I just wanted to tell you that i listened to your interview on the frommers podcast and now i have subscribed to your blog.

Keep up the great work!

Back to the DUI – would you then say that anyone who has a DUI on their record should be immediately fired from their jobs? We’d have a great deal of unemployment here if that were the case. Believe me, I’m not saying it’s a good thing by any stretch.

As for the comment on Parker’s DUI, well, that is a Felony in my country….

Bryan – Yes, the employees of the old US Airways had their pay slashed, but with wages at their prior rates, the airline would not exist. Oil is now 30% of US Airways’ costs and labor is 26%. When your oil costs spike to the insane levels they have, there are two options. Lower your labor costs or raise your fares. If you raise fares to the extent you’d need to raise them, demand will go down and you’ll need fewer employees (and airplanes). So, the labor groups get stuck with either lower wages or fewer jobs. It’s a really crappy place to be, and neither one is helpful.

Unfortunately, having three quarters of profit is far from being a reason to restore wages to their prior levels. This industry is cyclical and it will always be that way. So in good times, labor will do everything they can to squeeze higher wages out of the company. Then when it all goes to hell, the company will squeeze them back. It’s a terrible game of tug of war that impacts a lot of people in awful ways.

The only way that this can work in the long run is with variable pay. Then you can get much more in good times and less in bad times. But, that’s not usually what labor groups want to hear. People don’t save in good times to store up for the bad very well. They want it all guaranteed, and it just can’t be that way at the high levels that they demand.

So, is there room for higher wages? I’d say so. I know that US Airways has publicly said they’d bring wages up to the old America West levels. Is that enough? To be honest, I have no idea. The unions certainly say it isn’t, but it comes down to economics. If you can’t afford to pay, then what can you do?

As for Doug Parker, I would say he’s one of the better CEOs out there. Is it good that he got pulled over for a DUI? Hell no. But people do make mistakes, and that doesn’t mean they aren’t fit to do the job. If he showed up to his job drunk, then that would be a different story. He’s proven to be pretty good at what he does. Remember, without him, US Airways is out of business and America West is in a much more precarious position.

Brian – Not sure what I’m being “fan-boyish” about here. My post was primarily dealing with the inaccuracies of the Reuters report. What Kool-Aid am I drinking exactly?