In the pre Gordon Bethune days CO was a lost airline. Without good leadership and often under the protection of the bankruptcy court the airline provided only the most bare bones product on a mishmash of old planes. In this environment even the really special employees (the ones we love to praise at FT) could not properly do their job and the customers and employees were miserable.

Gordon turned this airline around by empowering the employees to solve problems and rewarded them for good service. For example, when he announced that there would be a bonus every period that CO is in the top three airlines for on time performance and even a bigger bonus if CO was number one, CO quickly became one of the most on time airlines, often number one. Almost overnight everthing at CO was different: they provided great service, they bought many new planes and began retiring older ones, they were on time, complaints were down, and employees were motivated. As a result CO started making good profits. To attract more customers CO began a very popular and successful ad plan (Work Hard Fly Right) in which they market themselves as a simple airline (clean planes, comfortable seats, on time performance...). They also gave out tons of upgrades or compensation to both new customers and anyone who made a complaint. Employees, customers, and shareholders were all happy. This was another "Cinderalla" story or "Americam Dream" story; however you phrase it (Gordon called this story From Worst to First) the press loves loves loves these types of happy ending fables so the media began printing and airing happy CO stories everywhere you turned. And while every airline including CO has problems and "horror stories" so to speak, from the mid 1990s until about 2000 CO EARNED the accolades bestowed upon them by the press. But as with anything else in the press these days, these stories became overblown and expectations of the customers increased. And like any honeymoon period, it ended. So now CO has settled into a profitable way of operating an airline and sometime recently, maybe within the past 18 months give or take a few months, as evidenced by the postings on this board, CO began changing. Some of the most vocal and loyal CO elite members who post here became outraged at the sheer number of what are seen as mostly negative changes to the OP program. Loyal elite members of other airlines, such as UA which has had so many problems since last summer, often comment about the negativity on the CO board from all the complaining done here.

I live in New Jersey near EWR and I started flying CO for non stop flights. Despite bad service in and around 1987 it was still easier to fly direct to BOS or MIA then to connect in ORD, IAD, ATL etc. Now I love CO and most of my experiences with them are good, but a search of FT will document some of the bad experiences I have had. And no I do not like flying transcons in 737s or eating cold boxed lunches but I think CO is a really good airline. And I choose CO over all others now because they meet my needs the best which is mainly affordable non stop domestic flights which I can upgrade on and good airport clubs plus all that clean plane etc stuff.

So, no I am not puzzled by all the positive press CO gets since they earned that press but their honeymoon period with the press will end, probably soon. What I am most concerned about is whether they can continue to provide really good (not great) service or whether the dreaded accounting department will make cutbacks and changes that make CO like all the other airlines. For a while CO was really special, and now they are really good and thats ok. I just hope they stay that way.


[This message has been edited by amazing nj (edited 07-20-2001).]