Can you run an Airline

Can you run an Airline? If you think you can, take this fun and easy test. Please read each question carefully and weigh each multiple choice answer, although there are no right or wrong answers the way you answer each question will show whether you are executive material or whether you are nothing more than an lowly hourly grunt, but no matter how you answer have fun and good luck.

The Test

Question 1

The cost of fuel has increased by 40% over the last three months. Currently, you do not have the cash to purchase the fuel necessary for your day to day operations, and competition saw what your shortsighted management didn't and hedged so the increase in fuel cost will not affect them. What will you do?

A) Attempt to raise fares to cover the added cost.

B) Borrow money to pay for the necessary fuel.

C) Fire the clown you hired to keep an eye of fuel prices and hedge to save the company money.

D) Reduce non-fuel expenses like terminating the least paid employees by the thousands.

E) Give management a 12% raise for reducing costs by 12% to offset the 40% increase in costs.

The correct answer is E with honorable mention to D. Obviously you cannot raise your fares because your competition does not have to, and, as everyone knows, no matter how shitty the service, how poor the employees attitude is, how old and dirty the airplanes are and how poorly YOU are treated, every single cheap ass American will take the cheapest fare and repeatedly bitch about how bad the airline is and then 3 months later fly the same airline because their fare was 1 dollar cheaper.

You can't really borrow money to buy fuel because the companies financial position makes it too expensive to borrow the money, anyway, you have that money slated for your wife's boob job, your girlfriend's new BMW, and bribing the local police because of your Sons latest criminal activities.

Obviously you can't fire the 6 figure dipshit who's job it was was to hedge against 40% fuel increases because that's some executives buddy that couldn't hold a job at McDonalds cleaning toilets, so they hooked him up with a job they thought he couldn't do any damage in, whoops, someone messed up. But it's not your fault fuel prices shot up, you can't possibly know everything about the operation at any given moment, that's why we hire people to do that, Dammit, we should just fire that guy.

Why fire the people who were responsible for allowing the company to be put in this position, they make millions of dollars each and the company can't admit they hired morons, as such, one of the best solutions would be to fire thousands of employees making 10 dollars an hour so you can proudly boast that you are saving the company 10 million a year, which coincidentally, is the amount that the two executives are making who fucked up the whole fuel hedge program to begin with.

The correct answer is of course to give management a 12% raise after you proudly announce a 12% cost savings plan, no need to explain yourself, just tell everyone who complains about the corruption that they don't see the big picture and then embark on a campaign to fire them for questioning you to begin with, cause you're the smartest guy in the company by far, that's why you hired yourself.

If you answered E give yourself 10 points, D is worth 9 points, C is worth -10, B is worth 1 point and A is worth 2 points.

Question 2

Because of your brilliant leadership your airline is experiencing very high load factors in a very lucrative (Overpriced and under serviced) market. You pay millions of dollars to a consulting buddy to conduct a study. After he receives his huge paycheck, he tells you what you already know, that there is opportunity for more passengers in this market. What do you do?

A) Fuck over your loyal customer base by designating only one seat per flight for frequent flyer miles.

B) Do absolutely nothing because it wasn't your idea to increase flights out of that market and you're not about to let anyone else be right about something.

C) Reallocate more aircraft and resources from less profitable markets to increase profits out of the new lucrative market.

D) Reduce the number of flights into the market so you can teach those assholes who's boss, and six months later when you reinstate the aircraft into the market you look like a fucking genius for increasing profits.

E) Increase flights into the market and lay off employees needed to service the increased flying, that way you end up cancelling half the new flights and piss off your customers so bad that the few times you actually do run the flight, you tell everyone what a great job you're doing for them.

A, B, D and E are correct, because those options best prove you are the one in charge and (in theory) optimize profits, as an added bonus, you can repeatedly pay your consulting friends to conduct similar studies every three months to coincide with earnings releases to make it look like you're really evaluating new markets when your buddies are really sitting at home drinking margaritas and just copying down info they read from their local newspapers, those people have to eat too.

If you answered A, B, D, and E give yourself 40 points, if you answered just one of the options only award yourself 1 point and if you answered C you get -10 points because you didn't think about all those people who have helped you along the way, those people can fuck you over by exposing you at any time, gotta keep their palms greased.

