MSN_Flyer

Being in the back of the SYD-SFO plane, there were only a couple of seats empty. Luckily that included the one next to me.

mattmacinnis

With all due respect, this kind of thinking is emotional, nationalistic and totally unpragmatic. When people get upset about United laying off workers, what alternatives do they propose? What would you propose?

They have decided to cut staff for financial reasons, and for the health of the company. Ultimately, they answer to shareholders. Reading your post, it seems you're saying that "disgraceful" United has chosen to do this to spite the employees or punish them. In reality, they're trying to save money, and profit is the primary motive of any and every for-profit corporation. How is this disgraceful?

Furthermore, what good could calling the airline possibly do? Would you like them to re-hire the employees? Would you like to teach them a lesson so they don't do it again? I'm sure they're aware that laying off staff is unpopular with the community. But losing money is incredibly unpopular with shareholders, and they ultimately take priority.

Instead of calling United and "ranting," I recommend buying some United shares if you appreciate their financial prudence, or use an alternative carrier if you feel their behavior in the community is inappropriate. Taking your frustrations out on remaining United employees -- and encouraging others to do so -- will serve nobody's interests.

UAL PACIFIC

Matt,
My comments are simply to thank UA staff for their support and tell them that we too are disappointed with the decision.
I know numerous UA staff in both MEL and SYD, and they appreciate the calls of support.
I think you have read parts of my post out of context.
My rant was my disappointment which i made clear in my post. There is no ranting to UA or their staff.
More a "sorry to hear, they should not have done it, it's a disgrace, hope you get a great job elsewhere".
When you spend large amounts of time and money with UA, you do become friends with staff and yes, i do have a heart and am disappointed at the decision and the ability for some of these people to find immediate employment elsewhere or for MEL and SYD check in staff, the ability to regain their jobs at the same rate of pay with the new contractor.
Qantas made staff bid for their jobs several years ago, and a friend kept their $35K check in job for $28k and loss of overtime.
Each to their own. Your view is different than mine and interpreted different than what i posted so fine. Move on.

CLELOSER

Golden parachutes worth millions.....


United management and United management alone got themselves into this financial mess and you all think things are going to change by firing some stiff with a house and car payment???

By the way United's food from MEL-LAX is horrible in economy. Who in gods name thinks THAT stuff is edible.

mymiles2go

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why it takes 100-200 people to service generally two (sometimes 3) aircraft per day.

If someone can come up with a comprehensive explanation that's valid then I'll agree with posts like yours. Until then - United is doing exactly what you are saying they aren't doing - fixing the situation. In fact, one could argue they could have done what they did at AKL - which is not only fire all the staff (again about 120 people) but also drop the route. In this case simply reducing the excess staff solved what was obviously a problem. In order to get them out of the finanacial mess they continue to be in, they must fix previous messes. This is a previous mess. It's really that simple, unfortunate for many people - but simple. As noted by others, it's very commonplace in the service industry for the new contract bearer to hire the vast majority of the previous staff. Obviously not the case in portion of the positions moving to Manila, but likely the case for the positions at the airport as well as in the SYD/MEL call centers which are staying aussie.

Kremmen

Firstly, the Australia-USA route accounts for about 40% of Qantas' total profit and is massively profitable to United too. The financial reason is to make even more money.

Since you ask, I'd propose that they outsource only some of the suggested roles. Baggage handling and other behind-the-scenes activities, for example.

Checkin counters and reservations lines should remain with those who understand what they are doing. After all, why do we phone reservations at all, rather than book online? In my case, it's usually because I have something complex to deal with that can't be done online, which means it probably can't be done by some drone in Manila either.

I was seeing off a friend at MEL the other night on SQ, flying back to the USA via Asia. The checkin agent didn't even know the airport codes for Narita or San Francisco! They obviously knew absolutely nothing except how to handle a vanilla checkin to SIN with no ongoing connections. I would have thought the sensible thing to do would have been for SQ, UA, OS and TG to get together and put together a Star Alliance checkin staff.

jswong

The NZ routes at that time were very profitable. UA dropped NZ probably through a deal with Air New Zealand. The Australian routes are currently profitable and I don't see UA dropping this in favour of Qantas. What most are shocked with is the scale of the lay off's (which will not come without a significant degradation in service)

Jeff

das

I recall the press mentiojned when UA pulled out of NZ that the LAX-AKL route was never profitable, and as I'm sure you recall they tried a number of things to turn it around, such as switching it to a 777 in its final year. I think it boiled down to low demand for premium fares.

rosesplus

Not true,

Australia/US market is no more than 15% of QF's profit. If UA really used 200 employees in Australia to service 2/3 flights per day I doubt it would been "massively profitable", my guess is that with QF putting additional flights on to SFO this month that UA knew it's uncompetitive service was going bleed even further. I'm sure most people who fly this route on UA do so because of price/cheap upgrades or the generous UA MP program. QF's passenger gross revenue per flight would much higher than UA's.

