help both return to profit faster than they could going it alone. But mergers in the airline industry have been difficult to pull off, in part because complex labor contracts can offset the promised cost savings. The latest combination, involving Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines , creating the nation’s largest carrier, took nearly two years to complete. One reason that merger succeede...