Weatherboy

Back in the "old days", like 10 years ago, there was a decent volume of aviation geeks that were UA employees and UA passengers: beyond knowing every airport code in the world, they (both employees and many passengers) knew how to navigate around in SHARES to get business done. They knew what metal was where, what configuration of what was flying or would be flying, and new the * shortcodes if there ever was a problem. And booking or rebooking complicated itineraries, checking bags through multiple carriers/tickets, etc. was always done with ease. The UA employees took pride in their authoritative knowledge of all things aviation, and knew how UA and their computers worked inside and out. Some of them even came to Flyertalk to chat, although I think most if not all have since retired or left.

Fast forward to today and we have agents using mobile apps to point and click through pretty pictures to do basic things ...and then route passengers to customer service kiosks or phone chats if something more than a simple task is done. And passengers are just as lazy, with their mobile app showing exactly how to get to their connecting gate when they land. Things have been dumbed-down across the board ...and while that works for easy tickets/flights, it rapidly falls apart if there's something challenging along the way. And I get a sense that many UA people that work at UA just work there because its a job, not for any real interest in aviation or flying. Heck, the draw of free travel isn't even much incentive now; the odds of non-revening anywhere with ease are nill, and the possibility of clearing into Polaris on most routes as a non-rev has lower odds than winning a lottery jackpot. And surprisingly, when printing bag tags, agents say things like "I've never heard of that 'city' or 'code'" before...even though it's a pretty popular spot.

10 or so years ago, you really needed to know the ins and outs to work at UA...but today, you just wait for a mobile app to spoonfeed you whatever.

I was recently at a gate and there was no plane there :30 before departure. I asked the agent what was what, but she said the app says it's still on time, so the flight will be on time. I said, look behind you -there's no plane there. To which she replied, but the app says we're still on time...so I'm sure we're still on time. (We ended up being 90 mins late.)

I grew up memorizing airport codes and booking my tickets through EASY Sabre. And I definitely grew into an aviation geek with time, knowing the right metal to take, cities to fly through, and seats to take. And if something went awry along the way, I was already scoping out alternate options in my head of how to get from point a to b. But I don't know if passengers bother to do that anymore: they do everything through a simple mobile app, and there's no need to think beyond that.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Back in the day, up through the '60s, I guess, flying was something "special". Being a stewardess or another airline worker was being part of an "exciting/glamorous" industry. I think since deregulation in '78, the "glamor" part has pretty much eroded away. Air travel is cheaper, available to more people, and has become mundane - maybe more of a hassle to some than an exciting thing to do. It's more of a job than a profession nowadays. The long-tenured "professionals" like Annie in Sydney have disappeared. The ones who saw the changes from hand-written tickets to printed card stock tickets/computerization are the ones who knew the most. Now, if the computer can't easily provide the answer to a problem, the worker is hobbled. It is what it is.

I was definitely excited on my first flight in 1960 as 4 year-old on UA LAX-HNL. This was typical in 1960 - not so much anymore. That flight made me a geek. Got metal wings (under the leis) on and extended family met us on tarmac at HNL. Flying was huge deal then. That's my great aunt Mary.

Wx4caster

i miss eaasy Sabre too!!

I’m not sure how many UA employees were ever savvy with Shares, but for sure the number is shrinking by the day.

WineCountryUA

Many travel so much, planes are just a form of transportation. It is a commuting vehicle for many frequent travelers. It is more about the destination than the journey

In some ways, the same thing has happen to cars, for different reasons. 50 years ago you needed to understand how a car worked and regularly do maintenance, nowadays it is very different

After time, marvels become commonplace.

gokeeper

They no longer train new agents SHARES, I came across at least 3 1k agents have no idea what SHARES is in the past few months.

GUI only agent at 1k line

FlyingNowhere

In the UK at least, many airport wages are so low that anyone who is switched on enough to think beyond the app/basic computer feed etc should take their energy and go work somewhere else that rewards them better for it, either in terms of more money or better working hours.

featheroleather

Exactly the reason why EWR will have chronic staffing shortages, not to mention mandatory drug testing is a buzkill for many…

bchandler02

I think this is true beyond UA. In AA land, it's the same thing - dumb it down enough that you can hire cheaper and faster. The old school AA agents knew how to get stuff done and make the system work even when it didn't want to.

