Call me a "koolaid" drinker if you will, but my overall impressions from spending 4 days at Willis Tower were positive.

First, Oscar spoke to us twice and both times his message was consistent. In simple terms he was saying he believes in the philosophy that change starts at the top and treating people like you want them to treat you is a key to success in business so no more reprimanding employees for trying to do what they believe is right instead he wants a culture where employees have respect for the work of others and feel empowered to do what's "right" even if what's right is not perfectly inline with company policy. He recognizes that people will make mistakes, but he feels this is a far better approach to running a business than trying to tightly regulate every decision UAL employees make.

His philosophy most definitely has influenced his top managers because everyone had the same message that they are there to support the frontline troops and are eager to hear from people when they find problems that need solving.

Next . . . the NOC was simply astonishing. I had been there years ago, but it has more than doubled in size and the resources available on that one floor are mind boggling. Just know that if you have a real emergency there is an incredible support team that goes to work on your behalf.

Next . . . Flight Ops is concerned about where the next generation of pilots will come from because they do not see a pipeline. They said they are down to the same 5000 applications at all 3 majors. They are exploring some interesting options even going so far as to have talks with military leaders about developing "dual track" careers where pilots would join the military initially but have a guaranteed airline job after initial training was complete. Of course, they are also actively setting up feeder programs with college aviation programs. To that point there were a half dozen interns working at Willis all of whom I would expect to see on the line within a few years. That was common in the mid-90s as well.

Next, Howard wants to know how to change the United culture on aircraft refusals. Apparently we average 2 per day where as Delta and American have less than that per month. He feels United pilots are too quick to shoot down a plane when conditions are not warranted. He was quick to point out that if one had a situation like being dispatched to LGA with anti-skid inop in a 737-900 he would be the first to support turning down that plane, but he felt that simply rejecting an airplane because "I don't take planes with inop APUs" was an example of a culture tendency he'd like to see change.

Finally, the word from Oscar was more used Airbus confirmed for 2018 but not mentioned in the last call with a deal being negotiated for an additional 20 or so plus ongoing discussions with Boeing about the 767 replacement for a time frame around 2025 and although they said in the investor conference they were only looking out to 2020, they had a plan thru 2024 that includes 4% or more growth in mainline flying.


Oh, and the course itself . . . it was a well run and interesting class in "team building". They are definitely trying to produce captains that are more engaged both with other employee groups and with passengers.