FlyWorld

Fair point. I hold that the "Continentalization" was widespread at the executive level, but, of course, lots of legacy UA staff remain below that level. However, since those legacy UA staff can presumably keep their jobs by obeying orders from the individuals brought in from CO, the CO influence is disproportionate to the number of heads from UA vs CO remaining in the overall organization.

xzh445

You need to talk to some people that work at Willis Tower. Take a large sample. It cuts both ways. ESPECIALLY at the Manager to Managing Director levels. There are a lot of legacy CO people in the exact same situation you describe, in fear for their livlihood and biting holes in their tongues. Man, am I glad I don't work in that environment.

Frankly, they all need to "break off the review mirrors" and start looking forward, but there are "kingdoms to maintain". Too many mid-level people with the "this is the was WE (insert legacy carrier here) did it" mentality looking to put their mark on the way things are run. They need to stop thinking of each other as enemies, and start focusing on their rival in ATL that is eating their lunch. Hitting on all turbines
That shakeup reported in the news is reverbreating down many levels. Will be interesting to see what comes of it.

Re: "Continentalization" I read many things in this forum that get attributed to COdbaUA that never occured at CO. e.g. The current boarding process. That is a mess, but it's not the way CO boarded.....yet gets proclaimed as COdbaUA boarding here. Back to front, at this point, would probably be an improvement, but let's not digress.

AAExPlat

So do I. I would argue that CO began slipping under Gordo at the end, accelerated under Larry and went into freefall under Jeff.

FlyingNut724

Agreed. While there is a learning curve and dysfunction associated with the use of the archaic SHARES system. I believe the root cause of the low employee morale and customer frustration is the "no help for you" policies that re programmed into SHARES. That is not a front line issue, but an issue from the top of the organization.

BearX220

Absurd comparison -- UA isn't a consultancy loaded with highly-paid brainiacs, it's a service provider loaded with low-paid randoms. In the latter case you get high-performing teams via tactics other than threats and firings. Southwest Airlines and The Four Seasons don't top the service-quality rankings by firing 10 percent of their workforce every year. You prevent "disdain for my customers" from sinking in by hiring carefully, managing to inspire, and giving the workers a stake in the fate of the enterprise.

I am not defending the UA workforce by any means. One thing that comes through loud and clear, from call center experiences to gate agents to cabin service, is that the employees are barely managed at all. They can do whatever the hell they want without reprisal. But the answer is not to scapegoat them, threaten them, badmouth them, wish in public for them to go away, etc. but build a genuine service culture. This UA has not managed in decades (service goodness comes from individual worker initiative, often workers + customer against management / policy)... and Smisek shows no interest in attempting.

In a long-ago thread asking who we'd like to see replace Smisek as CEO I suggested Jeff Bezos of Amazon - a guy who understands service culture and the importance of customers. I still think it'd be fascinating to see. Smisek, at any rate, is not the guy. He's about as inspiring as a North Korean missile test.

bob_the_d

he's doing WHAT to his staff?!

HR people look away...

alex_b

Sorry, I was responding specifically to the point that you can't improve anything by getting rid of people, which is clearly untrue.

You are absolutely right (and if you look at my other post earlier today I said as much) that you achieve this by "hiring carefully, managing to inspire, and giving the workers a stake in the fate of the enterprise", but all of the carrots also need to come with a stick too. At the moment any improvements that could be brought about by positive management action seem likely to be derailed by embittered long-term staff who seem to mainly be marking time. When things have become really bad there does need to be a level of clearing out along with the incentives; although you're also right that I see no evidence of any of this coming from the current leadership.

As for hiring Bezos, I've found Amazon's CS to be extremely mixed and whilst their IT platform is fantastic for CS, he doesn't have the background for an in-person service company. UA should be looking to one of the big hospitality players who have managed to provide a really strong CS proposition with a US workforce: Carnival, Disney Resorts, Four Seasons (perhaps even Fridays).

spin88

Hey I have not run an airline before But I can run the numbers and last quarter UA's profit from Operations was $14M as I recall. They are consistently under-performing in PRASM post 3/3, and had they hit DL or AA's revenue growth numbers it would have been roughly another $550M per quarter in revenue. Assuming this quarter is similar (and their under-performance is the same) that is about $1.6B in lost revenue.

Put bluntly UAL has sucked on the revenue side post 3/3. I can't draw a straight line from individual major changes (SHARES/MP changes/TODs/cross-fleeting/branding) to loss of revenue, but its hard at this point to blame ONLY the poor on time performance in June/July as the numbers are still bad. Now folks get the Ax, looks to me that the happy talk about how "TODs are great, they make us money" just might add up. Just saying.

I would expect nothing less. Decisions were made. Yes Jeff participated in them, and I assume agreed with them. However, if those decisions are not going so well, I would expect in any organization that the folks who pushed those decisions/strategy are the first to get the Ax. The head guy/gal then sees if they can turn the ship in part/whole. If what is said here - that Bergason was the "all passangers are equal" guy - then he is a good one to fire

I would not go that far. People change but what does it mean? Objectively, UAs ads/marketing/promos/branding are awful. Does anyone think they are good? If this is just "sell the same product, but better" then its what it is, and I don't think it will have that much impact.

On the other hand if this is a "our approach of treating every transaction individually and trying to maximize revenue on that transaction is not working" decision then perhaps things get better.

But until I hear an announcement of how UA is going to change, I am NOT counting my chickens.

EWR764

UAGS agents and former CO Concierges underwent a customer service training program developed by Disney earlier this year, and a similar regimen will be conducted out systemwide for all customer-facing employees in 2013.

channa

The former UA CS VP was from Disney, but they canned her and went with the CO person in that spot. I think she landed at Allstate.

blueman2

I believe UA hired their head of customer relations from Disney a few years ago (Barbara Higgins, I think). She managed to stay for about 18 months before running, not walking, from UA. I recall an article where she said UA was not serious about change.

ibuyyoufly

What I wrote isn't code. I only speak for myself, but if it were me running this Org, and even as Smi/J said, if "anyone" feel's they cannot change to meet the demands of a new and much larger merged company, they should leave. That means anyone.

But of course we know people won't leave, even if they can't change. I would also add that means they need to "elevate" their game. That's where Foland and Compton come into play. Smi/J did what he needed to at his "direct report" level, now it's up to these two to do the same below them.

I see many more changes coming. Embrace change. To change is to grow. The quicker the better so this company can get on the road to recovery and try to make up some very valuable lost ground. DL, AA and US are trying to do what they can to put UA in their rear-views and are not standing still. Time for the current free-worlds largest airline, UA, to develop some momentum and not let them. Be proud, be loud and scream it from the Mountain tops.

Wx4caster

I wonder what the severance package included, perhaps a $million dollars (in the form of a united.com voucher that can't be split), a lifetime* membership to the United Club (*good for the remainder of 2013 only), a fee-waived Explorer card, a lifetime supply of pillows from the surplus shed, and some state of the art headphones?

ric_wx

Wondering aloud if we are reading into this the wrong way. Sometimes people, even in an exec capacity, are fired because they made a big mistake on something that to company outsiders might seem small but perhaps was viewed as a critical or strategic initiative within the business.

This could be as insignificant as a missed target with their associated Chase business or the fact that not enough MP members are liquidating miles for things other than airline seats. Looking at who was dismissed, I can only assume they were spending a lot of time on things like this that we hardly even think about (hence the problem). The financial metric declines, at least I would think, are far more rooted in persistent operational failures and questionable yield management practices before an indictment of the loyalty marketing schemes.

cesco.g

What position was JC in at CO? What is he now? In what way was he a "good" guy in CO days?