Lurker

And although I do not have the data at my fingertips, it is my impression that block to block schedules are padded way more now than in the other years for which you present data.

Very Sad

Lurker

channa

This is less a result of Smisek's leadership than it is the new consolidated marketplace and Obama's economy.

Under Smisek's leadership, operational performance has declined, both United's and Continental's revenue leading positions were eroded, and customer satisfaction has declined.

That will be the man's legacy.


Really?

I suppose their fleet of brand new, dark planes is an easy fix for the next management team.

Their kludge of WiFi operators is a bit more messy, though. They're losing out on people who would buy a UA Annual Pass on WiFi and then be locked into the carrier as a preferred carrier because of that.

I sat next to a Gold on a recent dark 739. I asked him how old this plane was, he said from the 1990's, maybe 1980's. The correct answer was < 2 years old.

Poor customer satisfaction, a customer perception that their brand new planes are 20-30 years old, all with a high cancellation rate, weak on-time performance, and poor labor relations. Yeah, their plans are really paying off.

EWR764

Letter of Agreement. Without getting too technical, the company came to UAL ALPA seeking a conditional waiver of contractual duty time restrictions up to the FAA limits (upon crew consent on a case-by-case basis) with the proviso that the crew agreeing to the waiver would trigger additional pay. In practice, a dispute arose as to whether a crew's agreement triggered the additional pay regardless of whether the flight required the additional time secured by the waiver. The LOA would have given the company extra flexibility in delay situations where only a short period of additional time is necessary to get a flight out and keep the crew legal. Neither side could resolve the dispute so the LOA was scrapped.

There's no sabotage going on insofar as deliberate, malicious attempts to cause harm to company property, staff and passengers, but your head is firmly in the sand if you are missing the other contributing factors to the current morass. One can trot out the standard "80%" and "savvy" narrative to explain away these issues, but the numbers show that the operation is performing well below their own benchmarks, so clearly other causes are at play.

The Summer of Love is just getting started...

It's something that bears repeating, especially when we periodically see posts bemoaning the fact that UA didn't negotiate labor agreement before the merger. Aside from the reality that it would have been practically impossible to do so, given the dramatically different cultures/work rules, there simply was no time to do so and ensure that CAL was going to be UAL's dance partner.

BearX220

Practices that appear rational and efficient in the abstract, and to Wall Street ivory tower dwellers, are proving fatally disastrous in the real world. They are responsible for eroding margin, as they define a chaotic, unreliable, untruthworthy airline that, outside of captive hubs, cannot defend on-par price points after customers figure it out.

mherdeg

Hmmm. Yesterday's UA444 SFO-BOS, a 757-200 departing 4pm, was cancelled due to mx.

Today's version of the flight is "on time", but its inbound is landing about 45min late (at 3:45) � they took a 1hr catering delay on takeoff.

I doubt, given that the inbound now lands at 3:45 and the outbound is scheduled to depart at 4:06pm, that today's UA444 will really push back "on time".

Is the summer just worse for irrops? I don't remember things being this bad in the winter or spring; even with serious wx things went pretty smoothly.

SamuelS

It's an incredibly difficult time for front line staff.

For suUA F/A's for instance - critical coverage has meant for example 767 3-class Intl are going out with just 6 FA's in some cases. During mid-flight crew rest, you have just 1 FA per galley/per cabin and during the service itself you have significant stress on the crew to deliver the service they want to deliver but on a full flight across 3 cabins and 3 galleys.

Crew that turn up to do a "day turn" which gets them back home that night (which they've bid for and been able to hold based on 20+ years of service) could find themselves being hoiked away from their trip and "drafted" to do a 3- or 4-day international which can create all kinds of stress for child care and other issues. Boo hoo some people might say, but ultimately, when you have a stressed and discombobulated crew, it hardly sets the stage for the best service delivery.

CS has been a zoo for a long time, particularly in medium sized stations where pressure has been on station management to slash staffing levels. One GA to a gate policy means the podium is abandoned while the GA does critical tasks like attach jetbridge, check in crew, assist with pilot weather, process upgrades, process standbys, run manifests. New performance standards put heavy penalties on individuals if a delay occurs so the pressure is on. Do you think this stressed GA is all smiles and has all the time in the world to answer questions about seat changes or connecting flight arrangements?

There's bad apples and good apples in every basket, but I have a lot of friends and former colleagues whom love their jobs, but are in despair with the company right now, and it's not easy in the airline biz to just "quit and start over" - relocate your family, go back to being on reserve with little ability to be around for your kids, take a big pay cut. It's tough times and it's unfortunate but not surprising that the customer experience will suffer.

The summer ahead will be interesting, as IMHO - we'll see crewing and MX issues stretch the operation close to breaking point.

transportprof

Can someone explain "critical coverage" in a bit more detail? Sounds like there is some mandatory overtime clause in the FA contracts that can be invoked - by force majeure. Do FA's get paid a premium when they are "hoiked" away for four days on a scheduled same day itinerary?