Question 3

A natural disaster has impacted your operation in a major market for an undermined amount of time. What do you do?

A) Pull out of the market until those pricks beg for you to come back at ridiculously high prices.

B) Temporarily halt service to the market, lay off every employee in that market, if they ain't working, you ain't paying them, it's not your fault an act of god struck that area, if God wants them to eat, let God pay them. Reallocate your remaining resources to another more profitable market and threaten the devastated market with a lawsuit if they don't pay you for causing a disruption of your scheduled service and point out that you have a contract they are breaching by not being able to let aircraft into the airport because of damage from the natural disaster.

C) Temporarily halt service in the affected market and reallocate them to the nearest unaffected market, but make sure you lay off everyone in the affected market and make everyone in the nearest market that you increased traffic to work forced overtime and claim it a hardship to pay overtime to them and launch a smear campaign against the unions telling everyone how they are trying to profit off the misfortunes of others.

D) Temporarily suspend service in affected market and reallocate resources and employees to nearest unaffected market.

The correct answers are B and C as these options save you the most money and actually increases cash flow as you don't have the expense of labor or fuel but have a steady flow of cash from the distressed market from the threat of lawsuits. As an added bonus, you can probably force the government to hand you over some subsidies from losing the revenue from the distressed market.

If you answered B and C give yourself 20 points, if you answered A give yourself 5 points because you never know, that might work, and if you answered D give yourself -10 because it's not your job to keep paying a bunch of freeloaders. If you answered just B or C give yourself 10 points, at least you recognize an opprtunity, just not in it's most profitable form.

Question 4

Due to your brilliant and continuous cost cutting and improvement efforts, your airline has significantly reduced the amount of time needed to complete maintenance. As a result of this tremendous savings you have managed an under the table deal for third party maintenance that is generating a shitload of cash. What will you do with the extra cash?

A) Use the cash to pay down the massive debt you are in.

B) Contribute more than required to your now underfunded pension plans.

C) Give employees a much needed raise after taking about 30% of their pay away over the last 5 years.

D) Purchase equipment to update your aging pre WW 2 equipment that still has Property of U.S. Army marked all over it.

E) Give upper management a huge raise and restructure everyones contract so that you and your buddies receive millions in stock options, then release a press statement telling everyone how valuable you and upper management are to the companies future and brilliant hard working geniuses such as yourself could easily be lured away to a competitor if you are not properly compensated, BOOHHHH YAAAHHHH, gotta pay for that retirement castle in Switzerland somehow.

If you answered A, B, C, or D please stop taking the test now, you're fired, and you have no business in the airline industry. Please go back to McDonalds or whatever hole you crawled out of because you obviously do not understand how the airline industry works. If you answered E give yourself 50 bonus points and continue on to question 5.

Question 5

A low cost carrier has entered one of your major markets. They have managed to run their operation far much more efficiently than yours and thusly their fares are significantly lower than yours. What do you do?

A) Lay off your high priced skilled employees and hire unskilled, untrained contract labor to work around your 60 million dollar apiece aircraft to reduce your expenses and then tell the board of directors that this is a brilliant move because the contractor has insurance and every time they damage the aircraft your company receives twice as much money than if they had actually used the plane for revenue, oh, and match the competitors fare. A win-win situation for everyone.

B) Match the fares, but don't change anything else.

C) Match the fares, but then hand out like 20,000 free tickets on the matched routes and then reduce the number of routes so that every flight is oversold by passengers that are flying for free, that will teach those bastards.

D) Change nothing and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a smear campaign against your competitor, ooohh, ohhhh, yeah, and then hire your consultanting buddies to conduct surveys to show why paying your high fares are good for the local economy and to pay for all that, threaten to lay off employees by the thousands if you don't get your way because your losing so much money on those matched routes that you are flying everyone around on for free, stupid fuck, what kinda of crazy retard would fly 20,000 people around for free, I'm gonna fire the stupid bastard that came of with that idea as soon as I find out who it was.

E) Match the fares and reduce expenses to remain competitive.

