ABCNews says that the big three auto CEOs “flew to the nation’s capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.”
Just because your company is on the verge of bankruptcy– well, that’s no reason not to arrive in style. Right?
From ABC:
All three CEOs – Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler – exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM’s $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.
“We want to continue the vital role we’ve played for Americans for the past 100 years, but we can’t do it alone,” Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee.
While Wagoner testified, his G4 private jet was parked at Dulles airport. It is one of eight luxury jets in the GM fleet that continues to ferry executives around the world despite the company’s dire financial straits.
ABC estimated that the trip cost GM $20,000, as opposed to a first class ticket on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington — which would have cost about $800.
Amazingly, private jets are a luxury that even free-spending AIG is reconsidering.
AIG, despite the $150 billion bailout, still operates a fleet of corporate jets. The company says it has put two out of its seven jets up for sale and is reviewing the use of others. Though there are no such plans by GM or Ford.
Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds [ABC]
(Photo: Bonita Sarita )
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Go Greyhound!
They should have been in luggage with pet ferrets.
@kwsventures: Hey, as a ferret owner, I resent that! Plus there aren’t any US Airlines left that will allow ferrets, in the cabin or underneath…but if you name drop my name to a Virgin America agent, we’ll definitely make an…ahem…exception for medical reasons!
The Ford CEO has done such a good job he serves a private jet and $28M per year salary. .. Sure.. I could find a monkey to do the job for less with the same GREAT results.
Oh gee whiz.
My former employer had 3 corporate jets sitting in Denver for immediate use by execs.
I was stationed in LA. And the Prez of the company flew into town on one of the corporate jets to visit my team.
Duh, what in hell, like there aren’t hourly flights between LAX and Denver?
And when he left me, he flew down to San Diego… with the goal of flying to Salt Lake after he left SD.
Except he never made the trip to Salt Lake. When he departed SD the new destination was Santa Fe due to some crisis or another.
I haven’t checked, but I am pretty sure there are no direct flights between SD and Santa Fe.
Screw the costs. Flexibility. No delays. Fly when you want, where you want. I would be surprised if company execs DIDN’T use a corp jet.
It used to be that the first thing to go when a company realized tough times, was the Aviation Department. I guess its just another sign of the(elitist’s) times that it is no-longer the case.
This is just further evidence of how out of touch these executives are with society. Along the same lines as AIG having those expensive meetings after receiving taxpayer money.
I hope they are allowed to sink or swim. Automakers have to learn to ensure the long term health of their company and lose their tunnel vision mentality from quarter to quarter. Their unions have to learn that it is possible to have too much success in labor negotiations…..so much success that they have played a significant role almost bankrupting their employer.
I don’t feel sorry for the spoiled executives and I have a hard time feeling sorry for anybody who has a job that does not require an advanced education and yet earns on average over $70 an hour (salary/benefits). I was formally a “Buy American” guy, but what was the incentive for companies to improve? Besides, since buying my first Toyota I have not had anymore vehicle problems. They have earned a loyal customer because they make a reliable, fuel-efficient product.
You know, with United’s new list of fees, and the late booking notice the private jet flight was probably cheaper =/
It’s incredibly costly with what they pay these guys to have them delayed, not to mention that they should be spending their time working on their company’s problem, not sitting around in airports.
@SupritiPeneus: The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
It’s amazing how disconnected from reality these executives are. $20k round trip… do that twice and you can keep a factory worker employed for an entire year. Oh wait, they are executives of a major corporation!!! (not for long…)
back in the day when MP3s were becoming all the rage, and music execs said sales were dropping because of people thieving it and sharing mp3s; George Clinton said “mp3s aren’t killing the music industry, crappy music is killing the music industry”
Apply to automakers?
I don’t think the point here has anything to do with private v. commercial flight.
The underlying issue is the sheer boneheadedness of flying your Gulfstream to beg for money in terms of public relations.
The fact that this has become a news item shows how stupid this was.
So, let’s assume we give them the money.
It’s going to take a massive and successful PR campaign to convince anyone to buy their product.
Presumably, the same people who DIDN’T think this flight through will be at the helm of the “Please buy me!” campaign.
See the problem?
Screw these dinosaurs – they have not made ANY innovations or substantial change(s) to their business models in years, if ever. Let them die and allow the innovative auto companies whom actually make vehicles that people want to buy – sustainable ones – prosper in their wake. This has been a long time coming, no surprise here.
Ok look: a plane sitting on the ground. You own it. It costs 20000 dollars to use it. Or you can take a commercial flight for 800 bucks. It is no way cheaper to use the private jet. It doesnt matte if you own it, or if you pay everyones salary. Unless you have drums of jet fuel that expire in a few days and you cannot sell them, it is never going to be cheaper to fly your private jet.
Executives get work done on a private jet? Lame excuse. its a 6 hour flight to Washington TOPS. Thats not that long. I am sure they have adequate contact in first class to get work done. Going to washington is 100x more important than an email anyways. Or heaven, forbid, they travel in during slow business hours at night.
