ARLINGTON, Va. Former Piedmont Airlines employees still talk bitterly about the way USAir managers treated them during the airlines' merger in the late 1980s.
USAir managers wouldn't listen. They rebuffed Piedmont employees when they made suggestions on how to run the airline and save money, the employees say.
The complaints boil down to one word: Arrogance.
Seth E. Schofield, USAir's top executive, was the head of operations during the merger. It was his job to make one airline out of two - no small job, especially coming on the heels of USAir's merger with Pacific Southwest Airlines, or PSA.
Schofield doesn't try to deflect the finger-pointing, though he says that managers weren't intentionally arrogant. If anything, USAir botched communications with Piedmont employees.
"Somehow, we delivered this negative message that now it's USAir so you'll do everything our way because it's USAir's way," he said.
The message was not what Piedmont employees, who were intensely proud and loyal, wanted to hear.
"They loved their company," Schofield said. "And when you have a merger ... and you strip people's identity away from them, it's very hard for them to accept that, and understandably so.
"And I think one of the messages that we did not deliver in the process of the mergers was that we never expected everybody at Piedmont to forget about their past or forget about Piedmont or their loyalties or their friendships ... The message we should have delivered was that it was a great company. and so was USAir, and so was PSA, and together we're going to be greater."
USAir and Federal Aviation Administration officials developed a "mirror image" strategy to fold PSA and Piedmont into USAir, said Jim Repucci, an FAA safety inspector who oversaw USAir's mergers.
It meant that Piedmont was supposed to adopt USAir's procedures - language that pilots used during landings, for example, or the actions crews took in emergencies - so the airlines' operations would be identical when they actually merged.
Once USAir and the FAA developed the program, USAir was obligated to carry it out, and FAA inspectors monitored closely to make sure that it did, Repucci said.
The program was flexible, though, and allowed USAir to adopt Piedmont procedures, Repucci said.
USAir had no choice in some things; the FAA told USAir, for example, that Piedmont pilots would have to take a proficiency test before flying USAir routes.
Schofield said that the mirror-image program "was not USAir's program, it was the FAA's program, and it was only to deal with aspects of FARs (federal aviation regulations), and not everything else."
It wasn't USAir's intention that the do-it-our-way message be carried to all parts of the company, he said.
USAir also probably erred by waiting so long to complete its buyout of Piedmont, Schofield said. USAir bought Piedmont Aviation Inc. on Nov. 5, 1987. The two companies didn't officially merge until Aug. 5, 1989.
"It left people hanging without knowing what their seniority number was going to be, and am I going to have a job, and am I going to have the same job, and you know, all of the anxieties," he said. "And when they build and build and build over a period of time, I think that manifests itself as well."
As for USAir's arrogance, Schofield said that USAir has learned to listen.
His "Ambassadors Program" keeps him in touch with non-management employees.
Once a month, he meets with employees who offer him their perspective on how the company is running and the problems it needs to address.
"I like employee involvement," he said. "I like to deal with the employees, because I came up through the ranks, and there's a clear understanding on my part that those are the folks in the airline that really get the job done. They are the ones that deliver the product every day."
He also points to the company's "Ideas That Fly" program last year, which offered rewards to employees who offered cost-saving ideas.
It has cost USAir $33 million since it started last year, but company officials expect savings to total $80 million this year.