Originally Posted by
jlivengo
I know the merger has been tough for both CO & UA travelers but I don't understand why people keep blaming CO for the perceived problems as a result of this merger. I flew mostly CO out of Hawaii for years, always having good things to say. They may have not had all the perks of UA but they treated their staff well, and were one of the last airlines to drop the free food, charge for bags, and offered CPU's from Hawaii when nobody else did.
The biggest difference is that the CO staff were mostly happy and they were friendly to pax and respected. During the merger, management took the most conservative elements out of both airlines and implemented policies that screwed the employees but brought a little more balance to the frequent flyer wars going on between airlines. The real casualties are the employees/unions that now generate mistrust and no sense of ownership within the new UA. Hence the warring factions that I have noticed to be a partial cause of the “summer of hell”. Slow fixes of easy mechanical problems, poor customer service, and a lot of new & uneducated staff.
Not saying CO was perfect, just saying that it’s unfair that certain posters keep blaming CO policies. This post is not meant to inflame but would like contributers to stop point fingers or just bashing for the sake of bashing.
Everything that's wrong with UA today is due to CO.
1. SHARES, instituted by ex-CO management
2. A senior management team that is almost entirely ex-CO
3. Policies enacted by that ex-CO management team that have been hostile to its most loyal and frequent customers and otherwise disastrous in terms of operational performance (such as replacing UA practices with CO practices in regards to maintenance)
There is nothing newly bad about UA that I can't blame squarely on 1-3 above.
Everything that has been destroyed about UA was destroyed by ex-CO executives, not by UA executives.