I had lunch with our former UA sales rep (25+years at UA...now retired) last year and he confirmed, especially in his region, that the "new" UA lost a very significant number of long time loyal customers within the six months after the systems integration. He indicated that corporate has spent a significant amount of money to try an lure these customers back(with little success)...and considering the amount of visits by UA VPs we have had as well a plethora of freebees (upgrades, discount certs, even free tickets in F!!) given to us...I can believe it. He also indicated that the new management at UA used its CO experience to do what it took to keep customers in the fold(not much...CO did not need to)...but it underestimated the significance of the pmUA corporate contracts (COs paled in comparison) and especially those in locations where there was strong competition...basically almost all of pmUAs locations!

The sad thing is that the current passenger demographic of the "new" UA is significantly different that of pmCO or pmUA...the current passenger is less likely to be a loyal VFF than ever before...our rep said that the passenger makeup is now more similar to WN or B6 than it is to AA or DL! But, who knows, maybe that was corporate's plan all along!