Professional? Hardly.
Yesterday, the US Airline Pilots Association, on behalf of member pilots at US Airways, placed a full-page ad, “A Message to Our Valued Passengers…” in USA Today (p. 5A). The ad lambasted US Airways management for “pressuring your Captain to reduce fuel levels for your flight in order to save money.” The ad goes on to assert the aircraft captain’s prerogative to, “ensure a fuel load that will safely fly you to your destination with all the reserves necessary…” Translation: We’re in a power struggle with management, so we’re going to whip up sympathy and support by giving you something extra to worry about when you’re traveling. They might be willing to let planes fall out of the sky, but we won’t. Yeah, right.
In our book, Contented Cows MOOve Faster, we wrote about the extra effort and ensuing productivity that arise from treating employees as professionals. The model we used was that of commercial airline pilots. Though I’m sticking with the larger argument, the behavior of this particular pilot group, their union, and ultimately US Airways management bring into serious question the use of the term, “professional” for two reasons:
1. Professionals don’t take their grievances with one another into the public square, and
2. Professionals certainly don’t insinuate that safety is being compromised when it is not.
One of the reasons that our domestic airlines are in trouble is because there are still too many seats chasing paying fannies. Approximately 50,000 of those seats are controlled by US Airways. For the benefit of those carriers (e.g., Delta, Southwest, Continental, Jet Blue) who do generally behave responsibly, I’ve resolved to do my part to equitably correct this market imbalance by making sure that my fanny never finds itself in a US Airways seat. On the premise that I’m not going to trust that fanny to anyone but a professional, our travel agent has been given explicit instructions that Greyhound comes before US Airways. Those clowns deserve one another, but not paying customers.
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