I have seen a drastic drop in customer service over the last two months. I witnessed it from the passenger side after a busy weekend of pass travel. Each time, the gate agents told us this is the "United Way" and just roll their eyes. Shut the door with 15 minutes to go no matter what passengers are checked in and running down the concourse from a late inbound. I, as captain, had to stand in the jetway/terminal door as an agent tried to shut it saying "its the United way now with customer service!". An older man was hurrying down the concourse and couldnt keep up with the family. Their inbound was late and the family ran ahead to get to our flight. I told them I wouldnt leave without their dad. The agent was calling on the radio, "captain says he will take the delay". It was still over 5 minutes before departure time and the rest were boarded.

All they care about is getting the door shut now. The quotes are "There is always another flight". When asked about the last flight of the night they say there is another flight in the morning.

It is sad to see the rapid decompression of the airline that had good ontime an good customer service. On multiple occasions after the merger, passengers would come up to me and say how sad they were because of their experiences on both airlines and didnt want service to fail.

Well it has. Just like when bean counters get in charge of airlines. Pretzels go away because the other guy doesnt give pretzels. This is lost and that. Pretty soon its a low-class Southwest cattle car without the stupid jokes. Sad to watch.

This is how things were done before Gordon got here. He specifically was quoted as saying that if you shut the door on enough people, you wont have people to fly on time anywhere. They stopped the BS policy. Especially when we dont have enough available seats to help people on the next flights and it rolls downhill. I also assume that it doesnt count in involuntary boardings when passengers are denied on connecting flights even when it is the airline's fault for getting them to the hub late.

Sorry you have to experience this but, it is the United way. I could go into a litany over the events and comments I have witnessed over the years. I however, am trying to have happy thoughts right now. I will say when you think you have seen it all, stand by, there's more around the corner.

If it the "united way" I thought that cal people are running the show at flight ops, mx, customer service and flight attendents, then it sounds a lot like the continental way, or just the airline way as I have seen the same type service from dal amd amr.

It has been a very obvious degradation of quality within the last two months... whatever the cause. Our service, morale and maintenance in the last decade were not even close to what is happening now.

Take it easy, its not a dig at the pilots. Im sure you werent happy working for a such a mess over the last decade just as CAL pilots werent happy working for the mess before that.

I was attempting to get on a flight to a tropical destination last week. Last flight of the day. There were connecting passengers from Frankfurt who were running down the concourse over ten minutes before departure. The hugged each other, out of breath, and high fived as they handed their tickets to the agent. The agent denied them boarding and gave their seats to some standbys that were standing there at the gate. It was very tense. I was aware of their connection before the Franfurt flight even landed, so I know the gate was aware. That never used to happen.

Like I said I thought cal has taken over most of the operation from what I have seen or read. I fully expected the service to get better if the cal folks are running the show. That being said I have seen things just about the same as before not really better not worse but hey that is just the small picture in which I operate.

I was not trying to ake a dig at anyone I thought it was a legitimate questions since cal has taken over the opertaion at the top of most of the operation. The moral I assume is just from the merger dragging out longer than most expected.

It seems management has been adopting the worst practices from both sides to make the worst possible airline. They must have overslept and missed the class in business school when they taught it was the best practices from each entity that should be adopted.

What he describes is United's view of schedule integrity. AMR's way, DAL's way, or Cindy Lou Who's way, it really doesn't matter.

What matter's is it is simply wrong to leave people at the gate when either down line connections aren't jeopardized or it is the last flight of the evening and crew rest issues are not involved.

Are we in the business of attaining schedule metrics or conveying passengers from A to B with a modicum of service?

Agree special tracking with trying to get people from a to b and do my best to have that happen. I just laugh when I hear it is just united from an article from some ****ed off traveler. Again you might calit uniteds view but in reality cal is running a lot of this now.

When it works best is when the mid management gives the agents and the rest tools to work with and the best tool we could have that that has been taken away is communication. United has always been terrible at this when it comes to communicating between divisions, dspt to planning, routing to dspt, csr to pilots, better communication would really help. Remeber when the csr would mention a problem and all we had to do was say hey throw it on me i can make that 10 minutes up no problem.

But once again some of this had to happen before at cal as they seem to be running the show but falling back to our backwards ways.

Thx hooker you said it much better with fewer words. Agree 100%

Yea--new FOM still has the hat in it.