The two aren’t linked in anyway, IMO.

If you can’t be a decent human being and treat customers with respect, kindness, and dignity under the current CBA, is more money really going to change your character?

 

Agreed, it’s rare to find a commuter who hasn’t suffered a flight attendant struggling to read during the PAs. I wonder how the suggestion to create remedial reading classes for flight attendants would go over?

 

The flight attendants had their customer focused remedial training a couple years ago…”Back Stage” Problem is, when they’re forced to read credit card advertisements, they aren’t going to want to spend more time on the PA giving any sort of info. Nor will the passengers listen to them, anyway.

 

Not what I said. This is not about respect or whether or not to treat customers with dignity, but if the company wants me to hand out business cards to first class or say goodbye to every passenger just to improve some metric, I might be more inclined to do so if the company showed me appreciation in the form a new contract.

 

It’s really quite simple. Just like Herb Kelleher said years ago. The company takes care of its people. They in turn take care of the customers. Then profits take care of themselves. United trying to reinvent the wheel is a losing battle.

 

Bingo. And the new guys wonder why the old guys are cranky. Each new management loves to reinvent the wheel and prove the previous team all wrong. They squander millions and employee goodwill while taking bites out of the current contract or delaying the next one because of this or that emergency. Meanwhile, a big chunk of gullible pilots complicates the simplest of things so they can then assume (or direct) some of the blame on their fellow pilots. It appears to me that some of the smartest guys in the room are also some of the most easily bamboozled by the "suits and metrics" crowd. And then they become one of the suit's more powerful tools when they start directing blame at the wrong guys.

​​​​​WTF? Stop saving the airline already. It will survive or thrive irrespective of your best efforts. Just fly the jet and go home already.

 

Nice post Mr. Dynamite …


It’s like when your wife tells you there will be more sex if you just do more to help around the house… response:“alright, you go first”

Contract is past due… FUPM

 

I think a lot of the differences in attitudes between the grumpy old guys and the new ones is how many times we’ve seen this show. Just over 20 years ago UAL had very fast upgrades and a huge contractual gain, followed by 9/11, concessions, a recession, and a merger. Right after the merger they announced that we were getting a bunch of new 737-700’s at a price we couldn’t pass on and drawing down the 50 seat flying. We changed our 350 order to the -1000, and then back to the -900 and increased the total. We were going to grow the seniority list to 16,000 pilots and become the premier US airline. Following that sales pitch, the 737’s were changed to delayed max orders, 50 seat flying increased, and the 350 is still just a remote possibility. This is just the latest version of the same old show. I’m all for keeping the pax informed and comfortable, but going the extra mile and being all core4 has left the building.

 

I’m with ya about the company needing to keep this an attractive career and sorry if my reply sounded like it was pointed at you….I was speaking to the generalized “you”. Just another take on the “title doesn’t dictate behavior” discussion.

The company could do wonders for pilot recruitment by proposing a truly industry leading contract….seeing there’s a pilot shortage and all.

 

Ya know this quote was attributed to Pat Patterson, a 30-year CEO of United. To paraphrase: “Take care of the employees, they’ll take care of the passengers, the passengers will take care of the shareholders…”

In fact, in the 1930s Core4 was apparently Core5: