qfrodo

I flew GRU-IAD last week in F on a 777 old config. As I was boarding I recognized a FA that I have flown with a number of times. Mentioned I was in F this trip and the response was you have a good crew up there. And they were. For dinner each course was individually served. And not everyone was eating at the same time. didn't feel rushed, but when finished with a course, didn't have to wait long for that to be noticed. And my water was kept full until time to land. So this crew seemed to be on board with making improvements in the soft product. YMMV

MarkedMan

It may be anecdotal thinking, but there is plenty to suggest that which flight you are on makes a huge difference to how service is. SFO-LHR, SFO/LAX-SYD are a couple of notoriously difficult flights to grab for FAs (ie, senior staff always on these), and see difficulty as a result. It is obviously not universal, but your chances of poor service are higher. It's a tough nut to crack. That said, my last LHR-SFO was great. It has been more inconsistent. On my recent LHR-ORD, with only 14 folks in C on the 767, we never did see a trolley, it was great service. They kind of have to plonk a tray down, but they did it much better than we had come to expect.

euslaner

Is he going to redo 1K Voice? Twice in a row, they completely misread what I wrote. I told them that I did X but it didn't work. They told me that I should have done X instead of what I did.

LIH Prem

thanks for posting the summary. ^

-David

channa

If he really wants to do this, one of the most effective things he can do would be to step down. @:-)

lhrsfo

This is absolutely true and it's why UA's FA service is letting the airline down. We all know that occasionally we get a bad apple, or something goes wrong, and we should all expect that. But, in a service industry, the aim should be for exceptional service: sadly we don't often get that on UA. Usually, the service is merely good, sometimes it's merely acceptable. Rarely is it very bad. UA's international competitors would not tolerate that in Y, let alone C or F, and that's why the better ones fill their (larger) premium cabins with fare-paying customers whereas UA fills its cabins with upgraders.

As a travelling companion remarked to me, after a perfectly acceptable TATL in C on UA - nice flight but what a depressing bunch of FAs. And that sums it up.

UNITED959

I think Smisek should be in politics, not trying to run an airline.

People seem to like listening to his speeches, and he says what people want to hear, but his ability to take action is questionable at best.

sinoflyer

Unlike many people on this board, I have always been impressed Smisek, and I also like most of the changes happening so far. Good luck to him and UA.

the_happiness_store

Where do you guys find these crews? It's certainly not been my experience. I had a surly GA once.

RichardInSF

My UA premium class international experience is different from that of lhrsfo. It's variable, true, but I'd say heavily skewed towards the bottom end: 5% excellent, 10% good, 35% acceptable, 35% poor, 15% terrible.

One solution would be to still allow seniority to determine route but to put the most senior FA's in economy. After six months of that, where they actually have to work part of the time, they'd retire.

the_happiness_store

Must be something with SFO! My experience has been extremely positive. It may be that I am not very demanding.

why fly

I am always surprised at the complains towards UA for it web site or customer service, both are light years ahead of the hopeless Air Canada that I also fly, 100k. I guess when i get the occasional grumpy crew I just think they must have been trained by AC. Perhaps thats why UA is so amazing to me because AC is so bad.
Obviously UA can do thinks better the meals in C are not up to anyone's standards, so I am hoping we will move to CO quality.
I also in many cases prefer tray service so we get served quicker so i can go to sleep sooner. However most of my flights are to asia where sleep is more important.

PhlyingRPh

I hope so, even on domestic F

That's nice. It cost the purser 4 seconds of his time, but he made an impact that will last much longer.

I've always thought that if the airlines could data-mine all the information they have on virtually every passenger, and incorporate that data into their systems, they could possibly increase their revenue by paying special attention to those who are known or who are likely top-tier flyers on other airlines, they might be able to pull a few high revenue flyers over to their side. OTOH, I imagine that level of scrutiny would have some undesirable consequences too.

cerealmarketer

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Yes -- it is talk at this point. And conversations with the UA flight attendants I've met (most good crews) universally say they have to deal with the contract first.

They won't budge till that's resolved for better or worse.

CO flight attendants seem generally let down by the merger concept itself which they need to get over.

But Channa the dollar sign to begin Smisek is many of their interpretation. The pretzel cut was salt in the wound and prob not worth the perception it created.

Time will tell here - at least the talk is in the right direction.


On trays -- he was referring to the way things are delivered as opposed to their presence or absence.

Thunderroad

Thanks very much, OP, for posting your notes re Smisek's comments. I think it's great that he's emphasizing service culture. Whether he can deliver on this is another matter, but I'm cautiously hopeful for two reasons: 1) He seems to realize that better service translates into a better bottom line. 2) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that CO FFers are generally happier with their FAs than UA's have been.

While my assessment of UA's FAs is more positive than RichardinSF's, I have to agree that something needs to be done to either change the attitudes of the bad apples or nudge them out the door. There are many good senior FAs, but still...it's ironic that unlike so many fields, the percentage of the more experienced personnel in this one who are not good is higher than the percentage for their more junior colleagues.

While on the topic, I thought I'd share a couple of anecdotes. They don't even add to up being called data points, but FWIW:

1. A couple of days ago my flight from IAD to Kuwait was delayed a few hours due to a combination of weather and the need to add more fuel, so I had a chance to chat with a few FAs and otherwise get more of a sense of their attitudes than usual. It was a pretty senior crew, and pretty disgruntled with UA and less-than-stellar in other respects as well. One complained about working without a new contract for over a year. Another sat down to chat with me and didn't bother getting up when the fellow sitting next to me returned to his seat...fortunately, he was a very nice guy about it.

What was very interesting was that probably the most negative member of the crew, in terms of unsmiling service, mentioned that she and her colleagues could have left the plane during the delay, but if they had UA would have found a way to get back at them by assigning them lousy domestic routes. I don't know if this is true, but it was interesting to hear (and it's a big if whether she was correct in her assessment of UA's retribution) since I (and I believe many others) had assumed that UA does nothing to encourage FAs to be more conscientious in their work.

Having said all this, i do have to express some appreciation to these FAs since they could have left the flight because the delay meant they had to work longer hours than required. Unlike the pilot (who cam back to chat during the delay), they weren't gung ho about pushing through with the trip. But for whatever reasons, they stuck with it.

2. Speaking of pilots, a UA pilot who is a friend of a friend had an interesting take on other UA personnel when I ran into him at a social gathering. Like some of us, he was no fan of FAs who have negative attitudes. But unlike some of us, he very much appreciated the tough jobs GAs have, dealing with angry, confused or disappointed customers under lots of time pressure constantly.