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RUSH: To Miami. Don, glad you waited, sir. And you\u2019re up. Hello.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you so much for taking the call, and good afternoon, and mega dittos from Miami, Florida.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Okay, sir, my question is not political, and I apologize for that, but I was working for a major airline like 20 years ago, proudly working, and of course they had some union problems —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Let me guess. You worked for Eastern Airlines.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Could I say yes?<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah, I wonder how I knew that.<\/p>\n
RUSH: So you\u2019re asking me why American is laying off 13,000 people?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Well, sir, every time I go on a flight it\u2019s full.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n
CALLER: And, you know, I don\u2019t have to tell you, you fly a lot. I just feel that with all the extra things that they charge for that we didn\u2019t many, many, many years ago, I just can\u2019t understand, and I just feel bad for my friends who have clawed their way up after another —<\/p>\n
RUSH: You want to know a little interesting statistic about the airline industry?<\/p>\n
CALLER: I do, sir.<\/p>\n
RUSH: The industry, the entire industry, has never shown a profit in a single year. Individual airlines have now and then, but the entire airline industry as a whole has never shown a profit in a full year.<\/p>\n
CALLER: I find that so hard to believe.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I was stunned when I heard it myself. They\u2019re laying 13,000 people off. You know, my guess is that American Airlines hates people, and my guess is American Airlines doesn\u2019t really like all the passengers they\u2019ve got, and they want to have fewer airplanes so that the passengers they have are sardined on these planes. I think they love charging their customers for baggage and pets, whatever else. I think American Airlines probably wants to go out of business. I think American Airlines loves screwing people. (laughing) I\u2019m just saying what the caller wants to hear. He\u2019s an Eastern Airlines guy. I\u2019m telling you, that\u2019s what they think of the airlines.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: All right, now, I realize that I said some things in that last call — I just did a Romney. The media, did I give them every opportunity? It was one of those times where I might not have had enough sarcasm in my voice, because even Snerdley, when I finished the call, said, “What in the world? Why do you think that about American Airlines?” Now, I do not believe American hates its customers. I do not believe American wants to sardine its passengers. I don\u2019t believe that American Airlines wants to bankrupt their passengers. I don\u2019t believe that American Airlines wants their passengers to be so uncomfortable and hot and sweaty they never fly the airline again. I do not believe that American Airlines is secretly trying to crash a bunch of airplanes so they don\u2019t have to pay \u2019em back. <\/p>\n
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So this guy calls me, “Why would they fire 13,000 people? Those planes are full, Rush. You see it all the time. I know you fly a lot. And charging for baggage, why would they do that?” <\/p>\n
Well, because they hate their passengers, sir. They\u2019re mean, rotten people at American. I betcha if we had a camera on that guy on the other end of the phone, he was probably nodding in agreement with everything I said. The reason he didn\u2019t say anything is \u2019cause he was so stunned that I was agreeing with him. He called here loaded for bear. He thought I was gonna start ripping into unions. See, this is why I\u2019m host and he\u2019s the caller. The airline industry, I don\u2019t think people have the slightest understanding of the expense involved in maintaining an airplane to fly it. The federal aviation agency maintenance requirements, and there\u2019s far more maintenance for the schedule that a passenger airline must go through to have its planes proclaimed safe, pass inspection, so forth.<\/p>\n
So just the amount of money to maintain those airplanes, to keep them approved after rigorous inspections, as often as they\u2019re flown, is astronomical. The reason that the airlines, as an industry, have never made money is because in any given year there are at least one, and maybe two airlines, who have found a way to sell tickets and make money or break even at a price the others can\u2019t. I remember back in the seventies, the airline industry was heavily regulated in favor — I remember a flight from Pittsburgh to St. Louis was 600 bucks, coach. A lot of it was subsidized by the federal government. It was impossible for the airlines to lose money at that time. Not impossible, but they got rid of the regulation, the airlines were deregulated, that ticked off the union people, and that opened up massive competition and fares. <\/p>\n
You look at Herb Kelleher of Southwest, what Herb Kelleher does, he buys jet fuel five years in the future at today\u2019s price. He has the ability to do it. Every business is different. If Herb Kelleher decides that he\u2019s gonna give away free peanuts and free cocktails, or whatever he does, and not charge for baggage, and then sell the ticket at $199, the others have no choice. If they\u2019re going to compete, they\u2019re gonna have to sell their tickets at 199 bucks and try to get it back by charging for baggage or what have you. But there\u2019s always going to be an airline or two, regional, small, but that goes enough places to undercut the big guys. That\u2019s one of the reasons. Just the expense, the on-the-ground expense of maintaining a fleet of airplanes is incalculable. <\/p>\n
Now, you think, “Well, but, Rush, that\u2019s gotta be factored in the whole cost of doing business.” I\u2019m telling you, they can\u2019t charge enough on their fares to make all this back. That\u2019s why they take airplanes out of circulation, that\u2019s why everything gets full. That\u2019s why you\u2019re flying around in cattle cars. I\u2019m not by any means a full-fledged expert in the airline business and I\u2019m just giving you essentially what are educated guesses as to why the whole industry has never shown a profit in a single year. Now, individual airlines have and do. But the industry as a whole never has. I just think some of the costs are impossible to recoup, at the current — (interruption). I don\u2019t know how an airline can lose $5 billion a quarter and stay flying. That\u2019s above my pay grade. Don\u2019t know it. <\/p>\n
You see these numbers, their quarterly losses. Plus I don\u2019t know what about that is genuine, what kind of legal tax machinations that they\u2019re taking in writing off these losses and what their cash flow actually is. But I do know that in the last couple of years, a couple airlines have reported business being good and way up. It\u2019s one of the reasons why they have merged, is to help mitigate some of the costs that they have. But I was just being facetious with the guy when I said, “Well, they\u2019re laying off 13,000 people \u2019cause they hate people, \u2019cause they hate unions.” That\u2019s just one of these attempts to illustrate absurdity by being absurd. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: To Miami. Don, glad you waited, sir. And you\u2019re up. Hello. CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you so much for taking the call, and good afternoon, and mega dittos from Miami, Florida. RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. CALLER: Okay, sir, my question is not political, and I apologize for that, but I was working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n