UA-NYC

Things are getting better? Really? This is the same airline that now, year after year, is at the bottom of every airline quality rankings study. And of course, there's this:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25011207-post1385.html

tom911

I just don't see that happening with AA. They're going to stick with their focus on hubs and not take UA on in places like SFO and EWR. A few years back AA removed SFO-BOS and SFO-HNL, routes UA serves, and I just don't see them coming back.

mduell

막걸리 (Makgeolli)

spin88

You may be right, but United was not exactly operating great pre-summer, the trends on OT/MX, etc have not gotten better in any respect over the last two years. But this summer United further pushed the envelope by adding flights (higher fleet usage), doing tighter banking, and keeping staffing lean with some more outsourcing thrown in for the fun of it. IMHO the results are predictably (helped by a work force that frankly owns Jeff nothing, and given the labor situation I would not expect to give anything). I can see what we are seeing being the logical and predictable result of bad policies and planing by management combined with a work force that is not willing to give that extra mile to try to square the circle.

I agree, but I don't think this excuses Jeff from his utter failure to aggressively work to get labor agreements when everyone was happy at the merger. Instead he chose to spend 2011 sitting on his hands and 2012 trying to set the unions against each other to get what he hoped would be a better deal. Then he spend 2013 and 2014 sitting on his hands. So far 2014 appears to be the same. Jeff has had FIVE years to get unified labor deals, and the failure to do so is not at this point to it being a rushed move by CO not to be left out in the cold.

I think this is part of the logical explanation for why things have gone to heck in a hurry. Further cuts combined with trying to get more work out of fewer employees, at a time when employees don't like and more importantly don't respect management is not going well... Jeff is bad at many things, but with his creepy skelator smile (remember the "welcome aboard" video back in the days when United actually had video on its planes?) his people skills appear to be entirely lacking, and employees know it.

Yes, and asiana had one of the better sochu's I've had in the lounge at ICN. Made up for the fact they use the ChinaAir lounge at SFO. [Alas, and scary but true, its still nicer than the UC ]

mherdeg

Delayed flights in the past week where I have known ticketed pax:

* my DEN-SJC delayed 4.5+ hrs (mx, recommitted new aircraft)
* my DEN-SFO delayed 1+ hrs (late-arriving LAX-DEN due to recommit of a late-arriving inbound in LAX, could have been mx/wx/crew/etc)
* friend's dad's MEM-EWR delayed 4+ hrs (mx) (same plane took another 1.5 mechanical delay before going on to perform EWR-DAY some 5+ hrs late)
* my spouse's DEN-BOS delayed 2+ hrs (mx) (revised arrival time 3:50am)
* a colleague's SFO-IND delayed 2+ hrs (mx, recommitted new aircraft)

This is more irrops than I usually see. What is the deal?

tom911

Why Southwest? In the April DOT stats they had an 81.8% on-time arrival rate, while UA was at 79.4%. Delta, on the other hand, was ahead of both at 86.8%.

A top-three metric from April that neither Southwest or UA appear in:

Also in April, UA cancelled 370 U.S. departures (.9%) while Southwest cancelled 621 flights (.6%). Delta cancelled 147 (.2%).

In the prior month, UA was at 78.2% with on-time arrivals while Southwest was at 80%. Delta was ahead of both at 84%.

I can see UA wanting to catch up with Delta but looks like Southwest has some of the same issues UA has.

LarkSFO

Per the operational performance thread... (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...rformance.html)

United April 2015
April On-Time Performance: 79.4% (2.4) pts versus April 2014
April Completion Factor: 99.0% (.5) pts versus April 2014

United May 2015
May On-Time Performance: 76.6% +.2 pts versus May 2014
May Completion Factor: 99.1% +.3 pts versus May 2014


In April 2015, UA's on time and completion were worse than April 2014.

In May 2015, UA's on time and completion were better than May 2014.

June of 2014 Operational Performance:
Source: UA Press Release
On Time Performance: 70.1%
Completion Factor: 98.7%

Per mduell on June 24 (thanks again!):

The numbers reported by mduell for 2014 are actually slightly better than what UA reported for June 2014.
- 73% (mduell report) OT vs. UA's reported 70.1
- 98.8% (mduell report) completion vs UA's reported 98.7%

So, the question posed by the OP: Is this remotely comparable to the SFH 15 years ago on UA?

The answer: No. It is business as usual, more or less. (So far)

We'll see if the last 6 days of June (after mduell's post) change things much for UA.

We'll see how July looks for UA.

If they look more or less like June and July of 2014, then the answer is: No, it's just UA being UA.

Just FYI, UA's July 2014 numbers:

2014
July On-Time Performance: 74.9% (1.5 improvement vs. 2013)
July Completion Factor: 98.7% (same as 2013)

kettle1

WN's numbers are still ahead of UA's? Correct?

OK. I'll go with DL, Allegiant and Spirit management to run the "new UA".

Throw in some hotel bookings, show tickets, tours and rental cars (when booking air tickets) and UA would become the #1 domestic carrier in profits.
Let Maurice J. Gallagher Jr. (CEO of Allegiant) run the show at UA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_Air

The UA Unions would crap their pants with a move like this.

This will never happen... or will it?