Employees as Hard on Airline as Customers

US Airways has the worst on-time performance of any major US airline; it also has 36,000 employees encouraged to e-mail CEO Douglas Parker about everything from smelly planes to lousy in-flight snacks to a reservation system that doesn't work yet, reports the New York Times. Says Parker: The feedback “keeps management extremely honest.”

Parker fields questions during quarterly, company-wide videoconference meetings at the airline's HQ, where he answers a mix of live comments and e-mails. Some e-mails make it into the weekly newsletter, printed verbatim—vitriol and all. “Not some sanitized version,” Parker tells the Times. Employees “are going to talk about it anyway.”