Outside of airlines, I see the same thing. My job used to have our main application as a terminal app similar to Sabre. If you truly knew how to work it, it was excellent - but many never "got" it and struggled. Plenty of F key usage and shortcuts. Along came the GUI based tools to replace or interface into it so that you can train faster and cheaper and now all of a sudden they don't have to learn these, just click on the button that says what they want to do. There's very few of us left that know the old application. Same thing in the general public. Back in the day to work a PC you had to have at least basic PC knowledge. Now everything is easier. Just touch what you want is what most people know - that's why smartphones and tablets are so popular. Look at how many people drive today but don't have the slightest clue how anything on a vehicle works beyond the go and no-go pedals. It's great that things are easier and more accessible to people, but it's a double edge sword as well.

mahasamatman

That's why the best security feature for any car in North America is a manual transmission.

EWR764

The other side of the coin is that we as travelers are able to do more than ever without agent intervention. The hugely complicated interactions (admittedly less frequent for me without as much interline international travel since COVID, exchanging complex fares, etc.) still require time and I have had reasonably good luck finding agents both at the airport and over the phone who are willing to help. And in some cases they take more time.

On balance, however, I spend MUCH less time interacting with United agents, especially over the phone, because so many tasks that previously required contact (seat assignments, basic flight changes, applying ETCs, and so on) are now self-serve. This is an area in which United excels, and for my money, laps the competition. It's also a huge reason why during the major service disruptions, it's still been possible to get in touch with United without the perpetual delays reported by others. For those of us who understand the nuts-and-bolts of the passenger service operation, as you describe, I would argue it's a golden age of self-help and flexibility.

DJ_Iceman

I remember when my dad used to have a big book for troubleshooting problems with our TV. It would describe problems and then tell which vacuum tubes had likely gone bad. He'd go down to the local TV repair shop, buy the tubes, pop open the TV, and replace them. Nowadays if your TV has a problem you throw it away and buy a new one. When things got too complicated, he could bring the set to that same repair guy, who loved televisions and had a passion for understanding them inside and out.

I grew up as a bit of a computer nerd (along the lines of the OP describing themselves as an aviation geek). I knew the ins and outs of hardware and software and enjoyed "tickering". I was able to upgrade memory and knew which DIP switches on the motherboard to adjust; I knew when my video card was going on the blink and how to replace it, etc. Nowadays few people know how to do much more than turn their computer on and launch a browser.

The car analogy is another good one. People used to be able to do their own maintenance, or when things got really serious they knew a local mechanic who was a gearhead and had a passion for automobiles.

Call it the dumbing-down of society, or call it progress (as it's probably both). While some United employees probably share your passion for air travel and care enough to learn all they can about the business, most just think of it as another job and only want to learn enough to get by. When the systems were text-based and required learning shortcuts and function keys, even those less-than-passionate employees were forced to learn more. Today if you can use a browser, you can be a front-line airline employee. That's probably good for the 90% of the time they're just doing basic tasks, but frustrating for all involved in that other 10% (especially when you remember "the good old days" with agents who could work miracles interpreting the code in the matrix).

physioprof

Totally agree with all of this! I absolutely love being able to handle all of my flight booking, seats, changing, etc right from my phone! It is indeed the golden age!

adambrau

I do ticketing at AF JFK although apparently we are the last AF station in the USA that offers this service. I really enjoy it mostly - it's quite a challenge on the brain. Ticketing is more complex than many would think - it's sort of like coding if you use the manual entries but when you know them it's fast. I have recently had customers who drove 4 hours to the airport to get their ticket changed! I fondly remember Eaasysabre what a great product that was. In any case there are some transactions that require human interaction, and especially so this summer!

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Best of both worlds is being able to do something yourself AND have very adept/knowlegable help if needed. UA's IT needs to become easier and more adept to handling tasks as more and more agents are only exposed to the GUI. I don't know if it's true still, but agents used to have a harder time checking in a bag across two separate UA tickets than from a UA flight to another carrier on separate tickets. Some agents had to call in more experienced agents for help. That's two agents and a computer instead of one agent and a computer. The computer has to make it easier than one agent hand-writing a tag - that was the goal.

notquiteaff

I had pretty much the exact same thing happen at SFO… about 10 years ago. Even then there were employees believing in magic