The correct answer is A, C and D, those options offer the best solution to make it look like your trying to do something about competition, and of course in the end offer you the opportunity to give yourself a raise. If you answered correctly give yourself 30 points. If you answered B or E you receive -50 points because your a pussy for giving in to some lowly upstart airline. If you answered only A, B or D you only get 1 point because you did not recognize how to capitalize on this situation, but a least you tried to make yourself richer.

Question 6

You just spent hundreds of millions of dollars greasing the palms of politicians, special interest groups, consultants and foreign governments and miraculously you were awarded a new international route, however, to take advantage of this oportunity, you need to invest up to 200 million dollars, What do you do?

A) Accuse both governments of corruption by unfairly expecting you to shell out that kind of money to upgrade facilities that you don't own and then call every person that you bribed and threaten to expose them if they don't intervene and have both governments pay for the upgrades.

B) Buy new aircraft and equipment and hire more skilled, qualified employees to properly operate the new international service to make a good impression for future route considerations.

C) Pass up the new opportunity because of your financial situation and comittments to promises made to employees.

D) Do not invest anything into the new service and wait until you actually begin flying the route before you actually look at the logistics of servicing it, then quickly blame the embaressement of looking like a fucking retard on some mid level manager that was copied in on a memo that was sent out about the new route and then scapegoat him because it was obviously his fault for either running the flight late constantly, cancelling the flight repeatedly or repeatedly delaying it because you forgot to set up a decent operation to support the new route. Jesus Christ, how the hell could anyone think that your decisions are wrong, obviously its not your fault and you can't be blamed for everyone else screwing up.

E) Reallocate aircraft and other resources to begin operation in the new market.

The correct answer is D. You obviously don't want to commit any cash that you have slated for management raises to servicing a new route, just best to throw the whole thing together the day before you start flying the route and just scapegoat someone when it fails. Give yourself 10 points if you answered D, give yourself 9 points and honorable mention if you choose A and if your choose B, C or E give yourself -10 points and report to your family doctor for a drug test.

Question 7

Over the past 5 years healthcare costs have doubled and they are projected to increase for the foreseeable future. What do you do?

A) Allow the company to absorb the increased cost because you do not want your employees to not go to the doctor so that they can continue to receive quality healthcare which will allow them to be more productive and happier workers.

B) Keep the healthcare benefits in place but pass on a small increase in costs to the employees. A small increase should not affect them and they will still receive quality healthcare.

C) Solicit more bids from healthcare insurers and offer a wide variety of options and costs to employees. Offer employees incentives for absorbing a greater portion of the healthcare costs such as flex-time, work from home, on site daycare, incentive bonuses for attendance and good health habits and on site heathcare professionals for advice and to handle minor issues that would otherwise cause lost time.

D) Ask for employee feedback, after all, you hired each and every employee because you felt they were the best person available, your employees have a weath of knowledge from a wide range of cultures and industries and could be a great source of radical and ground breaking ideas that could change the way your company does business.

E) None of the above.

If you answered E give yourself 100 points, you truly are a souless prick whose only freinds are your local pusher and pimp.

All of other answers impact your bottom line which impacts YOUR bonuses and raises, what sane businessman would forgo their own bonuses and raises to help out the employees, after all, they are nothing but a bunch of trained monkeys that will do whatever you tell them or they are fired, healthcare is their problem, this is an airline, not a fucking daycare, those worthless, lazy bastards need to show up for their lowly shit jobs, if they get sick that's their fault for not taking care of themselves, we are not here to babysit them, they are grown adults, fucking worthless, lazy liabilities, the world will be a better place if we could run the entire operation with computers and remote controls, Christ I wish we could go back a thousand years and just work the bastards til they drop and then fire them for sleeping on the job, fucking peons. If you answered A,B,C or D give yourself -50 and move onto the next question Mother Teresa.

Question 8

Several smaller markets have become very lucrative and are willing to not only subsidize any airline that services their market, but offer an insane profit regardless of passenger load. What do you do?

A) Agree to do the routes but toss the routes to your regional carrier and inform them that they have to service the routes with no increase in costs all the time keeping the profitable situation to yourself.

B) Agree to do the routes with no intention of running a decent operation and just suck up the profit for as long as the market will keep paying you for the shitty service.

