DMN Analysis of Problems with UA Merger
 

Was scanning the Dallas Morning News for articles about the AA/US merger and came across this: http://business-news.thestreet.com/d...nited/12017518

Very intelligent analysis, IMO, and a great warning to all airlines regarding the pitfalls of allowing the smaller company's platform to serve as the model for the combined airline.

I did see na article about 4 month ago about the ARM / US merger that says they will do the opposite as UAL.

A global airline cannot have a computer system from the 70´s.

Read this
http://crankyflier.com/2013/02/14/th...screw-this-up/

UA's computer system was also from the 70s. So is AA's. There is a long, long thread where you can discuss it in more detail.

1970s? Don't these systems date to the 1960s?

Indeed, it was. But UA agents didn't use the native interface on UA, whereas they did on CO.

It's how undeveloped CO's system was that hurt UA.

Another way of saying this is that many of pmUA's agents were neither trained nor capable of using the system directly but were rather dependent upon technology to make the technology which they should have had expert knowledge of work.

That's a pretty creative statement.

How about this. UA agents used technology to improve efficiency and reduce processing time for repetitive tasks, resulting in cost savings in staffing and improved customer service delivery times while maintaining an older underlying platform. Indeed, FastRES and FastAIR were built to do just that, not compensate for agent's technical knowledge. The airline ultimately could do more with fewer people and customers waited shorter amounts of time for tasks to be performed resulting in better service metrics.

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The assertion that CSRs should be expected to have expert technical knowledge is unsound. Their role is customer service and to fulfill it properly they need an interface that is simple and stable.

+1

I can only imagine if my company went back to some command line based version of Excel my guess is the outcome would be the same or worse than what happened with UA. I've never used command line software in my life and it would be a very steep learning curve.

Says the person posting on the internet using a web browser and a computer operating system.

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