Ocn Vw 1K

Just a reminder that the thread's topic is CEO Smisek's appearance on CNBC a few days ago. Increasingly personalized -- and polarizing -- posts about the historical merits or demerits of operations or officials of s/UA or s/CO are off-topic. Thanks, Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator.

united4

Feel feel to google all of it, because every word of it is true.

Back on topic, this is not the first time Jeff Smisek has publically said CO was going down the gutter, he practically pleaded to Congress under oath that he didn't see a future for CO that didn't involve a "hand to mouth existence" and practically begged how they "need this merger". Glenn Tilton NEVER said United was in dire straights when responding to the same question Jeff was asked!

rduer

My biggest concern with what I heard was he thinks the "heavy lifting" in the merger is over- almost like they are in the fine tuning stage.
Has there been another United merger that I am not familiar with ??
The one I see is disjointed, sick ,and shares no common values at the operational and service level

CKinMD

I think the key word in that sentence is "shares".

JOSECONLSCREW28

And continue to believe that UA was such a well run airline and had no problems and the employees never had attitudes towards customers or anything. But with you and that other posters well known hate for anything CO it doesn't surprise me that you two agree with anything the both of you post. Was CO a horrible airline like you and that other poster make it out to be? Not at all; was UA the greatest airline you two claim it is? Not at all. CO had it's problems just like UA had it's problems, but to continuing to believe that UA was so perfect and CO was so terrible is laughable at best.

channa

I don't think anyone thinks UA was perfect. But many think CO was perfect. Breaking that part of the CO culture is going to take time.

That's probably why the host was trying to bait Smisek -- to try to get another pro-CO/anti-UA sound bite out of him. It didn't work, so maybe Smisek has learned his lesson finally

JOSECONLSCREW28

My issue isn't necessarily anything sUA, but rather certain posters here who can't accept the fact that CO wasn't the horrible airline and that UA was such a great airline they are making it out to be.

channa

Some of the areas where UA excelled (and CO was weaker) were biased toward high-level Elites/very frequent flyers. The participants on this board tend to be biased that way as well, which is where the notion comes from. In some of these aspects (e.g., speed and proactivity of IRROPS handling, global upgrades, ease and reliability of processing these sorts of transactions, etc.), CO was indeed horrible compared to the competition.

If you hung around a discussion board of AUS residents who maybe took a leisure trip every year or two, I'm sure the sentiment would be the opposite (UA sucked, CO was awesome). That also mirrors the more populist surveys where CO did well and UA did not.

Had the merger resulted in the company maintaining UA's high level of service and treatment of very frequent flyers, while also maintaining CO's level of service for less frequent flyers, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Instead, they downgraded service for an important set of customers and literally told them they're going to like it.

That's tantamount to the labor issues you alluded to, except in this case, they've damaged the relationship with customers.

Meanwhile, the CO brand is prevalent, CO systems, the CO CEO, etc., so CO gets the blame for what's transpired.

Which is why I think that as they rebuild, at some point, they will need to redo the brand if they ever want to get back in good standing with VFFs. There is just so much ill will about CO among current and former VFFs, that in order to fully recover, eliminating the perception that they're CO is a requirement.

And based on the interview, it seems that Smisek may know that's an issue now, since he didn't want to go there with any of the CO Rah! Rah! like he'd done in the past. While I don't think he'll be able to win over ex-UA customers or employees, at least he may realize that agitating things further is not going to make things better.

callum9999

He said most of the heavy lifting. Big difference.

Not being American I don't fly United very often - only 3 or 4 flights a year - but I don't recognise all this awful stuff people keep claiming happens. While the obvious answer would be I don't fly them enough to see it, to me it just looks like a group of frequent fliers who want this to fail because they don't benefit as much as they did before.

The airline is now stable and profitable - that is what he's employed to do, not make you happy (not ignoring the fact happy customers are more likely to come back!). I think many people on here mix up their vision of what an airline should be with what the shareholders want their airline to be. As to the stuff about them acting like you'll like the changes, name a company in the history of capitalism that changes anything and tells it's customers that they're going to be worse off but they don't care!

FlyWorld

I nominate this for post of the year.

Why did UA leadership surrender to CO and allow them to take over fully?

fastair

They didn't. The top execs were evenly split with CEO from one side, much like the house/senate. But the CEO, much like the prez can "executive order" and impose his vision, despite the objections of others. While in Congress, the backlash has led to a shift in the balance of power in Congress away from the prez, at UA, the opposite has happened as objectors were replaced with collaborators.

Bonehead

A partial (and biased) summation, as usual. You never seem to mention reliability. For ten years CO got me where I needed to go; UA, not so much. IRROPS handling by CO was a non-issue for me, because they were so rare. For me, reliability trumps pretty much everything else, so I guess I'm biased as well, eh?

Baze

And on the flip side, for 15 years UA always got me where I was going. IRROPS was virtually a non-issue and on the rare occasion I did need IRROPS, they took very good care of me as a long time 1K.

I won't bash CO pre-merger as I never set foot on a CO plane before the merger so my entire experience with CO is how they took over management after the merger when the UA execs wouldn't bend to the Smisek way of doing things and the airline is much worse than the pre-merger UA I knew. So I try very hard to not judge what pre-merger CO was as I don't know and can only base my opinions I what I see now.

Bonehead

Smart. CO in the mid-2000s was a joy to fly on. I started to see CO changing for the worse after Smisek took over, so much so that I prayed that the UA elite-centric policies would carry over. Alas, no such luck.

In any event, I want to continue to counter the rampant CO-bashing that goes on here by pointing out that there really are two COs in my view...pre-Smisek and post-Smisek.

FlyWorld

Ditto. ~10 years and ~800K miles with UA - never a significant issue, not one. Of course, I had issues. But, nothing that bothered me, and nothing that wasn't dealt with and fixed. Basic reliability met my expectations and nearly all delays were weather related (real weather, not CO-style weather).

My experience with CO is exclusively flying with the entity that supposedly "merged" with UA after the "merger" and after it was promised that reciprocal benefits would be given to UA flyers on CO metal. After those announcements and promises were made, I started trying some CO metal, and the experience was universally awful.

It might be the case that many opinions about CO voiced in this forum are from people like me, who only know the Smisek version of CO and had no experience with CO prior to that.

After the takeover, reliability objectively tanked. This is evidenced by government statistics. It was CO systems and CO policies and CO management that drove the decline in reliability. Prior to introduction of those systems, policies, and managers, UA had top-tier on-time performance according to government statistics. In fact, it was #1 for some time. This statement is drawn from public data, it's not made up.

This characterization of events is consistent with the hostile and dictatorial tone often attributed to the CO group often called the "hou crew."

So, what I think you're saying, then, is that UA never intended to roll over and become a sloppy version of CO, but rather, they were bulldozed by the executive powers that were given to the CEO, who somehow convinced key stakeholders that he was the best person to have that role.