C) Agree to service the market and increase your profits at their expense even further by hiring unskilled, untrained contract labor to do everything except fly the plane. The service may be horrible, the planes filthy, customer service non-existant and more flights cancel than actually make it in and out of the market, but what do you care, your company is getting paid no matter how badly you fuck that market over, but there's nothing they can do about it, they signed a contract, so Get You Some Of That, you bunch of chumps.

D) Agree to service the market and put your oldest equipment on the route so that the flights cancel about 75% of the time and then hire a bunch of your buddies at outrageous salaries and give them titles like, Executive Vice-President of West Coast Market Strategy Initiatives or Director of Midwest Market Strategies and Managing Director of New Market Strategies Southeast Division and then give all the new markets your fucking over their names as contact people. Of course these new "Executives" are just an enigma, no one will ever see them, no one knows who they are and no one has any idea where they work or how to get ahold of them, this way, it will keep complaining down to a minimum from the new markets because they can only complain to employees who have nothing to do with the problem.

If you answered all of the above, give yourself 50 points, if you answered none of the above thinking I put in another trick question you lose 75 points and if you answered any combination of A, B, C or D, well, at least you tried, give yourself 5 points.

Question 9

You recognize that by ridding yourself of some of those overpriced, underworked pilots and flight attendants you could increase profits by 20%. Due to you shortstaffing the operation, cancellations due to lack of crews begin. What do you do?

A) Ignore the situation all the while pointing out that the company is saving 20% in labor costs.

B) Blame your lowest level of management for allowing the cancellations to occur and threaten them that if they can't find someone to scapegoat for the situation, they will be scapegoated instead.

C) Begin a smear campaign against the unions and then give yourself and management a 20% raise for doing such a bang up job, oh yeah, and blame some low level jerkoff manager for the problems.

D) Recognize that your decision hurt the operation and quickly call a strategy meeting to brainstorm how to damage control the situation and quickly return the employees to their jobs with an apology for underestimating their value to the company.

If you answered A, B and C give yourself 50 bonus points. If you answered D, you must be kidding, what are you, related to the Pope, the only person that would actually take D as an option is Jesus Christ himself, really, did you seriously take D? I mean, were you really serious when you took D or was it just like a joke answer because you were getting tired of taking this test. Well, if you seriously took D, no matter what you answered for the other 8 questions, you automatically receive -100 points and are hereby sainted. Please proceed to the nearest church and accept your sainthood as you have probably been touched by the hand of god. After receiving your sainthood, proceed to the nearest Airline headquarters and just hang around outside, your pure goodness will drive any airline CEO insane and hopefully he will just take his own life and make the world a better place for it. Your job here is done.

Your Results

Ok, now for the fun part, add up all your points, don't cheat now and look at the table below to see if You can run an Airline. As an added bonus I will also give you a ranking, you will be ranked anywhere from a airline CEO to a lowly grunt hourly loser. Ok here we go.

• 210 points- PERFECT! you are a CEO. Go to the nearest Airlines headquarters, present this test to them and proudly inform them that you should be running the airline. Your total disregard for human life and your complete lack of a conscious make you a perfect airline executive, and as such, no matter how bad you fuck the airline up, as long as you take care of management, the board of directors and anyone who holds a shitload of your airline stocks you can run the airline into the ground because your going to get your money, pension, retirement and payoff even if your run the airline completely bankrupt, after all its all about you, fuck everyone else.

• 150-209- You have made some mistakes, but you are still executive material. As an airline executive your corruption is unsurpassed, your ability to force employees to take pay cuts just so you and your buddies can take the same percentage as a raise is your saving grace. Although not perfect, your as close as they get, just make sure you put people in place that can either protect you or that you can scapegoat. Good Luck and may your girlfriend never meet your wife.

• 110-149- Although you lack the corruption and deceit to be an executive or CEO, your score shows that you are still capable of running an airline with a little training. You score qualifies you for upper management material, but be careful, you do show signs of compassion and that could be your downfall, spend some time blatently fucking over your employees, get in some more practice at covering up your corruption and mistakes and spend some quality time making friends in key positions at Human Resources, those friends will be invaluable at covering up your stupidity and mistakes before they can hurt you, remember, there are no friends among thieves, trust no one, if you have someone covering up your stupidity, make sure you get some dirt on them so that if you need to hang them out to dry, you can do it and distance yourself from them.

