Word: carriere
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Bethune's day job gives him a far bumpier ride. The CEO of Houston-based Continental Airlines has piloted the nation's fifth largest passenger carrier through eight years of turbulent weather, bringing it back from the brink of a third bankruptcy in 1994. Nothing has been more challenging than the past nine months, with security hassles and terrorist fears driving away air travelers and costing the industry more than $9 billion. Continental was one of only two major airlines earning a profit before Sept. 11 (the other was Southwest Airlines), and Continental in March became the first traditional...
Bethune delights in speaking his mind almost as much as he likes climbing into a cockpit. He says competitors trying to cut costs last September were "stupid" to take off magazines and meals in coach, a direct dig at Dallas-based American Airlines. He ridicules "an Atlanta-based carrier"--a reference to Delta Air Lines--for cutting back its sales teams that cater to major clients, to save money after 9/11. "We high-fived each other when we heard it," says Bethune, who promptly sent his pilots into corporate cafeterias to reassure business travelers about security measures...
...predicts that United Airlines, the second largest U.S. carrier, could still go the way of U.S. Airways, which announced last month that it plans to seek government loan guarantees. Just two weeks ago, Bethune announced that to boost revenues, Continental and U.S. Airways are discussing a code-sharing alliance that would allow passengers to book flights on one airline but travel on the other for part of the route. "Fact is, we're all losing money. At Continental, we're just losing less than everybody else," he says. "If we don't survive, no one is going to survive...
...telling that when Bethune talks about "the industry"--including his assertion that all airlines are losing money--he really means full-service hub airlines: American, United, Delta, Northwest Airlines, Continental and U.S. Airways. He omits Southwest--long the industry's best-run and most profitable carrier, whose market capitalization is larger than the Big Six's combined--and other moneymaking budget carriers like Frontier Airlines and start-ups like JetBlue Airways...
Critics of Orbitz focus on its unique arrangement with airlines. The website's "most-favored" clause requires all 42 participating airlines to give only Orbitz their lowest fares. But according to smaller carriers that are part of Orbitz, the website often subtly undermines that arrangement by displaying inaccurate fares for a small airline or showing a major carrier's entire fare listing first. Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways, two successful low-cost carriers, are so concerned that Orbitz is structured to favor their big competitors that neither allows tickets to be booked on Orbitz...