Originally Posted by
CO_Nonrev_elite
While it makes me throw up a little in my mouth to defend Jeff Smisek, this merger was NEVER going to be an easy one. They were two very different animals to start with, and had a dramatically different cultures. I personally don't believe there was any chance of pleasing everyone, so he was doomed to be up against it no matter what happened. You cannot merge work groups that don't want to be merged without half being pissed off.
While there is definitely going to be a hangover of resentment or bitterness towards him (justified or not), the carrier of today is generally working pretty well.
The devaluation that got everyone so wound up still left them with a much better FF program than DL. I know people shout out about 80% inflation, but most of the increases were much much smaller.
It's easy to kick someone when they are down, but truthfully on-time is generally fine now, reliability is much improved, and staff are generally being how they were pre-merger (hit or miss). They are hit or miss on all the legacy carriers these days.
His mentor, Gordon Bethune, gave him the tools and training necessary to make this merger easier to digest:
1. create a plan, communicate it to everyone, stick to it
2. create a clear set of goals, deliver on them
3. take responsibility when things go wrong, then make them right
4. your employees will make or break your business - make sure they are happy and empowered to take care of your customers on your behalf
5. make sure the right people are on your team
6. deliver what you promise, but don't promise what can't be delivered
Yes, the merger went wrong, in a bad way - and much of it was technology that created the pain. The merger should have been postponed for the time period necessary to create a successor system to Fastair/Shares that both airlines would adopt, and bring both carriers to a common, updated, modern, flexible platform that could scale easily and promote user-enablement from the get-go.
What we're dealing with now is not merger problems, but product problems - and a leadership that is trying to scrape value out of the wrong customer while assuming the "right customer" is trapped and has no place else to go. Leadership that is still not leading, is openly hostile to customers, and who has publicly and enthusiastically stated that dropping the product to "match industry norms" is better than creating an innovative, attractive product.
This is lazy, disinterested management that is 'calling it in' while slapping spending plans around willy-nilly in an attempt to hit arbitrary metrics for the sole purpose of winning target bonuses.
Originally Posted by
Silver Fox
All that matters in corporate America is the shares are up 60%.
Most investors don't know what they're doing - smart money is made by smart investors who short-sell stupidity and buy on panic.
There are no fundamental reasons why UA as a business is deserving of such a share increase and in the last calls with analysts, they started taking management to task on its failures.
Smart investors never buy airline stocks (or start their own airlines)...US based airlines never make money in the long run - it's a never-ending cycle of feast and famine that in the end is just a return to the mean, and the mean=loss. It's like playing games in a casino in the most efficient way possible - in the end, you'll still lose everything even if you've made some decent runs along the way....the money just slowly bleeds away to the house edge.