• 85-109- Unfortunately you lack the skills needed to run an airline. Your score shows your nothing better than lower management material, its not your fault, you just have morals, ethics and a concious, all qualities most companies look for in people, but not qualities coveted by the airline industry. With a great deal of work and with the right connections you could possibly move up to mid-level or executive material. Hone you skills by turning your parents in to the police for abusing you as a child. If your grandparents are still alive, try and have them committed to a crooked rest home that will split the money from their estate with you. Practice fucking over employees by firing them on a whim and then while they fight to get their jobs back, falsify a bunch of write ups and put them in their personnel file, falsify their signitures to make it look like you followed procedure when, in reality, your not smart enough to complete a search-a-word puzzle.

• 50-84- Sorry, nothing you do will ever qualify you to run an airline. Consider work in a industry better suited to your skills such as a 911 dispatcher, suicide hotline volunteer or social work. If you must work in the airline industry you will never advance past the lowest level of management in the airline, you lack the true skills needed to keep the airline running and everyone in management happy. As with many jobs, there are just some people who are not suited to do the job, no amount of training, experience or education will ever take your work ethic, morals, conscious or passion for fairness out of you. Good luck in whatever endeavor you choose.

• 1-49- Scores these low prove that you obviously have no clue how an airline works. If you scored this low, you are obviously either an hourly worker or very idealistic. In rare cases I have seen scores such as these from someone who has either been disillusioned or has been scapegoated but still craves to remain in the industry. I pray for you if you choose to stay or plan to join the airline industry, you have neither the fortitude nor are you hardened enough to survive in such a corrupt environment. God be with you.

• -50-0- What are you? a fucking retard? my dog could have scored higher than this. Hey, just kidding, if you scored this low consider a career change to Priest, Fireman or Benedictine Monk, you obviously have never set foot in an airport or seen anything about the airline industry. I understand that you answered as honestly as possible and your Moral Fiber shows, so take my advice, RUN, run as fast as you can away from anything airline related, your aura of goodness is like sun to a vampire, any airline executive that accidentally strays into your presence would be burned with a fire as hot as the sun, you are too honest and pure and your abilities are needed in other industries that can still be saved with your help, so God Speed my friend, I wish you nothing but the best.

• Less than -50- Although you can't run an airline you obviously have the intelligence to perform such menial jobs as Brain Surgery, aerospace engineering, Genetisist, Astrophysisist or Geophysisist. We recognize that those careers are not as rewarding or critical as keeping politicians rich or helping keep corrupt, incompetent, self-serving, parasitic, lying, souless assholes employed.

Think about it for a second, do you really want an airline CEO wandering the streets and accidentally becoming employed to run a hospital, my god could you imagine the damage caused by that, the first thing that incompetent fuck would do is fire all the doctors and contract out their jobs to illegal aliens at $7 an hour and then tell the hospital investors that it's a good move because if they screw up and kill some one, the contactor has insurance and....... Oh wait, uuummmm, aaaahhhh, well, insurance will still pay us, even if the patient dies right?. Aaaahhh, good, good, as long as we get our money, everything else is those sickies problem, were not here to baby them, it's not our fault they are underinsured and work in dangerous indutries such as the airline indust...., construction, yeah that's what I meant to say, the construction industry, just best to get them into an industry where they can't do any damage to the millions of other important human beings who are actually trying to make the world a better place. Think about it, do you really want an airline executive thinking about a career change to a doctor because they are not paid enough, holy shit, just pay them more money than they are worth to keep them segregated from human beings who still have a chance of being saved, at least those worthless Ass clowns restrict the majority of their damage to their own industry. Sad thing is, they are so incredibly clueless and out of touch with reality that they spend 99.9% of their time infighting with themselves and other airlines to the point other industries use them as a model of what NOT to do. Other industries sell tickets so employees can watch a bunch of grabastic, clueless, braindead airline executives as they play musical retards, continually recycling unemployable burned out dipshit executives who drove some other airline into the ground, (Wouldn't want to pass up on all that quality management experience from Eastern, Valuejet, Braniff, Vanguard, Legend Air and Pan Am).

