Buying bigger and newer planes with the latest technology and ever-improving passenger comforts bought their airlines – and them – significant recognition among both consumers and investors. Both sides recognized the pattern, even if they never spoke openly with the each other about it.Īnd each had strong incentives to continue it.įor airline managers in a regulated environment prior to 1979, their job performance was rated as much by the reputation they created for their carriers as by the profits or losses their carriers reported. But after two or three such cycles the adage that management bought planes and signed new contracts in upturns and took delivery of planes and laid off workers in the downturns was known industry-wide. Their conspiracy was never really an overt one. Thereby airline managers and airline union leaders historically conspired in laying the groundwork for their industry’s next economic downturn. And airline labor leaders would take the appearance of profits as an economic signal to begin stirring up the rank-and-file to support big new contract demands. Airline managers would place big orders for new planes. But whenever these chronically cyclical companies did put together two or three decent years at the top of one of their cycles you could bet on two things happening.
And they certainly didn’t do so regularly. It ever has been thus, at least since pilots, mechanics and flight attendants began organizing themselves in labor unions in the years immediately before and after World War II.
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