Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We focused on getting popchips into the hands of tastemakers and influencers wherever they were, from the fashionistas at Mercedes Benz fashion week to the passengers on Virgin Airlines.
I've been asked a number of times what was my proudest accomplishment when I was still very active in the day-to-day affairs of Southwest Airlines. I always said job security for our people.
The safety of the flying public should not be for sale. Handing air traffic control over to a private entity partly governed by the airlines is both a risk and liability we can't afford to take.
Never, ever get on an American Airlines flight. They will make you wait four hours, and then, when you complain about it, you will be kicked off your flight, and they will rob you of your money.
There is no economy without airlines. Airfreight runs the world. There is no Honolulu without an airplane. This is a very complex system. If you take it down, you can't build it back up overnight.
When I read that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared - a state-of-the-art Boeing 777, said to be an incredibly safe way to travel - I waited patiently for the chance to learn what happened.
This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don't subsidize, we don't want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact.
I've long loved emerging markets airlines because they usually sell at bargain prices. The troubled history of developed market airlines unfairly taints these stocks. In the emerging world, they're growth stocks.
Dynamic pricing - charging more when goods and services are in high demand and short supply and less when the opposite is true - isn't new. Gasoline retailers, hoteliers, and airlines have been deploying the technique for years.
If the goal of the DOT's rule is to prevent companies from deceiving passengers about the total cost of their ticket, why is the department mandating that airlines hide the taxes, surcharges and government fees in the fine print?
First, we have to lower our costs to levels that are more competitive. This will prevent the lower-cost airlines from pushing us out of the markets we want to serve. We've made great progress on this front, but we need to keep pushing.
The intriguing aspect of food charges on airlines is that they create the perfect laboratory for any economist who wishes to study the question of how to price a good that possesses, by universal consensus, absolutely no objective value.
I do not have a merchandise line. I don't sell knives or apparel. Though I have been approached to endorse various products from liquor to airlines to automobiles to pharmaceuticals dozens of times, I have managed to resist the temptation.
In the early years of America's skyjacking epidemic, the airlines were reluctant to let the FBI attempt to end hijackings by force; they feared that innocents would get caught in the crossfire, thereby sparking a wave of negative publicity.
Occasionally we have to interpret an international treaty - one, perhaps, affecting airlines and liability for injury to passengers or damage to goods. Then, of course, we have to look to the precedents of other member nations in resolving issues.
With Virgin, I've just loved creating things. And as a private company, I can get away with moving Virgin from records to airlines to train companies to space companies to whatever, without ever having to worry about analysts knocking the value of my stock.
I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, 'Hey, let's try something new.'
Heathrow is conveniently located for airlines to shuttle the global elite between different routes. These flights disturb the peace of millions, disrupting lessons across west London and dumping toxic gases on people living around the airport. Their passengers don't pay a penny in taxes.
By 1931, after a few years' experience of flying scheduled airlines, those planes were operating at roughly 600 times the safety of the space shuttle. I look at safety not in terms of fatalities per passenger-mile, but when you get in and close the door, what is the risk of dying on this flight?
Our Congress passes laws which subsidize corporation farms, oil companies, airlines, and houses for suburbia. But when they turn their attention to the poor, they suddenly become concerned about balancing the budget and cut back on the funds for Head Start, Medicare, and mental health appropriations.
Divestitures have long been the preferred remedy for horizontal mergers, where there's an overlap between the two companies. Airlines, for example, may have to sell routes or airport gates where the two airlines compete; cable operators may have to sell operations in cities where both companies operate.
In 1996 - when, for the fifth year in a row, we had the best record among major airlines for on-time performance and for baggage handling and the fewest complaints for the number of customers carried - we dedicated an airplane to all of our 25,000 people. We put all their names on the outside of the overhead bins.
If Warren Buffett could change his mind about investing in airlines, Mohnish Pabrai could change his mind about investing in autos. Pabrai, who has modeled his investment career and fee structure after Buffett's original partnership, counts General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, and Ferrari in his highly concentrated portfolio.
'Megaforce' is a privately financed army of freedom fighters financed and manned by all the free countries of the world. We don't say the force is American-based, but it's obvious because they are driving Fords, encountering rattlesnakes and they ride a Continental Airlines plane. Also the landscape looks like the American desert.
When I worked at Microsoft, I got to go and visit a bunch of different companies. Probably a hundred different companies a year. You'd see all the different ways they'd work. The guys who did Ventura Publisher one day, and then United Airlines the next. You'd see the 12 guys in Texas doing Doom, and then you'd go see Aetna life insurance.
