Delta celebrates stiffing others
This past Monday, April 30, Delta emerged from bankrutcy. Read it here. It was a good move for me because I am a big fan of Delta. I take the shuttle a couple of times a week and almost solely fly Delta to other destinations. I like the airline.
So I was on the 6AM shuttle Monday morning heading to NY and I didn't recognize anything special. Maybe it was because of the blurry state my mind was in at that time. I stayed over Monday night and Tuesday, when I strolled into the Marine Air Terminal around 7PM I noticed the changes. There were vases on the ticket counter, balloons, and a general celebratory feel to the building. It was kind of fun. The flight was normal.
This past Thursday I flew down again early in the morning and when I was flying home at 6:30, instead of the normal soda, water or free beer/wine they give out, they made an announcement that to celebrate emerging from bankruptcy, they were giving out glasses of champagne. So the flight attendants, after handing out the delicious and surprisingly satisfying snack pack, walked around opening bottles of champagne and handing out plastic champagne glasses. I took water, I'm not a fan of champagne, too many bubbles and too sweet.
So the gesture was nice, and like I said I am a fan of Delta, but lets put things in to perspective. I live in the business world, I read the popular business journals, watch the right business shows, stay in tune to the world that I live in. And bankruptcy protection, a viable and common option for struggling companies, is not a good thing. Going into bankruptcy is NOT something to celebrate, and coming out of it should feel like walking out of prison. Delta, through some internal issues and some market factors out of their control, lost their ability to manage the airline. So they sought protection under a legal shield and business partners they owed money to got cents on the dollar, and people who owned stock got zip. Large institutional investors who bought tens of thousands of shares were left with worthless electronic certificates, and individuals who inherited a couple of thousand bucks and decided to buy a few shares were left with nothing.
Delta came out of this stronger, but many others were left with little or nothing. If I screwed Chase out of money for my mortgage, decided to default on my student loans, ran up credit and didn't pay it, and borrowed money from friends and skipped town, not sure I would have a party to celebrate my return.
But that's just me.