Originally Posted by
DontPickIt
Well, it's interesting now that the truth starts to come out for public airing and showing - from outside sources. I've been fielding comments for at least a solid year and a half or longer when I travel on UAL, of how it's gone to heck since CAL merged in - this is from passengers. I ride UAL as an offline pilot (from a international carrier) and for some reason passengers vent to me so I have to hear it all.
No matter how many turds step up to cover for the the king turd, the old Arabic statement of "The Fish Rots from the Head" turns out to be true. You can't cover up rot and basic ineptitude. For long. United is a lousy product since the Continetalization of a once very strong global product and the failure of the operational plan has shown it's cards. Change will occur - either by downsizing and going away a la USAir or TWA or significant optimization (not nickel and dime but structural) has to happen for success. It's not going to be easy to guide this ship out of the shoals CAL managers have driven it upon.
UAL needs a real airline man and a team of the right people in the right job. In other words, a MAJOR house cleaning and an IV drip. Now.
I've also heard how the merger has ruined the airline. Except that it's UAL that ruined it. When I would tell people I fly for Continental they would say "Oh, I love your airline". Now when I say I fly for United they just say "Oh" and mumble something under their breath.
UAL may have been making more money the year or so before the merger, but their product was crap as proven by the rankings at that time. Below is a overview of Aviation Weeks Rankings for 2009:
Aviation Week & Space Technology, July 13 2009
Top Performing Companies 2009 by AVIATION WEEK
2009 TPC Airline rankings (Publicly traded airlines only):
Mainline/Legacy Carriers -
[Rank) Airline (TPC Score* - Best score is 100)] -
ONLY USA:
11) Hawaiian Holdings Inc. (42)
14) Alaska Air Group Inc. (35)
16) Continental Airlines Inc. (28)
22) Delta Airlines (18)
24) AMR Corp. (15)
30) US Airways Group Inc. (1)
31) UAL Corp. (1)
Just as most of us thought at CAL, UAL has brought down our rankings to where you were.
Apparently, Mr. Anderson has bought into the "CAL ruined UAL" mantra, but that is simply not the case.
One thing all sides can agree on though is that we need some new blood to right the ship. With a 90% approval rating of Smisek from the shareholders, it doesn't appear that will be anytime soon.