ORDnHKG

You don't need to understand the maritime roots of the term or fly a lot on an airline that use it to know what Purser means, everybody know it means manager/supervisor, even my mother who only fly once a year or once every other year knows that, and she flies practically different airline everytime she flies.



CX is like many asian airlines have multiple FA levels, it is not from FA then jump right to ISM, they have two levels in between FA and ISM, they are called Pursers and Senior Pursers.

sUA also has one more level between FA and Purser, but that only exist in 744 flights, it is called aft Purser, which means Purser for Y class, a level below Purser, which not many senior FA like that aft Purser position at all.

FlyingNone

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I agree with you.
When I hear the word Manager, I think of someone sitting at a desk in an office.

alphaod

I just flew a transpac flight a week ago and the purser came and introduced herself to every seat. And she said, "I'm the purser for this flight." From that introduction, I knew exactly who I was talking to. If she said ISM or something I would have been very confused.

mike1968

Very interesting. Given the sCO admission that the FSC are trained to lower standards, and by direct observation not even fit to work a WN flight, it should make it very easy in the contract negotiation to single out the worst of the sCO FAs by their assignment and the direct correlation to driving away the pm UA F flyers with their rude, surly behavior/service and move them to the back or entirely off the integrated list.

JOSECONLSCREW28

What's that supposed to mean? The position the ISMs/FSCs work is dependent on aircraft type :

Narrowbody : ISMs/FSCs work the top of the bar cart in Y/C
Widebody : ISMs/FSCs work BusinessFirst.

Also there's differences between an ISM/FSC.

To be an ISM you actually have to be based in an international base and be with the company 3+ years and in good standings with the company. Also when your an ISM your responsible for all the paper work, announcements etc.

To be an FSC you don't really have to anything except like bid for that position.

Also I'd say that not all of the FSCs are awful like you make them out to be.

SFO 1K

This whole conversation is really interesting. As is another thread highlighting the "brand" and if wearing coveralls with the former company name is acceptable or not.

I work for a very large international firm. We have been through mergers, several of them. Many of you use our products. We have one name, one brand and we display it proudly everywhere we exist.

We have many union agreements, with different unions in different parts of the world, doing the same work. We have people who do the same job, in the same union but different agreements, based on geography. Different work rules go with those agreements based on the legacy firms people were tied to.

People get paychecks from different operating subsidiaries based on where they came from originally, too.

Yet EVERYONE is behind the BRAND we work for, and we are all known as working for that name. No one is still languishing around in the history of where we came from. We may enjoy talking about it at work, or proudly display awards from our careers - but on the outside, when we're meeting customers we are the BRAND we are known as commercially. This is done through outstanding LEADERSHIP from the TOP.

So as this relates to FA-INTEGRATION the topic of this thread - I don't care about who you get your paycheck from or what titles you have in your work agreement. The COMPANY needs to set a VISION for who UNITED is and every employee's job is to convey that BRAND PROMISE to the customers and to each other to deliver a CONSISTENT EXPERIENCE.

freshairborne

As a pilot for United, from the United side, incidentally, I have had my combined contract for about ten months. It is still not fully a single contract yet, because there are provisions from both sides that are being phased in over time. We have had our integrated seniority list for about a month and a half now, and nothing has really changed yet because it would impossible to make aircraft/seat/domicile changes overnight. The training for different seats and aircraft takes up to a year to implement.

My "new" uniform has been sitting in boxes in my closet for seven months. It arrived in three separate boxes, with the hat in one, the rest of the uniform in another, and the trinkets (wings, emblems, etc.) in yet another. We have not been told when we should start wearing them. It's gonna be bittersweet because it looks like the uniform of the dictator of small a third-world country, but my current United uniform is pretty tattered, and I'm not about to spend the coin to buy new stuff, only to be told to wear the new thing tomorrow.

My point here is that even though the company is United, it's still not fully integrated in any way. Integrated, yes. Fully, no. If you look down on the ramp, you will see people wearing all sorts of stuff that is in no way part of any uniform. It has never been an issue before, so I guess just the fact that some wear United and Some wear Continental stuff is now more an issue of loyalty than personal attention to their appearance. Even the gate agents and flight attendants have so many different approved variations in their uniform that it's not even, by definition, a uniform anymore.

I think that it's a good thing for an employee to have some affinity to where they were hired. I will always be a United pilot, and the Ex-CO pilots will always be former Continental pilots. We will never forget it, but we also will be pilots for the same airline (someday, I'm told; we're still flying for completely separate operations). I fly with pilots from many different airlines who are now United. I certainly don't take any offense in them telling me where they came from.

This integration will be a subject for conversation, and more, for far longer than any of us will be flying.

P.S. I'm secretly wearing my new shirts because they're whiter than the old ones, and they're identical. Call me a cross-dresser

FAB

FC ORD

Thanks FAB; we can always count on you to put things in proper perspective.
And please continue your cross-dressing!

LaserSailor

Thanks for perspective FAB.

If you just put the jacket on, would that be a coat-share flight?

tuolumne

The problem is that the new company is far larger and more complex than what CO used to do. The new combined fleet will have another premium cabin, and a far larger mix of different aircraft configurations to cover. As such, all of my favorite angels have lamented that the CO complexity of having different groups will have to end. The system you've done a good job explaining, Jose, is totally unproven on an operation of this size, and would likely result in efficiency being lost. Rember, UAL used to be larger than this new combined entity on the late 90s, and their system of having a "slathered" pool as you call it worked out fine - and oh yes, they still used purser back then too. As far as I'm concerned, call a purser whatever you want, but pmUA's system has already had decades of proven results on a large complex operation - yours simply has not, and as such, won't be sticking along in any meaningful way.

palmetto86

Is that really true? UA of the 90's was bigger than CO+UA today? I'm surprised if so!

kenn0223

I prefer Pam Ann's definition of what CSD stands for: http://youtu.be/kAgQR8Z_-KQ?t=5m22s

dcpdxtrans

UA will never become a solidly run airline until the sides merge & the behind the scenes differences are reconciled. Of course the previous still manifests in the final product offered

kale73

As pointed out above, the term "purser" has long been used in marine transport.

And I find myself sitting here trying to figure out why a passenger would even care what the lead flight attendant's "title" is. As long as the nuts are warm, the drinks cold, and the pre-flight safety briefing is at least mildly entertaining, the lead flight attendant can call him or herself the Grand High Poobah for all I care.

SFO 1K

Pax don't care. Folks in the union care a lot about titles because different titles earn different pay scales. I don't know if that's the case here, but it is typical in other industries and a great deal of hand wringing goes on to define job scope and associated title and attach a wage to it.