"my sister and my daughter"
Chief Pilot blastmail
United Airlines NYC Base
August 20, 2012
1. Director meeting: I attended a series of meetings in ORD, one being a Chief Pilot Meeting and the other being a meeting with all Director Level leadership. I thought I would share with you some of the information that was shared with me. Getting the operation running correctly was the major theme of both meetings. I know I am not telling you anything that you don't already know when I tell you that our operation has suffered greatly recently and we are certainly are not running the type of airline that we could be and should be running. I know many of you have spoken to me and asked if upper management is aware of the state of our operation and do they have a plan to fix it. After these meetings, I can tell you the answer to both questions is YES. I don't want to dwell on how we got to where we are, because we need to focus on how we go from here, not on how we got here. But I think we need to look at the past to see how to alter our course in the future. In very simple terms, we put our desire to capture revenue synergies from the merger ahead of our ability to support those plans. We have flown more hours than we should to capture revenue, stressing the aircraft and crew. Our parts inventories and down line maintenance plans for supporting our redeployment has suffered as well. The problems are understood and there is a plan in place to get us back to being the kind of airline we all want to be. We have determined that with our fleet there is a maximum number of flights we can operate effectively. This summer we were significantly above that level. We are reducing our flying to a maintainable level, and have already made some reductions this week, there are two more reductions to made between now and the middle of September. This allows for more spare aircraft, more down time for the aircraft for maintenance and perhaps dearest to your hearts, more reasonable levels of flying for the crews. We are delaying some of our redeployment plans and are opening crew bases in ORD and DEN which will improve the quality of the pairings. We are increasing the connect time for passengers by leaving the aircraft on the ground longer. We have invested a large amount of money to reposition aircraft parts to the locations they are flying out of. Our redeployment flights out of IAD for us and EWR for s-UAL had been run like outstations in terms of support. We now are focusing on supporting these flights with parts as hub flying and not down line flying. With more aircraft available we are able to follow through on our plans to match aircraft, parts and mechanics to certain cities where the work needs to be done. All of this requires a great deal of money and the company is committed to make it happen. It is a cost of doing business and from Jeff on down we are committed to make this happen. I know our poor operational performance has been a large frustration for many of you. I am out flying as well and see the same problems you do. We as pilots, have our careers tied the closest to the success of this airline. We don't have the option of going to another company and enter at the same level we left behind. That is why running a good airline, one we all can be proud of, is important to all of us. I know it is easy to be frustrated want to give up when you feel that everyone around you is failing to support you. I ask that you do not give up. I ask that you continue to focus on doing your job to the best of your ability and control the things that you have control of to help turn this ship around. Continue to let us know when you feel that you are not being supported by the groups that you have no control over. I want to know about those cases. Don't give up and think that nothing happens when you bring this to our attention. This airline is like a super tanker at sea. It has a huge amount of momentum and can not be turned on a dime. We will fix our problems, we are focused at all levels to make it happen. The same energy that allowed us to reap the financial benefits of this merger are now focused on the operation. Hang in there. I know it has been tough. It will get better.