halls120

This. Until "United" becomes truly unified, offering a consistent soft product and a better hard product, they will continue to underperform.

Next Tuesday, MsHalls120 and I are flying business to Scotland on AA/BA. First vacation trip ever where we haven't flown UA.

bearkatt

one thing I would do would be to quit buying back stock. you can get it a lot cheaper in the future.

fly18725

There have been points in the past where less China exposure and more Japan exposure was a negative. Today it's more of a plus.

The industry is dynamic. Assuming the past to repeat itself in the future ignores macroeconomic and competitive conditions.

If generating better yields was as simple as changing the product offered to the customer (slap on some new paint, give out more upgrades, serve better coffee), it wouldn't be so tough to run an airline.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'same basic network,' but Delta does not have the same basic network it had 5 years ago, nor is Delta's network the same as United's.

I'm not saying that United isn't underperforming, but you need to look at performance at the regional level if you're going to make apples-to-apples comparisons. Summing up Delta's PRASM growth over a period of time and saying United should have achieved it doesn't make sense and ignores the real issues.

Kmxu

If everything is equal, especially, the FFP, why do you fly UA instead of DL? The change in MP program (following DL's FFP) is one of the key reasons that more people have moved to DL.

cerealmarketer

AA numbers are out and they continue to see worse domestic RASM and Yield declines than United or Delta.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....cle&ID=2159615

Stock down 5% in the premarket after a decline yesterday when United came out.

Domestic RASM / yield: (6.8%) / (6.6%) on a 2% capacity increase

AA having problems is an opportunity for United, Southwest, and Delta to take share. Southwest the biggest winner so far in Dallas, but United has slack to pick them up and has a window with the reliability improvements and hub share gains.

As AS integrates VX there will also be natural attrition of customers and an opportunity as that unfolds.

sfozrhfco

Exactly--down 10% yesterday and down another 5% again today. UAL management must be congratulating themselves for cutting costs and throwing the savings down the drain.

TPJ

I have hard time believing VX customers would switch to UA...

BearX220

You hear "I want the old United back" from HVFs whom UA took care of -- even if pmUA's main elite-care strategy was to try to insulate them from the airlines' everyday, ground-level mediocrities.

As for "I miss Continental" -- I sure miss Gordo's CO of 1998-2002 or so, when a Silver could ring the call center at T-72, ask for an upgrade, and just get it. But that CO went away a LONG time ago. Nobody misses Smisek's CO.

The United name had more domestic presence and better overseas recognition. The hybrid brand with the CO meatball now denotes nothing, however -- or at least nothing positive.

The decision to ditch the tulip may pay off in unanticipated ways, though. They can roll it out again with a rebrand, wipe out the meatball + block-font word marque, and pretend the 2011-2016 nightmare never happened -- like the dream season of Dallas.

AA's numbers are awful, as have been some of my AA customer / flight experiences this year, but they are at the point on their post-merger timeline where UA was in fall 2012, when things were also awful. I do not think Doug Parker plans to emulate Smisek and settle on awful as AA's new normal.

I don't know where VX loyalists who find AS uncool will migrate to, but I have a hard time believing it'll be back to UA.

porciuscato

Thank you. I am incredulous that people here are talking about livery. As a $50K+/annual spender, I can tell you the very last thing I care about is the stupid livery.

What I do care about is how United's big marketing and slogans are followed up with crappy service. New livery would be a strong message that it's just going to more of the same. All show; no substance.

You want to win me over? How about an announcement that "we're not going to waste $300 million changing the paint and the napkin logos. Instead we're going to invest it in better service." And then do it.

entropy

I miss the old Continental of the late 90's and early 2000's. They cared, they had good performance and even as a lower-level elite, they took reasonable care of you. Kellner's CO was really on cruise control, and $misek he took them off a cliff.


UA had a lot of interesting history, and yet still very strong customer loyalty and employees who are proud of the company but hate their management. UA spent a lot on their branding, and I'm sure someone has dug around for the Pentagram branding docs. They literally made the design to have everything matching and coordinated (mind you they did have 3 liveries out there at once) the swoop, the coffee cups, the F seat default angle...

I would love to see a re-imagined tulip brought out once they fix the deficiencies in product, service and execution. The skies will be friendly once more.

BearX220

Remnants of the DeathStar, the post-BK overscanned tulip, and the CO hybrid look. And until recently at SFO you could spot bits of branded signage in the Saul Bass font that Wolf theoretically retired in the early '90s. UA has never been much for executing brand coherence, no matter how elegant the Pentagram playbooks.

cerealmarketer

They may make some changes, but when you merge two very different airlines like this a subset of people who were 80%+ loyal become 50% or less loyal for good.

I don't see AA improving its frequent flier program - they made a clear decision to gut it - and we haven't yet seen the impact of moving to revenue based earning later this year.

The soft product has no sign of returning to what it was at AA before the merger.

There's no more 3 cabin service JFK-LHR.

A whole bunch of AA fliers are becoming free agents.

As for VX....it's more than just 'dont like the AS product' - they will move resources elsewhere - and we may see a net reduction in capacity in markets VX currently serves. See what happened with AirTran / Southwest in Atlanta for an example.

UA and Southwest are the primary nonstop alternatives out of the Bay Area.

channa

If AS jacks up VX like CO did UA, then the VX customers may flee. UA is a viable (and much larger) alternative to a combined AS-VX.

The AS and UA products are much closer than the VX and UA products, so that poses a real threat to AS in terms of retaining the VX customer base.

AS also has some very CO-like tendencies, in that they carry a bit of arrogance about how great they are, they are a bit over-hyped, and they've won a lot of awards. However when objectively compared to other carriers, they do some of the same weak things that gets UA crucified for (e.g., dark planes) and have some unique weaknesses.

There is a real chance that AS-VX goes down like CO-UA.


New livery is not for the $50K annual spender who is still flying. It's message to those who have left.


I would be curious to hear what conditions disproportionately impacted UA over the past 5 years.

Many of the competitive conditions are a direct result of UA's actions. UA sent so many customers to AA, that they had a very clean bankruptcy exit. UA sent so many customers to VX that they were able to build up a customer base and command a very high price tag from AS.

These things don't happen in isolation after all.

BearX220

In the next recession, which will probably coincide with oil price hikes, I see everybody improving their FF program. We're at the apex of a high-demand, tight-supply-control period, but when demand inevitably craters the airlines are going to have to add a carrot or two to all these pointed sticks they are now stabbing customers with.

Austin787

USdbaAA's financial results reflect many customer's flight experiences recently: disappointing. Doug Parker has quite a few Smisek-like qualities, mainly a big focus on cost cutting without regard for impact on customer experience and overpromising while underdelivering ("going for great" is worth as much as "flyer friendly"). Many LAA elites have become free agents, and it's possible some may start flying UA more, especially in markets like LA, Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, and Austin where UA is a reasonable alternative to USdbaAA.