A great brouhaha is going on right now in the City of Brotherly Love over the proposed expansion of Philadelphia International Airport. Not surprisingly, US Airways (which currently holds a dominant position in Philadelphia) wants to keep it that way and opposes expansion.
Click here to read a leaked memo sent by US Airways CEO Doug Parker to his employees on the project. Here’s an excerpt:
Memo: To US Airways employees
From: Doug Parker, Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer
Subject: New ways to give passengers the US Airways Experience
Date: Jan. 17, 2012
Several weeks ago the Philadelphia Inquirer reported our opposition to the building of a new runway at Philadelphia International Airport. I felt an excellent job was done making our case that a new runway is not necessary because the problem is congested skies in New York that spill over to Philadelphia.
Of course, since no one trusts us given our somewhat bottom-of-the-barrel customer-service record (see J.D. Power and Consumer Reports), I think readers were probably more swayed by the positions taken by Southwest and Delta.
I am concerned nevertheless that we gave the impression that we don’t care about passengers (who are we fooling . . . ) since the airport CEO maintains that a new runway would improve travel in and out of the airport, particularly during inclement weather. Also, given the city’s position that we may be blackmailing them by threatening to curtail service if the runway is built (of course we would. See the screw job in Pittsburgh), we may want to modify our position somewhat…
Sounds plausible at first, but by the time you got to the end of it I hope you realized that the memo wasn’t really wan’t sent by Mr. Parker but instead was the work of Philadelphia Daily News humorist Buzz Bissinger.
But for all who have flown US Airways, would it really surprise you if the memo was real? Not me…
(tip of the hat to Grant)
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