eponymous_coward

*cough*SummerFromHell*cough*

fly747first

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/La...-you-surprised

"United Airlines was the worst U.S. airline —and Virgin America was the best — among leading U.S. airlines last year, a report said Monday. Overall, carriers had their second-best score in the more than the two decades since researchers began measuring quality of service."

http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/unite...-toilet-paper/

"In a week that saw United Airlines (UAL) place dead last in a customer service ranking of the major airlines, a picture surfaced that gives some idea of how the airline earned that dubious distinction. A member of travel forum FlyerTalk posted this picture, which he says he snapped in the lavatory of a United Airlines flight."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3038556.html

"United Airlines, whose consumer complaint rate nearly doubled last year, had the worst performance. United has merged with Continental Airlines, but has had rough spots in integrating the operations of the two carriers."

Thus, I maintain my position that UA is an all-time low. Explain to me how the company isn't when being last means that all your competitors are above you and there is no way to get ranked lower.

sbm12

Got it...you're taking some data and interpreting it badly in an effort to prove your point. That's fine, but it isn't reality.

Even if we accept that UA today is the absolute worst operation in the USA that doesn't mean that it is worse today than it has ever been, either operationally, financially or in any other way.

fly747first

UA's financial performance alone places it behind its competitors and in terms of service and operational performance it has been ranked "dead last," that's pretty self-explanatory I would think.

WineCountryUA

even if this, it does not mean UA needs or would even qualify for Chapter 11 at this time or the near future. The recent (past qtr, past year) financial performance is far better (note I did not say "great") than other periods of UA's history. The entire premise of this thread is misplaced.

fly747first

From lack of innovation to poor customer service, there are a variety of factors that when combined can have very serious consequences... similar to when we say "disasters don't just happen, they are triggered by a chain of critical events."

You may want to read this:
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/19/...d-to-innovate/

WineCountryUA

Understand you and many are not pleased (including myself) with UA's direction, but such long term speculation is more a work of fiction -- and overstating things just undermines the seriousiness of the decision.

BTW , I don't need to read about Apple's turnaround, I have been in/around "The Valley" since before it was called that or "Silicon Valley." These are not new concepts to long term high tech folks.

Pi7473000

It seems United needs Glen Tilton again to save it! The new PMcO regime seems to be making things awful for the customers and it will be sad to see them take United into bankruptcy because of the policies they instituted since the merger. It is sad that arrogance from new management may lead United to bankruptcy when it had really turned a corner before the merger under Tilton. Hope to see the United name fly into the late 20 teens under new leadership!

LarkSFO

Sound insight from the 'Dean of FlyerTalk'. (maybe just the UA forum)


And, 747: As you continue to argue with everyone who is offering reasoned feedback on why UA will not enter BK in 2014, you are beginning to appear more like a troll than in your original 'objective' post...

Procopius

Yes, I think some people are having trouble understanding that bankruptcy has something to do with a corporation's finances, not its popularity.

Procopius

They don't go into bankruptcy when their financial performance is worse than their competitors. They go into bankruptcy when their financial performance is so bad that they are unable to pay their bills. Is that the case?

BF263533

I think that it would be several years before bankruptcy is an issue. Although I will have to shift much of my travel to the new American because UA without US Air does not offer service that I need, American & Delta will not have the capacity to absorb a very large defection from United. I think that it would be a very slow death for United. As we start to flee I think they will get the message and change.

For the 2nd half of 2013 my US Air travel has exceeded United travel and it will go up with the merger. United may be heading to "weak sister" status like Gulf Oil.

It feels like Frank Lorenzo is with us again.

channa

The answer is yes, but it will take time.

Would anyone 10 years ago have thought that DL would be in such a dominant position? People were complaining about DL and their plastic cups in F.

But they've improved service -- customer service, in-flight experience, amenities, etc. tremendously, and they're reaping the rewards as a result.

Could anyone 5 years ago have thought that US with their limited network and connection focused hubs (PHX, CLT), outperform behemoth UA from a RASM perspective, despite UA's much broader global network and more business-oriented hubs (WAS, ORD, SFO, LAX)?

The industry is quite cyclical.


This executive team does not understand how to increase the revenue, so the only choice they have is to adjust costs.


They don't just have weak systems, they have weak business processes. In your situation in the old UA, it would have given you the same bad connection, but a second sweep checking for that would have moved you to another flight and/or put you in a call queue to be addressed.

I had one several months ago where UA simply cancelled the flight in a market. I ended up not needing it, and decided to wait and see what UA would do. The answer was absolutely nothing. I waited until 2 days before the flight to actually change the ticket.

That's part a technology issue, and part business process. Someone needs to be contacting customers in these egregious schedule change situations.



That was not a hiring issue, rather a cultural one. The CO "we know best" attitude is responsible for a lot of what's wrong with UA. When you have someone who doesn't know what they're doing, but thinks they know what they're doing, that can be very damaging. Unfortunately, the CO culture bred a lot of that mentality, and a lot of that seems to be driving the organization at the moment at various levels.


But what if UA made substantive improvements to the product, mileage program, customer service, etc., fired the CEO, rebranded, and marketed to the hilt to regain former high-value flyers?

That's basically what a new CEO who gets it is going to have to do.

At the end of the day, people change their decisions all the time. People aren't running back to UA in droves in their present state of poor CS, hot pockets in F, devalued mileage program, etc., because Jeff says they're "flyer friendly."

They'll come back when the place actually looks, feels, and smells a bit different.


Yup, and that pretty much sums it up. While there still are some hard feeling from that, UA was ultimately able to recover from it.

And they can recover from this too, if they do the right things.

lensman

I think there's disagreement about the meaning of the term "all time low".

I know when I hear it I think about financial results - particularly when you're following up with discussion of Chapter 11. UAs financial results are far from being at an all-time low relative to how badly their financial results have been in the past.

As far as their customer service ratings, I'd like to see their customer service ratings over time before I decide whether they've been worse at customer service. I suspect their customer service ratings from March 2011 were worse than last month.

To answer the question from the original topic: I think that Chapter 11 is unlikely for UA in 2014, barring some exogenous variable that impacts the entire airline industry.

I do think that UA has a lot of areas for financial improvement. Some of these are customer friendly, some are not.

joshwex90

Agreed