Air Sickness : Who ’ s to Blame ? ( Part 1 )

A specter is haunting America’s airline industry: It’s the ghost of Eastern Airlines. Once one of America’s largest carriers, Eastern went out of business in 1991 following a prolonged, crippling and acrimonious strike. The episode was a nadir for labor relations in the airline industry. Even if things are not quite as bad now as then, serious problems are weakening America’s major airlines—and causing some to contemplate Eastern’s fate. Vaughn Cordle, a leading aviation consultant and veteran of the airline industry, puts much of the blame on the organization of the industry’s labor force. In an interview with Labor Watch (see article at right), Cordle explains that the industry’s current labor relations regime is unsustainable in the long term. Unions cannot continue to call the shots by threatening to shut down the airlines. Unless things change, Eastern’s ghost could come back to haunt the airline industry.