Its not like the money matters though. 19K is a drop in the bucket for this company. That will pay, what, 1/3 of one persons salary for a year? Its not like they are spending money on parties/offices/etc. Private jet is how head honchos travel, period. Its not going to look like they have lots of confidence in their company if they are trying to save every. single. cent. These guys need massive budget overhaul in the area of billions, not a one time thousands saving.
of course, after the AIG fiasco, you’d think these boneheads would have learned their lesson. If you ask for bailout, DO NOT do things as if you had tons of spare money.
Figures! I wonder if everyone from management on down are going to try to soak these companies before they go bankrupt. It may be a little late but perhaps management and the employees should do a little interest based bargaining before they all go down the tubes.
The culture of the elite and the ultra rich is the same as allways. We just see more with instant comm. I hope a comment I read above about a peacfull culture change with a new admin in washington comes to pass. I fear the message of “let them eat cake” from corp execs can be heard by to many to fast and could lead to some serious damage to our country in the long run. We see through the bs and spin and we know it is all about greed. My god what % of the wealth do the rich want.
Regardless of what we think is a good use of a CEO’s time, I think it is poor form for them to come to Washington on private jets to beg for bailout money. It just looks bad. As an earlier poster said, if the CEOs were serious about the fate of their companies, they’d fly coach on their trip to Capitol Hill. Its only an hour flight from Detroit to DC and it would help their cause so much better, even if it would merely be a symbolic jesture. They can save the private jets for when they take the politicians down on their booze-riddled jaunts in the Carribean.
if their businesses were in the black and they wanted to fly around in private jets, that’s their business.
when their businesses are f$#@ed, and they are begging for tax payer money to help ‘bail them out’, then they had better be prepared to get a MAJOR ASS PROBING BY PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE WHO PAYS TAXES.
nothing wrong with this news report. it was valid news, and telling too.
I’m all for free market, when it applies, but our government SHOULD put limits on antitrust, SHOULD put limits on monopolies, SHOULD get involved when ultra powerful are totally f$#@ing the peasants who help make them ultra powerful.
It’s not all black and white, in the sense that neither political party has a perfect platform. Pretty f4#@ing far from it in fact.
It IS all black and white, when it comes down to it any failing system, no matter how big or small, can be looked at from a systems analysis approach, and can have either the input, the modulation of input, the output, the feedback, or all 4 tweaked, then reassessed, then tweaked again, till it’s running at optimum. Makes too much sense in fact.
Reason it doesn’t happen is because no one in DC wants anything to run perfectly. F$#@. They’d all be outta jobs then. No. It’s the mighty dollar, and the power it represents, that runs the show.
Don’t EVER let anyone tell you differently.
Two things…1) Look how crappy the Volt turned out looking…for $40k, it should look better than a Malibu!
2) Even if they needed a private jet for the reasons mentioned above, why a Gulfstream IV? There are many, many jets that can do the job for less than half the cost!
Heck, a VLJ like the upcoming HondaJet can do the Roundtrip for less than $5k!
Here’s an interior of a practical jet:
You can buy 10 of those for the cost of 1 of what GM’s CEO flew in on…much more luxury than necessary:
Not that I’m all that surprised, but I’m hoping this’ll be the last straw that pushes the fence sitters from not feeling sorry for these arrogant bastards to actively hating them and wishing they were dead.
We’re all hurting right now (well, most of us, anyway), and these guys are obviously the least deserving of help. It doesn’t matter how much money we throw at this problem – they’ll still be arrogant bastards and they’ll continue making crap vehicles ’cause that’s who they are. Giving them a handout is just going to prolong the life of a dinosaur that should have gone extinct a long time ago.
US auto companies are like a patient in intensive care, with three tubes siphoning away their life-blood: high current wages, retiree health-care commitments, and their dealer-network. Now, they want the government to stick an intravenous tube in them, and give them some more life-fluid. Of course it’ll work in the short term. Of course it will allow buy the patient time. However, what good is that time if nothing is done about the three outflows? And — height of ridiculousness — some legislators want to stick in a fourth outflow tube in the form of enviro-crap.
And, how can those three outflows be stopped? They’re all based in contractual obligations. In theory, the Union pay might be open to rollback as a condition of a bailout, but I don’t know the legalities of that. What about the other two? The solution is: GM must break its contracts. The only legal way that can happen is to declare bankruptcy.
What I would love to have explained to me is this:
As much as they want to pretend that they are as all-American as apple pie, the auto companies are multi-national corporations, with workers and investors all around the world. Most large companies these days are, that’s not the problem. But then why is it that the American people are stuck footing the bill to save the auto industry?
This is what executives of huge concerns do. Let it go
Who cares? If they have a private jet, why not take it? Even for their own security. There are many people that obviously think the CEOs of these companies are single-handedly responsible for the entire economic downturn. I wouldn’t want some underinformed wacko coming after me because the economy sucks.