Rut Row....

Stand by for the next PR disaster....They'll be leaving people and cargo on the dock. They really should know better after the AKL debacle.

 

Airhoss;
You have been at UAL long enough. Have you ever seen UAL learn from past mistakes?
I would predict another low cost "airline within an airline" announcement soon. Or some other debacle we have seen 2 or 3 times in the last 15-20 years.

They appear to be incapable of learning from mistakes.

 

In 2011 I was on a four hour sit and was sifting around the company website and hit the webpage that lists the top Officers of United Airlines. Out of 27 only 7 were former United. So I'm unsure who the "they" is you refer to but it's not former United management. Not that they were any good, or old Continental was bad.

 

Good now the new "they" can make the same mistakes as the old "they". And a whole batch of new ones like 757-200's trans Atlantic and the little 777 LAX SYD. It really isn't rocket science.

 

Many of those doing the planning for the -400 at ORD don't have the foggiest notion of what's happening. For One? The Hangar and Ramp area at ORD are about to become a NEW Runway!! so the facilities to maintain the -400 will be impaired severely and ORD might become not much more than a Very large terminal operation as the new facilities have not yet started going up on the south side of ORD. Much of the expertise AND MOST OF THE resources to maintain the -400 are on the west coast and aren't coming back east anytime soon.
I can't speak to the Pilot base as I don't know but there's a LOT of consternation at Willis because some would like to retire the -400 and some would like to keep it, as of NOW? The A350-1000 will be 4 years out with no real guarantee that it will meet the present mission OF the -400. And there are NO alternatives immediately to be had on the marketplace.. to be short? We're in a Pickle!! what are the Alternatives?? the 747-8i, the A380-800 or the 777-300ER/LR of which NONE can be had in the short term. So I guess we fly the 777's we already have?? or we mix the 777 and 747 missions.

 

Yes the old CAL management in charge of the New United Airlines knows exactly how to run International Operations??? Will the house of cards fail before we get real airline people in place to fix it and succeed?

I don't care if you're UAL or CAL start saving a little for hard times ahead.

 

Yes once again CAL management has to clean up a UAL mess.

 

Well I started this thread with no real knowledge of the closing of LAX and essentially moving it to ORD, but it seemed logical.

The truth is UAL -400 are nearing the end of their useful life and UAL mgmt gambled on not needing a replacement airplane for another 4+ years. So here they are moving metal around to fill the holes.

Oh and for some reason no one seems to remember sCAL mgmt had planned on using the 787 from IAH - AKL, but lo and behold Boeing over promised and under delivered with the more capable next gen version of the 787 years away. What a pickle UAL has grown into.

I'm sure people are happier flying "guppies" to DSM and OMA anyway. ;(

 

Weird.

For example, the 747-400 didn't have the extreme "reliability" problem in ORD until after the new post-merger management team found an ingenious way to save $$$ by not duplicating the stocked spare parts in ORD with the ones in SFO.

Just imagine the savings!

(The problem was any pre-depatrure MX delay in ORD could cause the FAs to go illegal without sufficient international FA RSVs to cover an entire crew---which is itself yet another example of the imaginary savings providing by tight staffing.)

 

UAL international operations was a well oiled machine. But hey, the new United managements wisdom is to put the "smallest equipment" that can complete the operation with JUST ONE fuel stop.

Meantime we send our PREMIUM INTERNATIONAL PASSENGERS running to Delta and American. Remember the 757 fiasco with flights over the North Atlantic? We sent premium passengers to other carriers to avoid the fuel stop to make connections. Guess who those guys book travel on now - not United.

You can defend them all you want but START SAVING. It can't last very long until it breaks.