Amazon runs its own race as takeover talk in T&L swirls
Meanwhile, please don’t exaggerate the UPS effect
By Alex Lennane
It has been revealed that Amazon has the right to cancel the aircraft CMI deal agreed with Atlas Air at just 180 days’ notice, in terms that will surely be questioned by investors at next week’s earnings call.
And on September 20, Atlas shareholders will be forced to decide between potentially paying their company executives significant bonuses, or face a potential $9.5m cancellation fee to Amazon, when they are asked to approve the Amazon share issuance.
Details of Atlas Air’s deal with Amazon emerged in ...
Comment on this article
Ale Pasetti
July 28, 2016 at 3:31 pmThis is surprising, even more so because the financial market seems to shrug off any such risk as well as the risk associated to the funding of the deal. The stock shot up to an all time-high of $57.7 on the announcement, and now trades at $42, but the trading earnings trajectory and one-offs mean its stock could be much more expensive than it actually is based on cash flow/earnings multiples.
Disgruntled Atlas Pilot
July 28, 2016 at 9:49 pmIn my opinion, this deal will fall through. Atlas will not be able to staff the 767s due to the amount of pilots constantly leaving. We have new hires leaving before they even finish training. We have experience First Officers leaving. We even have experienced Captains that have recently started to leave. Why would someone stay here when they can go to FedEx, UPS, United, Delta, AA, etc. and eventually make more money as a widebody FO than a 767 Captain at Atlas? Our 767 training program has become the FedEx pre-training program. Atlas 767 Guys are getting hired at FedEx and don’t even have to go through their full training course before getting qualified there. Even Allegiant Air’s management recognizes the current state of the industry with regards to the pilot shortage and has offered their pilots significant increases in pay and work rules. Allegiant pilots flying MD-80s and A-319s domestically in the US will now be making more than an Atlas 747 Captain flying hazmat to all corners of the world.
Atlas management refuses to negotiate with its pilots and continues to pay us the lowest wages in the industry for the type of flying we do. When Bill Flynn tries to justify the increase in training costs at the next meeting by saying that we constantly have guys in the school house, ask him why we are doing so much training. It’s not only for growth, but a huge part of it is due to attrition. I wish I had some hard numbers handy, but the pilot attrition here is significant. I hate to say it, but this management teams’ greed and unwillingness to fairly negotiate with and compensate its pilots is the beginning of the end of what could be a great company.