Cargojon

Companies have a responsibility to act in the best interests of stakeholders. Not all stakeholders are shareholders, but all shareholders are stakeholders.
Customers, employees, vendors, etc are all stakeholders as well as the shareholders.
Companies who find the right balance of balancing the interests of all stakeholders do well.

eefor jfp

So you are saying that there are (roughly) three times as many people going from Denver to somewhere in the southeast as there are from Atlanta to somewhere in the west? And DL flies three times the capacity of UA because passengers prefer Delta destinations to UA destinations? If that's true, then it seems like UA chose the wrong hub city(ies). Help me understand this.

Or looking at SFO-ATL, UA flies two 737s while DL flies seven planes (the 737 is the smallest and there are several 767s). So more people are connecting from SFO via ATL to Europe and the southeast than are connecting from ATL to the west and to Asia? Again, I don't really understand how the issue is primarily related to connecting traffic.

Or ten 717s (DL) vs. six 737s (UA) from EWR to ATL. OK, the DL planes are slightly smaller but still DL has more capacity to the primary transatlantic hub for each airline.

itsMoe

It's about the difference between mainline and non-mainline. Typically, you're more likely to find young pilots starting out a smaller, regional airline which would then do business as United Express or American Eagle and what have you. The salaries there aren't anywhere near as good as those of a mainline pilot, so there's an incentive to "graduate" to a mainline position. There's a much more detailed breakdown here.

With that in mind, it's not unreasonable to assume that on average, a pilot flying a UAX RJ does not have the same amount of experience and isn't being paid the same as a pilot flying mainline on a 737, let alone a widebody.

As the Colgan Air disaster showed, there was a standards gap between mainline and regional pilots in terms of training, regulation and so forth. In the wake of that crash, measures have been taken to address those issues, and one would hope that they've been sufficient to at least address the safety aspect of this discussion.

BearX220

If UA racks up this kind of shabby underperformance in an era of strong business travel fueled by high corporate profits, low interest rates, low oil prices, and high overall demand... imagine how they'll cope in the next, inevitable recession. They're living a rosy scenario, and this is as good as they can do. Team Smisek ought to be terrified by what lies ahead.

FWAAA

Pilots and dispatchers make the decisions on fuel loading, and at all airlines in the USA, pilots have the final call on fuel. If the OP's flight took on too much fuel, that was an error by the captain. That said, their error was probably not loading too much fuel, but over-estimating the taxi-time. A shorter-than-expected wait for takeoff can result in too much fuel onboard. For most airplanes, the maximum taxi weight is several hundred pounds over the maximum takeoff weight, to account for the fuel burned sitting on the taxiways waiting to takeoff.

Typically, less experienced pilots fly small planes and more experienced pilots fly larger planes. You won't find any 30-year old 777 captains at AA, DL or UA. By time they work their way up to those planes, they're old and usually very experienced, with many thousands of hours of flying.

Old-looking pilots don't always equal very "experienced" pilots. The captain of the Colgan crash was 47 and was hired by Colgan just 3.5 years before that tragedy. Like most RJ/turboprop pilots, he had relatively few hours of flying experience. So your RJ pilot who looked to be in their 50s may have had lots of experience but might not be so experienced.

EWR764

This is certainly true of captains, but with the current upheaval in the ranks of pilots at the majors (lot of retirements, expansion, merger-related movements, etc.), airlines like UA are putting new-hires into the right seat of 757s and 767s. That being said, 747/777/787 right seats are considered plum because of the desirability of scheduling/trips and nature of the flying (or lack thereof...). It all depends on where the vacancies are at the various basis when classes graduate.

CO_Nonrev_elite

Agreed, I know a few very low hour folks flying 777's at United. Don't assume because they are in the 777 that they have loads of experience. Besides, where did the loads of experience help the folks on Air France 447. It's a mixed bag

scracer14

Your experience must be unique, I was Gold with UA flying 3 times a month out of CLE 2 years ago. I was impressed by the service maybe 3-4 times a year. Now I am PM on Delta flying every week out of CLE. I am impressed by the service 2-3 times a month, and almost never disappointed.

