Have you gotten this email yet? It's spreading like wildfire today.
Quote:
For airlines, ultra-expensive fuel means thousands of lost jobs and severe reductions in air service to both large and small communities. To the broader economy, oil prices mean slower activity and widespread economic pain. This pain can be alleviated, and that is why we are taking the extraordinary step of writing this joint letter to our customers.
Wow. If this isn't handwriting on the wall, I don't know what is. What's next - Walmart knocking on our door with a petition? _________________ Business as usual is about to get unusual.
Joined: Oct 12, 2004 Posts: 997 Location: In the suburban sea of strangers
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 2:40 pm Post subject: Re: An Open Letter to All Airline Customers
The scary thing is that a group of airline CEO's, who you would expect to be intelligent well informed people, imagine that it's possible to make oil cheap and plentiful again by writing a letter to someone.
Maybe they can write a letter to God, imploring him to refill the planet. lol _________________ The battle to preserve our lifestyle has already been lost. The battle to preserve our lives is just beginning.
cb _________________ President Bush: “There’s no question about it. Wall Street got drunk—that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk, and now it’s got a hangover."
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:33 pm Post subject: Re: An Open Letter to All Airline Customers
Boy, that last $15 billion sure didn't last them very long! _________________ "It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."
My greatest fear isn't so much of Uncle Sam shutting down nymex.com or jacking up margin requirements, we ALL see that one coming. Thanks to the internet you can live in Seattle and trade the Dubai exchange if you have to.
however......
If Uncle Sam bans all Americans from speculating anywhere / everywhere, I will have nowhere to run and no where to hide.
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:05 pm Post subject: Re: An Open Letter to All Airline Customers
cube wrote:
If Uncle Sam bans all Americans from speculating anywhere / everywhere, I will have nowhere to run and no where to hide.
Create an operating corporation in BVI, nominee shareholders, held by a lawyer under attorney client privilege. Retain the firm as corporate secretary.
The corporation then opens an account and trades.
DO NOT have signature authority over any offshore bank accounts.
Note: An OPERATING corporation, not merely a financial corporation.
Classic! Thanks. The campaign should be "Do you or someone you know use oil? Then you're both part of the problem!"
I said it once today, but its worth repeating. Ignorance is still our biggest enemy. Even in this age of information! Or disinformation as the case may be? ; - )) _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 8:02 pm Post subject: Re: An Open Letter to All Airline Customers
Quote:
How to Contact Us
Coalition to Stop Oil Speculation Now
c/o Air Transport Association (ATA) of America, Inc.
1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW - Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20004-1707
An open letter to the Air Transport Association:
Dear ATA:
Let me get this straight:
Your customer service and ticketing people are inefficient and indifferent. Your baggage handling system is so bad no one that actually wants their stuff to arrive at the same time they do checks bags anymore. You seat me, a 1.75 million mile frequent flyer next to the noisiest, stinkiest babies on the flight. You cannot get a plane between two points in North America in the scheduled time. You are too cowardly to raise ticket prices, so you nickel and dime me with airport fees, surcharges, and extra charges for the most simple things. The restrooms are dirty. You gave me salmonella. I paid $100 more than the person that is sitting next to me on the same flight.
Yet, you expect me to write my incompetent congressperson to supposedly do away with oil speculation which supposedly is the cause of all of your problems? Guess what...Speculation is not the problem, the congress cannot and should not do anything about it, and no amount of whining on your part is going to help, because your business model is no longer viable in the current era.
Instead of spinning your wheels on this sort of activity, you should focus on the real problem: You won't change.
You have some headwinds, to be sure. Your unionized pilots and flight attendants are resisting you. You contracted to run 5 flights a day to places like Fargo, while you are trying to compete against the upstarts in the run between Dallas and Houston. Your fleets, purchased on borrowed money, are no longer appropriate for the type of flying you are doing. You paid your executives hundreds of millions of dollars during the 90's when you should have been making your operations efficient. These are the same management geniuses that completely ignored the issue of energy depletion, and as recently as a couple of years ago had no plans for fuel being at these levels, other than denying the problem and wishing upon a falling star.
I'd like to think you have a chance to survive. After all, you had a glorious past, you have made air transportation in the US so cheap that everyone can afford it. I gotta say, though, that it is looking bad. You should start making other plans for the future.
...
I said it once today, but its worth repeating. Ignorance is still our biggest enemy. Even in this age of information! Or disinformation as the case may be? ; - ))
Sometimes I get this paranoid feeling the "true" reason why the internet was invented was to spread mis-information to keep society perpetually in the dark.
Or is that just another internet conspiracy theory?
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:22 am Post subject: Re: An Open Letter to All Airline Customers
eastbay wrote:
It's part of a PR campaign designed to soften up Congress as the airlines prepare to tap into some public money as a short-term fix.
That was my impression to. Congress wants somebody to blame so they don't have to be responsible for their inaction. Airline CEO's also need someone to blame for their failure to plan for this. One hand washes the other. Since high oil prices weren't an obvious inevitability, but the work of evil oil speculators, then they can come whine to Congress for money when they start to go bankrupt. _________________ "I was born in a deep forest
I wish I could live here all my life
I am made from stones and roots
My home, these woods and roads
All my life I loved this sound
Of the woods all around
Eagles fly where the winds blow free" -Korpiklaani
Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:53 am Post subject: Re: An Open Letter to All Airline Customers
If high fuel prices don't ground airplanes then insurance and over-regulation surely will.
``It's bureaucracy gone mad,'' said Trevor Cherrington, 49, a civil servant who paid 90 pounds ($179) for one of the 64-year- old planes' last joyrides. ``If they've been flying this many years, how have they suddenly become dangerous?''
Quote:
The twin-propeller Dakotas, first built by Douglas Aircraft Co. in 1935, have a maximum altitude of 20,800 feet and top speed of 192 miles an hour, about 30 percent slower than the world's fastest car. In Europe, the model became famous for carrying paratroopers to France from England on D-Day, in 1944, and dropping supplies during the Berlin Airlift, in 1948 and 1949.
``After the war, DC-3s were the backbone of airlines around the world,'' said historian Henry Holden, the author of two books on the aircraft. ``It is an easy airplane to fly, `forgives' many pilot errors, and its reputation has been passed down from generation to generation.''
Fuel costs and soaring commodity prices are also making the upkeep of vintage aircraft more difficult, Parr said. Air Atlantique's DC-6, on display at the Farnborough International Air Show, takes 11,000 liters (2,905 gallons) of aviation fuel.
Maybe a silly example, but in this and other threads posters have raised the spectrum on regulators and governments hindering our ability to adapt and change to a post peak oil world. Certainly not out of the realm of believability! _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
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