Poor Service – Poor Rating

The secret ingredient for a successful airline is its service quality.

After having traveled in Emirates, Qatar, Thai, Itehad, you get used to a high quality Business Class experience. Nice, comfortable and modern seats, excellent meals, both in quality as well as quality.

However United Airlines is yet to learn the actual meanings of Business Class! Experience UA977, a 14 hours direct flight from Dubai to Washington DC. The flight leaves at mid-night Dubai and lands in the US at around 7am. You would like to get enough sleep to allow you going to work around mid-day.

Forget about this if you have taken UA977…. Business Class is comparable to an Economy+! Still operating with manual seat controls, the leg room and seat alignment does not provide Business Class comfort.

After the recently becoming a single company, Continental and United together with United Express, Continental Express and Continental Connection, operate an average of 5,820 flights a day to 373 airports on six continents. However US Airlines are not in good financial shape.

The US's eight largest airline companies (counting United Airlines and Continental Airlines as one and Southwest Airlines and AirTran Airways separately) incurred a collective 2011 first-quarter net loss of $1.01 billion, ATW calculated. The deficit was slightly widened from a net loss of $985.7 million in the 2010 March quarter as rising fuel costs offset strong revenue gains. With these financials, one should not expect any major service quality uplift program, at least in the medium term.

Choice is yours, but I would opt for other options!

Markets Suffer as IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn Arrested

“IMF will remain fully functional and operational” – Caroline Atkinson, IMF Spokesperson.

This weekend’s biggest news hit the media that reported the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Head of International Monetary Fund.

He is expected to plead not guilty at his arraignment Monday, following allegations that the Frenchman sexually assaulted a maid in a swank New York City hotel. According to an account the woman provided to police, Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where he began to sexually assault her. She said she fought him off, then he dragged her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear. The woman was able to break free again and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened and police was called.

Anne Sinclair, who is a TV journalist and wife of Kahn said "I do not believe for one second the accusations brought against my husband. I have no doubt his innocence will be established,"

In 2008, Dominique was investigated over whether he had an improper relationship with a subordinate female employee. The IMF board found that the relationship was consensual, but called his actions "regrettable" and said they "reflected a serious error of judgment."

BUT markets have felt the jolts!

Gold prices kicked off the week on a softer note Monday, as the dollar gained following the news of Dominique’s arrest. Gold for June dropped $3.20 to $1,490.30 an ounce in electronic trading on Monday. Silver prices also weakened, with silver for July delivery dropping 36 cents to $34.65 an ounce!
Europe is also worried, Kahn had been one of the key players working to address Europe’s debt crisis. The euro has suffered, falling 7 weeks low. Asian shares took a dip over concerns about European sovereign debt woes.
Watch for developing news on media.

Are there Investment Opportunities during Economic Downturn?

A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought. Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars. Warren Buffett

The world economy is in recession! For a long time, we have been hearing this statement from friends, governments, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Central Banks etc. Real Estate Market is down; stocks are in shamble, mutual funds made huge losses, be careful hold on to your liquidity, do not make foolish investment decisions – have been the grapevine around coffee tables, pubs and golf courses.

Having said above, there are many financially literate opportunists that were able to crack business deals worth billions of Dollars. One recent example is $ 8.5 billion Skype buyout deal by Microsoft Corporation. If the times are challenging, I wonder why aggressive corporate entrepreneurs are making new investments, from where are they making money and parking it in money making opportunities?

Perhaps they are the intelligent once and are able to interpret the insights of businesses with open minds and turn these challenges into opportunities. They are able to tap into hidden opportunities, no matter how bad the economic indicators are. Or they are planting seeds today in the hope or sweet fruit in the times to come?

I was training a group of senior businessmen, and ethos of my session was “Investment Opportunities”. Although, belonging from wealthy business families, it was a depressed bunch of people. At least for the first hour of my session, I kept challenging their ability to improve upon their superficial way to looking at opportunities, and some of them started reacting! Off course I was expecting that.

After coffee break, said, if the business climate around you is so sickly, why are you in still in business? The fact is that your respective businesses are sustaining economic pressures; you are employing staff, producing goods, competing with other market players, paying for your luxuries. I went on and said:

“You are managing your business well. The only thing that is missing in the equation is your boldness to start investing in opportunities”.

They were astonished and started realizing the fact! Let’s discuss how you define opportunities, I said. They were thrilled, and over the next five hours the group came-up with a number of potential investment opportunities.

In my view, the general notion of being careful turns in to being lethargic during the time when economies are slow. But those with ability to understand that challenge are always willing to take calculated risks and are often successful!