Sulley

+1

5khours

I like the ads, but to be honest in the last 18 months UA has not announced even one single change or initiative that would improve my flying experience. Every announcement and change has been in the opposite direction....from PQD, to broken cashews, to reduced allowable segments on award flights..... absolutely everything is moving the wrong way.

All the changes that UA is tooting the horns about in the ads are all years old initiatives. There is not one thing UA has done positively in the last 18 months.

halls120

This has been my experience as well. While Smisek and his cohorts believe we are over-entitled sheep to be sheared, the frontline employees have always been better examples of professionalism and courtesy than management.

I heard the "thanks for flying the friendly skies" line from the FD on 2 out of 3 legs of a May IAD-SFO-DEN-IAD flight. Since they were on sUA metal, I thought it was just nostalgia - obviously not.

I agree with those that are critical of the slogan not matching reality, but I think those posters are ignoring the point made above about emphasis. Raising the bar as to what the airline offers also challenges the employees to meet that standard, in a positive way.

recreationguru

I'm ready for return of the Friendly Skies, and am more than willing to give United the chance to strive for performance that matches slogans. And in fact, flying has taken a big turn to the more enjoyable for me. Last week on a same day trip out to SAN from the East Coast, I had smiles the whole way. Pre-check is a delight. On new 737s with power. SAN United Club a whole lot nicer than the old one.

One big need to is to deal with the complexities of the UX system. Treking over to UX flights at SFO via shuttle puts you into an atmosphere that seems almost Third World. Gate agents talking to ramp crews on walkie talkies that everyone can hear, terrible signage and staff that seems to understand less about what is going on than most passengers. And SFO is far from the only UX base challenge. A gates at EWR, A gates at IAD are just plain poorly run.

XCstud

I hope their actions match their words. I have had really good FAs on all my flights the last 6 months or so, but it's the corporate changes on some little things that irk me and seems to counter all the good things I'm seeing from the people trying to make it work. Here are a few suggestions of some relatively minor things they've done that I think would make the airline feel friendlier-

Offer passengers in Y the whole can of coke. I read in another thread about an FA saying the new policy wasn't to give cans. I'm sure a bean counter has decided it will save a bunch of money, but it's saving pennies in the grand scheme and nothing irritates me more than a stupid policy like that.

Pre-board premium cabins (or at least GF) on intl flights. When flying pmCO routes between IAH and LHR that don't have F lounges, figure out a way to do something better for the premium customers. My pre-flight experience flying GF out of a pmCO terminal had absolutely no difference than if I were flying economy as a plat.

Make the pre-flight experience for intl premium cabins better - i.e. give me something drinkable for free in the lounge. The UCs generally pale in comparison to the Intl lounges in Europe I get to frequent, but this is like rubbing salt in the wound. My avg tatl ticket this yr is well north of $6,000 and McCormicks and bud light doesn't cut it.

If you are going to continue to use a horribly glitchy system called SHARES, empower your customer service reps to quickly fix problems and make things right. It's irritating enough when I have to be on the phone for over 30 minutes because my reservation got screwed up, but it's even more infuriating when I have to talk to 3 different people before somebody finally has the authority to fix it.

Set reasonable expectations for upgrades and be more transparent about the system. The greatest cause of disappointment is unmet expectations. A lot of people feel like they are missing out on upgrades because UA would rather sell every last F seat for an incremental $50 to get extra revenue. Whether that's true or not, nobody knows, but if the process were more transparent at least we'd understand it better.

I see employees working their butts off and really trying hard and many of them are doing a great job, but when you have all of these "unfriendly" corporate policies it leaves a bad taste in your mouth and wastes all the tremendous efforts of the people on the ground.

We are generally "captive" to UA, but I don't know a single person in my division at work that wouldn't rather fly BA than UA. For their campaign to be successful and more than an empty slogan, they need to do stuff to actually change this perception.

FlyingNut724

I agree totally. Don't forget removing IFE from the A320s, the addition of a ton of Barbie Jets, the crappy food, the boarding mess, the food priority mess etc......

These ads would have been much more meaningful, had they announced improvements to the service. Otherwise, it just looks like more marketing spin from a company that has a track record of spinning.

bob_the_d

ugh. i just flew out of A at EWR yesterday to RIC. flight delayed an hour. did a quick scan around the terminal, every other damn flight was delayed. my plane had no soap. just had a bunch of handi wipes strewn about. garbage was full upon takeoff. my experiences on mainline planes have been getting... less awful lately. UX still manages to be a hodgepodge of mediocrity and "did that really just happen? seriously?"

on the other hand, i was at the UC yesterday and the lady (i wish i caught her name) was one of the nicest bartenders i've met in the system in years. it was a lot of stranded frequent flyers all complaining about the airline and she tried to stay happy the whole time (us UX pax stranded at EWR-A can tend to be a cranky bunch, especially late on a friday) and was happy for ever second. it was nice.

jasondc

are you saying installing Economy Plus on every mainline aircraft isn't a positive thing? What about beginning the roll-out of satellite wi-fi? Not on every plane yet to be sure, but I did enjoy it on my flight from SFO to Seoul in July. Frankly I don't see anything "wrong way" about those things.

Hadrian35

UA was the airline to the west coast of my childhood flying DSM-DEN-SAN... even as a Continental man that wouldn't touch UA for all the bad experiences in my adult years, this campaign makes me nostalgic. Echoing that the campaign has to reflect reality ACROSS THE BOARD, and I am looking at you, UAX. FAs seem to be doing their best with what they have over there but they regularly respond to my complaints with a complaint of their own about maintenance and not having the tools to do their job. Ugh, another RJ means a list of complaints starting with hard seats and greasy armrests/tray tables.

