Exleftseat

It is really sad to read the report and the various references to United and their ( United's ) responses. Like this one :
"As for United, spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said the carrier is making improvements, including customer service training for tens of thousands of employees.

“We invested significant resources in 2013 to give our customers an improved experience and better customer service,” Johnson said. “On-time performance is up, cancellations are down and we continue to introduce new products and services to give travelers more inflight comfort, better information and more control and consistency when they travel.”

Just think about it. On the UA side we had all of this already before the merger :
excellent customer service ( at least for 1K and above ), on time performance, good boarding procedures etc. Of course there were complaints and things could have been improved, that's a given for any business. However, after the merger the new management succeeded in destroying a decent if not great airline and years later proudly reports introductions of improvements........... We are not even close to where we were before the merger......Fact is that new product and services include the elimination of BKK and destruction of a once great FF program. More inflight comfort means cramming in more seats, most of them uncomfortable. When does a pax have control with an airline. And consistency means more RJs on flights with longer duration. And I am not even talking about the coffee served.
As I said it's really sad.

fastair

How is that ironic? Leading up to merger, UA was rising and CO was falling, based on this survey. On operational metrics, UA had already surpassed CO, which was extending it's deteriorating performance. Initially, company leadership was about 50/50, but many UA leaders were quickly replaced by CO leaders.

Me, I'd try to promote those that had a recent track record of improving metrics, not the other way, but of course, I'm not a chief exec.

PV_Premier

my personal takeaway:

all the legacy airlines are bad, with Delta being "less bad" and United being "more bad".

milepig

Speaking as someone who had the misfortune to fly (twice) on merger weekend, we've all lived through seeing a perfectly fine airline (not great, but fine) descend rapidly into the 4th or 5th circle of hades. As much as I'd like to think they're clawing their way back out, I see little evidence. Self-proclaiming themselves to be "flyer friendly" doesn't count.

I'm not even talking about service changes. I'm talking about core functionalities, reservations system, auto rebooking, inability to book itins you know exist, huge issues with PQM not working properly, issues with Chase miles not posting, semi-hidden up fares, having to fight to get LH miles posted. On and on. Their systems are just plain broken and it seems to be getting worse instead of better.

ThisYearsModel

The old UA was not perfect, but this UA is very poor. Admittedly my narrow POV, but as a 1K and near 2 Million miler, I feel like an occasional flyer being herded with the rest of the commoners. The boarding process sucks when 50% of the passengers are in group 1. The availability of FF award seats has diminished considerably. The ability to upgrade has been almost completely undone. But......there are a lot of Smisek videos and signs telling us how "friendly" they are.

channa

The 2 areas where UA was really low were just post-bankruptcy when there are presumably product cuts, and then around 2008 timeframe, when they did some really boneheaded moves like not cleaning planes. That's a CS killer right there. Fortunately they reversed that, but reputations take a bit to die off.


They're destroying the "friendly" slogan much as they've destroyed the globe logo.

Both will need to go when the regime changes to show a turnaround.

EWR764

If we are going to give this survey credence such that its results are meaningful now, then we simply cannot selectively ignore the fact that the various iterations of United Airlines from 1999-2010 were rather bad as well, as the scores cited above bear out.

The bottom line is that this management team is essentially running two poor airlines, and I maintain that the root cause of UA's current problems is the inability for this management team to find a way to integrate the operation. Since the merger, they've blown through an astonishing amount of employee goodwill and I am quite confident that this management team will never, ever regain the trust of the rank-and-file.

Treating your people like garbage (despite Bethune-era mantras, which are mostly lip service at this point) and not giving them the tools they need to do their jobs is not a sustainable strategy for running a business. Eventually the contempt trickles down to your customers.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Most of the top were at CO when CO did well in this survey. What has changed is the direction of the company and attitude towards quality, which Jeff Smisek really is dictating. The drop in the survey numbers can be tied primarily or directly to arrival of a new CEO, not a change in the rest of the staff. UA is a very top-down company right now. IF you want to play the UA vs CO game, the numbers went down when UA staff were added in the merger. That's just as non-sensible as your assertion that the drop is due to primarily CO staff - they were with Previous CEOs with good rankings. Nope - the scores can be directly laid on the fact that they made a lawyer CEO of a service-oriented company. Put a good CEO in and the staff/company will react accordingly.

EWR764

Also a nonsensical generalization. Have a look at Richard Anderson's background... I can assure you that profession has no correlation to bad leadership.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Fair enough. I'll just say Smisek should not be CEO of a service-oriented company.

azepine00

my personal takeaway is that any ranking that puts WN and B6 at the top does not consider factors important to me

also contradictions here regarding past rankings are quite amusing..

oh well - yet another useless thread in this forum

BearX220

The brand damage done in two years (FTers who maintain branding doesn't matter, skip this bit) is incalculable and will require years, post-Smisek, to fix. Claiming you're friendly when you're clearly adversarial is worse than claiming nothing at all.

The ratings we're discussing do not have anything to do with whether an airline flies to Kuwait or has 787s or lie-flat seats. They have to do with how satisfied customers are with delivery on the brand promise. In that regard I promise you JetBlue and Southwest do a far better job of meeting expectations, day in, day out.

EWR764

Agreed. His body of work as an executive is serving as CEO of two underperforming organizations and overseeing a merger (essentially set into motion by exogenous factors) that will go down as one of the most colossal IT failures in the history of corporate America. Hardly an exemplary track record.

azepine00

I see... so you are saying that UA (unlike WN etc) just set an unattainable target of perfection?

Exleftseat

To read "UA" and "perfection" in one sentence makes me cringe