What Merger?
 

Here we are more than seven months since 3/3 and UA is, in many markets, United and Continental.

I thought my home market (ICT) was the only one with separate check areas and gates in separate concourses. Wrong!

I'm at MCI (delivered a luncheon speech in KC today) awaiting a 1.5 hour delayed flight to CLE on way to CMH where I'm speaking tomorrow. PmUA is in Terminal A. PmCO is in C. When I asked about possible alternatives to CMH due to the delay I got the "we really aren't able to put you on 'their' flight, they are in a different terminal" story.

What decade do they expect the "merger" to be complete?

On Friday, a gate agent was trying to re-open a flight on MX for a few of us late arriving passengers. She couldn't do it until one of her colleagues, looking over her shoulder told her that it was CO plane. Apparently, SHARES has distinct flight opening sequences for CO and UA planes. She was confused because the flight had a UA flight number, but was a CO 737.

In BOS, CO was in terminal A, and UA was in terminal C. There isn't room to move the gates from one terminal to the other, so flights to pmCO hubs go out of A, and flights to pmUA hubs go out of C. If you're lucky, the same applies to arriving flights, but not always.

None of the terminals are connected airside. For that matter, some of the terminals have different areas that are not connected airside, so you have to make sure that you find the security checkpoint for the right gate range. Air Canada, for example, flies out of an area that only has 3 gates and a single security lane.

There is a plan to move all of United to Terminal B as part of a renovation.

A few months ago, I flew from ORD to BOS on what was clearly a pMCO plane. It ended up parking at Terminal A (previous Continental gates) and my ride was waiting for me at Terminal C. What a mess.

There is nothing unusual about this with mergers. It was a few years after AA bought Reno Air before the operations were consolidated in one terminal

at many/most airports the operations have been combined, however as you noted there are still some separate operations. This is partially due to restrictions at the various airports, such as lease restrictions or the lack of avialable space to combine operations. UA does not have the power to move other airlines, it needs to work with airport operations and in some cases this can be slow.

a fairly complete list (ICT is not listed) of the "problem" airports can be found in "Confirming the correct terminal for your flight"

UA & CO departures are supposed to consolidate into Terminal A by the end of the year. (:eek:)

Seven months?
You're being generous. The actual merger was 2 1/2 yrs ago!
3/3 was only when the IT changeover occurred.
Add a couple more YEARS before the crews/planes can be mingled.

This could have been wrapped up a lot quicker ... if mgt wanted to.

Saturday departing from LAX T-6 on a PMCO flight noticed the monitors at the gate were still showing the pre-merger CO screens. And that there was a stand at the gate where they hung a print out of the standby list. A little archaic to me.

Out of curiosity I asked why six months after 3/3 (and nearly two years after the merger began) why the screens hadn't been updated. His response: "Those are old monitors and aren't able to display the same information as the ones in the other terminal. But it doesn't matter because we get flights out in less time than those people over on the other side".

Didn't have the heart to tell him the monitor is a dumb terminal that displays the data fed into it. And that supposedly the entire company is using the same interface.

When was the last time you flew out of ICT? ICT was my home airport until a few months ago and they had consolidated check-in (I was flying to IAH and I checked in with UA people) the last couple of times I flew. The CO people at ICT were dreadful. They were contract employees that handled AA too. They were surly, clueless, and slow. I was counting down the days (which the one of the excellent UA employees told me) until they consolidated.

Just wait till you call the 1K line and the agent says 'yea, we'll be one airline once we get rid of all this United stuff'.

Way to alienate 2/3 of your frequent flyers..... :rolleyes:

Maybe yes, maybe no. I haven't looked closely at the gate displays but it's entirely possible (and, in fact, likely) that each "modern" gate display is running some type of thin client software that interfaces with SHARES, which is why the gate monitors sometimes appear to be on different points in the refresh cycle for the same flight.

That's not possible.

Bad or lazy agent. Have done it at least twice at MCI since 3/3 and even a few times in the build up to 3/3

Exactly.

When DL and NW announced their merger, one of the first orders of business was to get the pilot contract issues solved. Both DL and NW pilot groups got an agreement from the company that no operations could be combined until the pilots had a deal. If the pilots from both companies had not solved their issues, then the merger would be placed on hold. No formal merger activity could occur until the both pilot groups had signed off on their seniority list integration and negotiated a joint contract.

To accomplish this, an expedited negotiating schedule was established. Both groups agreed that if a deal was not reached within 60 days, then it would go to binding arbitration, before a panel of 3 pre-selected members. It went to arbitration, it was settled there in about 3-4 months.

Only after the pilot issues were settled, did other formal merger activity then proceed. Pilot issues were settled long before a single operating certificate was granted. The day after SOC, DL aggressively began moving jets, pilot time, routes, etc. Within two years, it was done.

Contrast that with what the UACO management is doing to their two pilot groups, and its no wonder things are still so inefficient at UACO.