UA-NYC

http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2010...-championship/

Scott's a little subjective of course, but postitive pub is always nice. I bet a lot of UA's rise is the new ORD runway (as he mentioned).

bmvaughn

Great to see!

UAL4life

Yup, glad im not the only one seeing it

CCIE_Flyer

Wow, does anyone here know whether or not United bonuses are still tied to on-time performance record (as suggested by this article)? That may explain the nearly unexplainable. Back in probably early Dec or late Nov, I was stuck waiting for an arrival gate @ DEN (again). I finally deplaned and rushed to my DEN->BWI gate, only to find that they had pushed 10 minutes early and had left me (and a few others flying the same exact itinerary) behind. I was stuck there from around 10:00 until ~17:30 (followed by several post-boarding delays, pushing wheels up to after 19:00, IIRC) and did not arrive BWI until very, very late that night.

I, of course, complained right there at the gate. Was told that they were in a hurry to go get deiced and get out of Dodge. Complained to Cust Svc on the B Concourse and was told that since I wasn't there 20 minutes prior to departure, it was my fault. Complained to 1kvoice and received a measly miles/e-cert choice. No one once ever apologized for the actual act of having intentionally stranding me @ DEN all day long. What they apologized for was something to the effect of "not meeting my expectations" or something very vague and generic like that.

This policy, if still in place, might finally explain the whole thing. What a back-fire that has the potential to unleash on the flying public! I may yet lodge a complaint w/ DOT ACPD if this was all over bonuses.

flyinbob

An increasingly common practice at UA, and one that has cost them some of my business. I've had the same thing happen, once on an inbound flight waiting for a jetway driver at the gate right next to my connecting flight. I was finally off my flight and to the connecting gate about 7 minutes before departure time, with the jetway still connected and the aircraft door still open, but I was refused entry. I simply avoid that circumstance now. If all UA has is a close connection through ORD, I go AA or another.

CCIE_Flyer

Wow, bummer!

In the interest of fairness, I should say that *part* of our delay was simple weather. But the last several minutes of the delay in arriving was lack of a gate marshaler followed by another minute or two of delay due to lack of a jetway driver (apparently they weren't expecting us).

In any event, it's one thing to not hold the aircraft for us but another entirely to push early, in spite of the fact that operations knew full well we were on the ground in DEN and could conceivably have made it if they had just held to an on-time departure. To make matters worse, they were projecting to arrive @ BWI over half an hour early due to tail winds. I had a colleague on that very flight who confirmed that they did indeed land very early. Several hours following that stellar arrival into BWI, I finally took to the air back in DEN.

1kBill

From a related WSJ column (link is here, but may require a subscription), here are the portions relevant to UA:

When an airline focuses on improving customer service, the results can be dramatic. Last year, UAL Corp.'s United Airlines went from one of the worst-performing carriers in on-time arrivals to one of the best.

United, perennially a laggard in punctuality, decided that it wanted to start running a better airline. Borrowing from the playbook established at other airlines, notably Gordon Bethune at Continental Airlines Inc. in the 1990s, United launched a revitalization plan focusing management and employees on five measures—on-time performance, condition of airplanes, courteous service, revenue and costs. Bonuses are paid to employees for months when on-time arrivals beat rival airlines.

"We're proud of our progress but we're not yet where we want to be," said Alexandria Marren, United's senior vice president of onboard service.

With the "Focus on 5" effort, United improved on-time arrivals to 80.5% of its flights, up from 71.3% in 2008, according to FlightStats. United has higher rates of mishandled baggage and customer complaints than most of its competitors, but getting flights to arrive on-time is the start of better service for passengers.


The emphasis is mine, but isn't it simply amazing what can happen when you focus on actually running the business?

Who knew?

flyinbob

The thing is their business is not to get planes from place to place on time, but to move passengers on time. When their on time performance is enhanced at the expense of passengers delayed by other UA screw-ups, that is not running a business well. That is fudging the numbers.

jd2000

One of the things CO did in the 90s was update their fleet, which resulted in improved on-time performance as a side-effect. Does anyone know what the 737 dispatch reliability was in their last several months, and whether removing them helped on-time performance?
If you (or someone) can persuade DOT that their stats for airline on-time performance should be based on passenger end-destination arrival timeliness, rather than individual flight timeliness, it will move the goal to the right place, and put a premium on airlines making the right overall decision on specific flights. The latest airline disruption management software is based on passengers rather than flights, so it would fit perfectly.

sharmaintl

The reverse actually happened to me recently. I was running from a delayed flight to my gate for a tight connection, pretty sure they would have closed it. One of the GAs saw me running and shouted my name out to see if I was their missing passenger. He then started running down the jetway shouting to the jetway agent not to close the door. He tore of my BP as we were both running and confirming that I had to checked bags. It was beautiful. I could almost hear 'Chariots of Fire' playing in the background as we both ran down the jetway and I handed him my BP without either one of us missing a step. I got on the flight! Too bad I did not even have the time to get his name and give him a GTEM. Kudos to this customer focussed GA! ^

sfozrhfco

Aren't the bonuses only like $50/month/employee? Would hardly seem worthwhile to strand passengers for such a nominal amount. Perhaps at some stations, the hourly wage is so low that that the $50 would double the agent's weekly wage.

FreFly

Statistics can be misleading. I noticed a few instances where UA padded the schedule, and also flights arriving way ahead of schedule seem more common. Anybody noticed this?

FlyingNone

/////////////////////////////////

But maybe they were able to give away remaining empty seats to standby passengers and the flight was now full......once full, this might be the reason for pushing early.

CCIE_Flyer

Agreed, and that TOTALLY SUCKS! I was not standby, but confirmed. And UA Ops @ DEN knew exactly where I (not to mention a few others) happened to be hung up - a few feet from the B Concourse! There is absolutely no excuse in the world for failing to get a plane to its gate on time for deplaning and then giving away a 1(2 by then)K's seat to a standby so that they could push early and get along their merry way - especially given that they were already scheduled to arrive @ BWI half an hour early, even if they pushed just on time. Even with deicing, they still managed to arrive at least that early, if not a little more. Arrived early sans a few confirmed passengers, of course, at least one of whom rides UA metal a minimum of twice every single week of the year.

I'm not attempting to derail this thread. It's just that reading this article (potentially) bridged a very troubling gap in my mind that I heretofore couldn't make any sense of. There is (if this policy stands) a self-interest incentive that can work against even the very best customers United has.

CCIE_Flyer

I just realized that you're United. What has baffled me throughout this entire experience is that absolutely every single United employee I've been in touch with regarding this incident has demonstrated the exact same utter disregard for me, the paying customer, that you just have. There's always a perfectly good reason why this happened, right? And none of it is the fault of anybody at United, right? I should have been there 20 minutes prior to departure, right?