Kremmen

You're right. I should be more careful in expressing myself accurately. The Australia-US routes account for over 40% of QF's international operations profit. (... but only represents 27% of its international capacity) It's a cash cow.

I'd agree that many who fly this route on UA do so because of the MP programme, I woudn't say it's much because of price. Qantas' lowest prices are usually within $50-100 of UA's lowest prices. That's not a massive revenue advantage. For a convenience/price combination, UA has a massive advantage for Australians in providing convenient connections in the USA and often has good deals on destinations beyond LAX/SFO. (I'm not sure if QF offers many good deals for Americans going to other cities than MEL/SYD in Australia.)

All that aside, UA regularly flies very close to full and sometimes over-sold. When you have an international route flying at 100% capacity and carrying cargo too, it's a fair bet that it's highly profitable.

Bear96

I'm kind of puzzled by this thread too. I don't remember a long post expressing so much outrage when UA sacked literally thousands of employees in the wake of 9/11. Then, the attitude here was, "Eh, times are bad, watchagonna do? They gotta cut costs." (shrug)

Times are still very shaky at UA. And as others have pointed out, when there is literally an army of hundreds to support two or three flights per day, there must be some inefficiencies.

Yes it is sad when people lose their jobs, and I hope UA properly treats those affected. But it did seem like there was a lot of fat to be trimmed in this case. How many UA Australian employees are there in relation to the number of UA passengers leaving Australia each day (and what is the UA systemwide employee : daily passenger ratio)? Sounds like it might be close to 1:2 in Australia. That's ridiculous.

rosesplus

Not true, QF offers AA's network throughout the US and as you suggest perhaps not as cheap as UA but this again goes to profitability.

The fact that UA sells the majority of it's Y seats (on this route) as E+ means it cannot gross what QF.QF also sells, on average over, 70 C seats on each flight for big $$$$. QF's award availability and the fact that on average it charges 3 x the miles that UA does also supports QF's higher profitability (QF SYD - IAD in F is a whopping 384K miles). QF only offers upgrades on checkin (never in advance) and at a mucher higher redemption rate than UA again adds to a higher gross $ revenue per flight. I flew US/Australia on QF 18 times last year and twice I met people who had paid $6K for a Y ticket!!

The Australian governments restriction on the airlines that can fly this route has caused the ridiculously prices QF is able to charge. The fact that UA has only has 2/3 flights a day as the main opposition (with the 3rd flight being near empty a lot of the time) is a clear indication of how uncompetitive UA's service is.
I'm still cannot believe that it took 200 people to run these flights in Australia.

Kremmen

You clearly missed the word "convenient" in my comment. Let's try a random destination that I might like to visit, Denver. Qantas offers me a flight to LAX and a 5.5 hour wait until an AA MD80 to DEN. What a joke.

UA doesn't sell the "majority" of Y seats as E+. It's under 1/3 E+. (88/172) ... And another good reason to fly UA on the route. According to QF's web site, the worst 3-class 744 config is 14/79/265. UA's config is 14/73/260, about 1% less seats.

If, given the incredibly horrible QF FF rewards that you yourself pointed out, you flew QF across the Pacific 18 times last year, I can only feel very sorry for you. You could have been earning some astonomically more useful credit on UA's MP. As for meeting 2 people in, what, 6000, who paid outrageous amounts for Y tickets, that isn't exactly a statistically useful sample.

rosesplus

I credited to AA, your statistically relevant Denver example is noted.

Constant Motion

I think most United travellers won't notice the difference, It wasn't such an astonishingly good service, at all times, for everyone, that there should never be any change. Everyone,everywhere is facing big change in their workplace environment. 200 people are way too many to service just three flights.