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2014 Airline Quality Ratings release - UA again dead last among majors

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2014 Airline Quality Ratings release - UA again dead last among majors

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Old Apr 7, 2014, 9:37 am
  #1  
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2014 Airline Quality Ratings release - UA again dead last among majors

Story: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/07/travel...ality-ratings/

Download raw report: http://commons.erau.edu/aqrr/1/

The 2014 Airline Quality Ratings came out this morning. Excluding express carriers, UA is again dead last among major airlines.

The only bright spot is that Frontier took the "Most DOT complaints" award away from UA with a whopping 3.09/100k, compared to UA's 2.14/100k.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 10:07 am
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and Spirit was not included in this one...so they didn't have to worry about trying to beat them out. You have to say though, UA is consistent--even if it is consistently at the bottom.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 10:19 am
  #3  
 
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That said, United did improve substantially over their 2012... now just 'abysmal' after previously in the category of 'unmitigated disaster'.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 10:39 am
  #4  
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Originally Posted by EWR764
That said, United did improve substantially over their 2012... now just 'abysmal' after previously in the category of 'unmitigated disaster'.
The authors agree with you: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A3616720140407

They classified UA's 2012 as a "debacle", in their own words. Kind of funny when even academia is kicking you while you're down...
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 11:09 am
  #5  
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Wow. And this is 4 years into the merger? It doesn't seem like things are getting better.

It says a lot when DL is #4 and UA is #12.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 11:28 am
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Originally Posted by REPUBLIC757
It doesn't seem like things are getting better.
Except that's exactly what happened.

United Airlines (UA) On-time arrival performance improved from 77.4% in 2012 to 79.3% in 2013. Their mishandled baggage rate decreased from 3.87 per 1,000 passengers in 2012 to 3.47 in 2013. Performance regarding involuntary denied boardings of 1.83 per 10,000 passengers in 2012 improved to 1.17 in 2013. A lower customer complaint rate of 2.14 in 2013 compared to 4.24 per 100,000 passengers in 2012 combined with improvements in all other performance areas to move United’s 2013 AQR score to -1.43 from -2.18 in 2012. United was the only airline to show improvement in all four areas rated in 2013. United also had the most improvement in AQR score of all airlines rated for 2013.
http://www.airlinequalityrating.com/reports/2014aqr.pdf

United is starting from the utter depths of the metrics evaluated in this survey, but the numbers are trending positively. That much is clear. Whether it's enough is another story...
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 11:29 am
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Originally Posted by REPUBLIC757
Wow. And this is 4 years into the merger? It doesn't seem like things are getting better.

It says a lot when DL is #4 and UA is #12.
I'm not one who believes UA is on any course to recovery, in fact I don't think they even want to be. But does anyone know where DL was 4 years post-merger? I've never flown them often but as a non-status flier on Delta I remember lots of problems for a while...maybe not 4 years though.

Sorry if this data is easily available, I wasn't sure where to look.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 11:34 am
  #8  
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Originally Posted by JBord
I'm not one who believes UA is on any course to recovery, in fact I don't think they even want to be. But does anyone know where DL was 4 years post-merger? I've never flown them often but as a non-status flier on Delta I remember lots of problems for a while...maybe not 4 years though.

Sorry if this data is easily available, I wasn't sure where to look.
DL and NW merged in 2008, so 6 years ago. there were some issues the first couple of years, none that i remember to the same extent as what UA faced and is still facing. but comparing DL today to UA today, it's hard to believe that UA will be able to make up enough ground to be in the same place 6 years post-merger to where DL is. they're simply too far behind.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 11:35 am
  #9  
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Originally Posted by REPUBLIC757
Wow. And this is 4 years into the merger? It doesn't seem like things are getting better. .....
the data was for 2013, the formal corporate merger was Oct 2010 and the operational merger was March 2012. So 4 years into the merge for this study's results is a bit of an overstatement, maybe a year and half is a better metric. Still lethargic.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 11:45 am
  #10  
 
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Originally Posted by PV_Premier
DL and NW merged in 2008, so 6 years ago. there were some issues the first couple of years, none that i remember to the same extent as what UA faced and is still facing. but comparing DL today to UA today, it's hard to believe that UA will be able to make up enough ground to be in the same place 6 years post-merger to where DL is. they're simply too far behind.
I agree with you. I was just wondering if someone knew how to find the more objective ratings, such as in this report, for comparison.

In the end, I'm always going to go with my personal experience. Interestingly, I've personally had more "quality issues" over the last 6 months but have been overall more satisfied with both the resolution and the speed of resolution.

My previous experience with CO pre-merger (I was mainly a UA flier) was that they were very friendly but could never fix any of the problems, so I'm at least glad to see more ability to fix the issues they cause now.

Now, just work on PREVENTING the problems!
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 12:00 pm
  #11  
 
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Angry 2014 Airline Quality Ratings release - UA again dead last among majors

In my experience UA has become a high maintenance airline. I had to send in reminders to post my mileage and 50% of my flights in the last 2 years were cancelled due to mechanical issues
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 12:05 pm
  #12  
 
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United finished behind one of its regionals (ExpressJet?) last year so it may be doing better, as ExpressJet hasn't gotten any worse. I'm surprised that SkyWest fell behind EJ, though, but not surprised to see AE at the very bottom (totally decrepit EMB's on ORD-YUL).
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 12:11 pm
  #13  
 
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United does have it's good days and good points. It just has so many bad ones. It likes shooting itself in the foot. But what do I know? I like Sky West better than United and I am just over entitled.

For those execs at United reading - maybe you should act before you really hit the bottom of the list.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 12:11 pm
  #14  
 
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UA continues its downward spiral.
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Old Apr 7, 2014, 12:14 pm
  #15  
 
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Originally Posted by JBord
I'm not one who believes UA is on any course to recovery, in fact I don't think they even want to be. But does anyone know where DL was 4 years post-merger? I've never flown them often but as a non-status flier on Delta I remember lots of problems for a while...maybe not 4 years though.

Sorry if this data is easily available, I wasn't sure where to look.
I have run the financial results compared to DAL at the same point: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/22507640-post26.html

If you want to look at customer service metrics, this is the third year of the CO/UA merger, and the third year of DL/NW was 2011.

The data is in the original link from OP (the same study goes back 20 years or more). Look at where Delta was in 2009 (same as UAL in 2011), 2010 (same as UAL in 2012) and 2011 (same as UAL in 2013) see the trends. I don't have time to do this analysis.

-spin
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