Yup. I feel bad for them.

johnmont

I'm actually a bit more positive about this move than many here, it seems.

The actual service and experience isn't going to change overnight. And a commercial campaign doesn't do this. But what it does actually signal to me me that the management that leads the new combined United has finally realized customer service and attitude makes a big difference in customer flying decisions. Saying you have a large route network and 787 isn't enough to make people fly United. They may have been able to get away with that in the Continental dominated hubs, but not with the combined company and diversity of locations.

We'll see what happens long term, but in the last two months I've seen a *dramatic* change in attitude from frontline employees. Not everyone, but the FA have seemed very different to me and I haven't gotten the cranky vibe on my last four flights. I also had my first ever pmCO crewed longhaul flight (IAH-AMS) and was blown away by the friendly and competent service provided. So my take is that things are changing, albeit slowly.

I've flown United considerably less this year because of the decline of service, IT, and the horrible summer of 2012. But when I have flown UA, it's actually been quite pleasant compared to what it was. Not up to other airlines, but improving...I'll give them that.

FlyWorld

It would be more accurate to say that CO aircraft never had E+ and that $mi$ek wanted to rip E+ out of UA aircraft but he was convinced not to do that and so he added E+ to CO aircraft. That's a more true and complete picture of what happened around E+. It's not like he sat down one day and asked how he could make a better travel experience and came up with this idea on his own. From what I've read, he was convinced to fix a deficiency in the CO product to bring it in line with the UA product so CO wouldn't continue to look so bad compared with UA.

By the way, to date, I have yet to ever experience E+ on a CO aircraft.

Satellite WIFI. Are we meant to celebrate this? Isn't it the case that most other top tier carriers, and even a lot of second or third tier carriers, have had this for 3-4 years now?

Sure. It's better that he's slowly adding it to the fleet than if he were not adding it, but it's not so wonderful that he's slowly fixing a deficiency compared with competitors. It would be more wonderful if he came up with a new idea on his own, and if he lead rather than lagged by 3-4 years.

By the way, to date, I have experienced WIFI on only one CO aircraft, 0 UA aircraft.

Compare this ad campaign with the latest BA campaign, as an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1M0p...fssFcYyqm6V_oA

Transcript:

To pioneer.
To engineer.
To innovate.
To imagine.
To Fly.
To Serve.
Today.
Tomorrow.

I felt the BA campaign was more inspiring, more true, more touching, and definitely more innovative.

Whereas COdbaUA is touting things that are demonstrably false and, at best, fixing 3-4 year old competitive deficiencies (finally), BA is touting things that are genuinely new, such as their advanced electronic bag tracking system. Whereas CO ripped out UA's bag tracking system to save money, leading to less granular bag tracking, BA invested in a state of the art system to provide better tracking.

Just an example.

And, how about the notion of "to serve" - when is the last time anyone has seen or felt that from COdbaUA?

LarkSFO

Adopting CO's best in class SDC process has not been a positive?

The 787 and new routes it opens?

Club upgrades (not the booze) and terminal upgrades?

A stronger business entity that you can count on to be around and not go BK?

5K: What changes can UA make to put a smile on your face?

I understand some people are just pessimists by nature, but at some point you just come across (to me) as a whiner...



Have you seen how quickly the new T3 wing is progressing? From my VX flight in T2, I got a great vantage point - it is really coming along nicely.

So, hopefully, the T1 shuttles won't be around too much longer. (and if they do stay after T3 new wing opens, this means UA will need the extra gates for additional flights, which would be a good thing...)

flythewing

Ground employee contracts maybe finalized this week. Will give a lot more insight into whether UA is turning a corner.

halls120

I've never had the need to use SDC. Don't think I ever will.
I'm not impressed with the 787 - the reliability isn't there yet, and to the Y cabin squeeze.
I have yet to see an upgraded UC, and now that the drink offerings and prices have been degraded, I doubt I ever will.
IAD Concourses A, C and D remain a disgusting embarrassment to an airline that purports to be the world's leading airline.
Seating on the A320 and A319 are worse, not better.
Domestic F food and on board coffee is still bad.
The separate sCO and sUA workforce results in inconsistent service across the board.

Yes, upgrading of the ghetto 767 and domestic 777 deserves a thumbs up.
The boarding process is almost back to what it was before management "improved" it.
There are still front line employees who bust their behind to provide excellent service.
International GF and BF food and drink is keeping up with the competition.
I'm optimistic that the new website will be an improvement. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but it's hard to see how it could be worse.

For me, the balance sheet post-merger is still in the red. That said, I think the new ad campaign is a positive step forward, and it shows me that some of the people running United understand the importance of vision and leadership.

FlyWorld

I had and used SDC with UA before the takeover. I haven't experienced anything new, different, or better, under CO. I rarely use this anyway, since it usually results in a middle seat next to the lavatory in the back of the plane.

I found that the BF food took a drastic nosedive after $mi$ek started his cost cutting.

Food in BF has improved a lot from those lows, but I still have some dishes that I can't finish eating, and I'm finding that even as a PP, they're now asking for a 3rd choice. It seems that inventory is way lower than it used to be, resulting in fewer people getting their first (or even second) choices.

There are certain things I can't eat. Out of 3 options, I can usually work with 2. But, when I can't get my first 2 choices, I'm often left with a dish that I can't eat at all. I'd rather have crappier food that I can eat than have no food at all.

Still, for $3K in cash, or even for $7K in cash, you get stale, broken cashews that aren't edible, because he thinks that "nobody will notice." It's an insult to put down $7K for a BF seat and then be given inedible cashews so Jeff can save, what, .0003 on the 7 cashews in the bowl compared with providing edible ones? I get that his bonus is all that matters. But, for that kind of cash, it'd be more respectful to give nothing than to give those.