Analyzing the Results

Those who scored less than 0 take heart, you may not be able to run an airline, but you wont be going to Hell for all eternity either. Next time you see some smiling cheese dick Airline Executive drive by in his wives BMW with his girlfriend by his side while he is on his 25th week of vacation that year, smile and wave to him, know that when he leaves this earthly plane he will suffer a firey tortuous afterlife for all eternity and he will take comfort in knowing that someone was actually nice to him for no other reason than he was a fellow human being. Small comfort for him as he spends all eternity being injested into a jet engine at full thrust.

If you scored between 0-75 there is still hope for you. You have not yet turned to the dark side, but do show glimmers of evil. Please reconsider the airline industry as the evil it represent corrupts absolutely and could destroy someone as innocent as yourself. Unfortunately your not corrupt enough to be in airline management, but probably just corrupt enough to get yourself in trouble if lured to the dark side. God is merciful, but not stupid, please reconsider before it is to late.

If you scored between 75-99 points on this test than it is my sad duty to inform you that you have gone over to the dark side of the force. The evil that has corrupted you has now taken over and now controls you. However, do not lose hope, as long as you didn't score above 100 there is still a chance that you could be brought back from the brink, it won't be easy though and the path back to the light will be hard, but there is still hope for you, hope that can only come if you want it.

For those of you that scored over 100 but less than 150, you cannot be saved. Your black heart died a long time ago and your real hell is here on earth as you spend each tortuous, sleepless night trying to figure out how to cover up your lastest fuck up/mistake/stupidity/corrupt action/etc...etc...etc. I hope the dirty money is a comfort to you as the stress from your evil corruption slowly and painfully eats away at you more and more each day. For your sake, I hope someone with a pure heart feels pity on you and they can ease your suffering before the lack of sleep, high blood pressure, bleeding ulcers and brutal headaches cause your heart to explode and every blood vessel in your brain ruptures. Have a nice day.

If you scored over 150 but less than 210, you are one of the devils minions. Animals and little children sense your evil presence when you enter the same zip code they are in. Unconditional acts of love escape you, you can't even give unconditional love to your own children you piece of shit. You are a friendless, bottom feeding coward whose only purpose is to be a yes man to some asshole who would sell you out for a shiny new nickle, good decision you souless abomination.

If you scored a perfect 210 than the bible was right, there is an anti-christ, and you are it. Anyone that comes in contact with your evil ass (Or kisses it) will need to be blessed by the Pope himself, you corrupt, evil fuck. You suck the very life out of anyone that is in the same zip code as you are. You delight as you masturbate while you send out memo's to lay off thousands of people. Your total lack of any positive quality will be studied by scientists for thousands of years after you finally die, probably by your own hand, so that they can try and understand how Hitler, Stalin and Nero managed to reincarnated themselves into you.

Just for Fun

Just for fun, compare your results to the hoards of other who have seen if they could run an airline. Lets take a look, in no particular order;

• Adolf Hitler - Scored 195. His score was high but his unconditional love of his dogs negatively affected his final score.

• God - Didn't take the test, but uses the results to determine whether those who do take the test are going up, or going down.

• Saddam Hussein - Scored 150, but cheated. The fact that he cheated over rides his score and propells him in to the elite category of Airline CEO. As a side note, he believes the U.S. invaded Iraq right after he took the test, so he blames the Airline industry for his downfall, thus, making him a perfect fit for any CEO at any U.S. airline.

• Joseph Stalin - Scored 250. What can I say, anyone who let his son die, drove his wife to suicide and who's own grandson disavowed all knowledge of him, (Not to mention the 10's of millions of people he murdered.) should get the highest score, good job Joseph.

• Oprah - Scored -50, but cheated and looked at the rankings before she took the test. Hmmmmm, she cheated so she automatically achieves airline CEO status, but she tried to score low to help her sleep at night, well, ok then, good luck with that.

• Christopher Walken - Suggested we take the test and shove it. That's ok, he rules.

• Bruce Campbell - Scored 0. Hail to the king baby.

• Charles De Gaulle - Went to England before he could take the test, said he would take it when he got back.