I glanced through the six pages of this thread but did not find this article published by the Boyd Consulting Group. I thought it was rather amusing.

Missing In Action: Ted

Anybody remember United's Southwest-killer, Ted?

The advertising has stopped, it seems. The quirky and expensive promotions are nowhere to be found. Remember, Ted was the mystical program that simply took some A-320s, re-painted them, put a few more seats in, and put them right back in service mostly where they were before, except that they were now were "low cost" airplanes.

Along with that, United gave the new sub-brand a persona, weaving the name into all sorts of aspects of the flight. "Ted wants you to be safe," says the inflight announcement. Silly plastic seat back cards announced "Ted tunes" and the same IFE earphones often found on other United airplanes were made "distinctive" with the addition of brightly-colored foam ear muffs. Wow, fun and frivolity and color in flight!

Unfortunately, most of the passengers, many of which were connecting from other United flights, had no idea what or who "Ted" was. Nor did they care. It wasn't a definable, separate airline, nor a separate route system. It was just a sub-fleet with a different paint job.

But according to United management - or, more likely the wizard outside advisors to which they paid hundreds of millions to tell them what to do - these simple changes were supposed to create a low-cost carrier, despite the fact that airport costs, fuel costs, aircraft costs, maintenance costs, and labor coststedgone.JPG (18871 bytes) remained the same.

Well, actually not, as the increase in seating capacity required an additional flight attendant.

The rest of the industry was dumbfounded with jealousy - the CEO of one of United's competitors lamented that he, too, wanted to find the magic paint United was using - one coat, and, voila! lower costs.

This doesn't include the millions spent on installing dual-jetways at several gates in Denver, for the "fast turns" that these wizard outside advisors had read were so important to low-fare airlines. This despite the fact that Ted-painted airplanes at Denver were actually part of the hub bank, just like the rest of United's flights there, so "fast turns" were not really a factor. But according to news reports, these back-door boarding contraptions have already taken out at least one airplane when it collapsed on the wing.

But, now, it seems that Ted, as part of United's multi-dimensional strategy, is AWOL. It seems the ad budget and the hype-stream have been shut off.

Lots of smoke and mirrors, and millions of dollars spent on a quirky marketing gaff that nobody outside of its creators ever really understood. The public never has grasped what Ted was supposed to be, especially since the fare levels, particularly at Denver, never really changed much, given that United had already matched Frontier, and the arrival of planes in a new paint didn't change that. Mileage Plus Premier-level passengers sure noticed, as those expected first class upgrades to places like Orlando, Phoenix and Las Vegas were no longer available.

The Ted fiasco is sort of like an inside joke with not much of a punch line. Nobody's laughing except United's competitors, who don't understand the concept any more than does the flying public.

It's unfortunate that it was all funded from the millions in employee pay and benefit givebacks. If there aren't the results at United that employees might expect after bankruptcy and painful concessions, the thought process that created Ted is one of the core reasons why.

On my TED flight today from SFO to LAS, a man with a United name tag aproached my seat during the flight and introduced himself as an Onboard Supervisor and thanked me for being a 1K. He went on to say that he wanted to know my honest opinion of TED and said he had been flying on TED flights interviewing 1K and UGS members. I get the feeling that United really wants to do something about the whole concept of TED and we really will see some changes in the future.

So, what did you tell him?

I told him I would much preferred TED to the RJ200s on BUR-SFO:D Seriously, I said I wished TED would have First Class..my main complaint. I am not a big TED hater as I think the exit rows and E+ on TED are O.K. I also said I don't really see the reason for TED as it is not a LCC in my experience and the only difference with mainline is the lack of First Class and food service (I assume there is no food service but I have never taken a long trip on TED). He did indicate that the lack of First Class was the main concern he has been hearing.

fuzzy logic and skewed survey results
 

the problem with UA's survey approach here is that they're interviewing (only the) UGS/1K members who are actually willing to fly Ted.

i travel to LAS routinely for work, and "i have a choice of airlines." i've stopped flying UA to LAS (i get all my EQMs from intl trips... no need for the frustration).

UA should be interviewing the people who refuse to fly UA because of Ted routes, and Ted substitutions for mainline metal on non-Ted routes.

Perhaps UA should buy a ticket in F on AA/US/CO and ask them why they're not flying TED:cool:

Mike Boyd doesn't mention that, to make matters worse, they're not even using the expensive dual-jetways after the accident. They're just sitting there...kinda like the baggage system sat there for years after DIA opened.

TED's a mess.

Correct. Removing a row in the back would give you 31 more inches for 14 rows, or about 2 1/4 inches per row. 33 inches is more than E- but not really E+.

Or, you could go with 34" of E+ in all rows. Probably not possible, though, as you are restricted at the exit rows in terms of how you can position those seats.

My idea from months ago is still sound, IMHO. Pull two rows from the front of the plane; install 4 F seats. Total capacity drops to 148, eliminating the extra FA. These 4 F seats would have great legroom, BTW.

Another freaky idea: FIVE F seats in one row. 2-3 configuration. They'd be a bit narrower than traditional F seats but again you'd have tons of legroom. I'd bet a frequent UA traveler would prefer a middle F seat over a middle E+ seat. That would make the capacity 149.

Given United's apparent commitment to Ted and all-Y seating, it seems so ironic to me that United is trying to move CRJ/ERJ regional flying onto CR7s and E70s to they can sell F/C, primarily for international (especially at IAD).

Does United really think it's appealing for paid F/C passengers to endure Ted from Florida to IAD or, even worse, from LAS/PHX to ORD?

This actually makes a TON of sense. E+ is never filled with elites on Ted and the reduction in seat count eliminates an FA from the cost structure.

Yeah that makes sense too becuase I'd have a place to actually use the e500s rather than the ocassional LAX-SFO or ORD-CMH that I use them on...

They should have introduced TED with the tightest pitch allowable and foregone the E+ altogether and then pack the planes to the tilt.

As other have pointed out currently the few TED flights that I have taken the E+ is mainly empty or filled with commuting United employees from "leisure" destinations.

Song is dead. As we discussed at the time when the TED was launched these airline within an airline experiments have never really worked out at the end.

EXACTLY!!

They could easily look at people like me who used to fly IAD-LAS a couple times a year then *COUGH* mysteriously stopped flying that TED route after two times. I learned my lesson. The experience sucks immensely. I now fly IAD-LAX-LAS and upgrade the transcon segment or sometimes use AA. Soon I will be trying a paid first class trip on VX. I do everything in my power to avoid Ted!

To discontinue TED, UA managers would have to admit it was a mistake, and that's why we are stuck with it.:mad:

I realize that there weren't many F-class ticket sales in TED destinations, but whatever numbers there were - it is better than the zero F/P/A sales that TED generates at present.:p

This is a flawed analysis because you can't just say that even one paid F/P/A ticket before Ted is worth more than zero paid F/P/A tickets now with Ted, because along with Ted, came more seats on the aircraft. More seats = more revenue potential. Given that Ted routes are often high-volume markets with presumably high load factors, it could very well be that Ted generates overall higher revenue than mainline into those markets, even with the F/P/A traffic going to zero.