It is a night and day difference in service and culture at Delta, don't take my advice, look at most customer satisfaction surveys...

spin88

Ha, ha, ha, United is the case study on how managing for the market, and sticking it to your customers back fires, and hurts shareholders.

The year before Jeff announced his "savvy" plan, and all of his "changes you will like" UAL made $1.3B (ex specials), and $840M with them. Delta made $1.2B (ex specials)

Jeff promised any extra $1.2B in "synergies" each year ($800M extra revenue, $400M in savings), which should have gone to the bottom line.

Well from 2012-2014 with his plan in place, United made $3.659B ex specials, but if you include the massive specials for integration, etc back in United has only actually made $1148B. Given they were supposed to (and I expect they did, they were just swamped by other losses) gain $1.2B in profit each year its a stunning failure.

Delta? Well under different management, with a goal of having leading product and CS, it made $8.8B ex specials (the figures including specials also include taxes, which are not actually paid, so are less relevant.)

Given the bump that Jeff got from consolidation of two airlines w/o overlap (in extra revenue of $800M/year) and ability to save on joint functions (of $400M/year), its hard to think of a better example to show that slavishly focus on wall street metrics like Smisik has ("there are limits") do better for their shareholders.

CALMSP

yes, b/c DL has to send everyone to ATL, where UA can offer direct flights from DEN to the destinations beyond ATL. Pretty simple explanation on this one.

CALMSP

not to mention, there are those that are even more tenured pilots flying an RJ than a mainline a/c.

channa

Huh? This makes no sense to me because it doesn't work when flipped around.

From ATL, UA has to send everyone to DEN to destinations beyond DEN, while DL has nonstops to many more places, so UA should have more feed to DEN than DL has.

PsiFighter37

I feel like the relevant comparison is to compare DL's service from ATL (or maybe one of its smaller regional interior hubs, like MSP) to IAH or ORD. DEN is nowhere close to ATL in terms of size (for UA), and the only folks who would route to DEN from ATL are some TPAC travelers or people connecting to somewhere in the west but don't need to go to SFO or LAX.

ETA: doing a little bit of research shows ATL has nearly 1,000 daily flights for DL. UA doesn't even break 600 at ORD or IAH. Really hard to compare when the magnitude between largest hubs is that stark.

spin88

Well DL can offer direct flights to the destinations beyond DEN as well. Your explanation (on this route) makes no sense.

While there are some head to head comparisons (IAH-ATL, EWR-ATL) with a similar level of market penetration, this one is caused by three factors. First, United has chased away much of the O/D market share at DEN to OALs (it currently only has a 40% market share, SWA is 25%), as a result they just have fewer passengers who fly them ex-DEN than DL has ex-ATL. Second, the "connecting traffic" that is pulled through the hub at ATL is much greater than what UAL can pull through DEN, hence more passengers on the connecting ATL-DEN and DEN-ATL flights on DAL. Third, more of the regional traffic on UAL gets pulled into other hubs (ORD, IAH) on UAL than into competing hubs of DLs (MSP, SLC).

Part of this is natural (as to DEN) and part of it is self inflicted, with the loss of passengers then causing downgrades to RJ, which chases away more passengers. At some point it comes unsustainable (see CLE) as there is too little high yield traffic on the RJs as it has booked away.

ani90

But many of those people on DL from ATL to DEN would not have started their journey in ATL. Essentially DL is operating flights between DEN and X destination, with ATL as stopover, so the comparison is not between 8 DL flights Vs three UA but between DEN and a chosen city pair (which UA may or may not fly directly to). DEN is not that a big hub (for example to European or African Flights) as ATL is so the UA feed of DEN has to be smaller I don't think this is a helpful comparison except for those starting and ending the journey in ATL and DEN.