| To: John Vosilla who wrote (79) | 5/19/2011 7:07:09 AM | | From: Glenn Petersen | | | | Interesting, thanks.
The Minutiae of an Airline Merger
By JAD MOUAWAD
0New York Times
May 18, 2011
ATLANTA — How many chimes should pilots ring to signal the plane is about to land — two or four? Should flight attendants first pour drinks into a cup or just hand over the can?
Airline mergers are complex and tough to pull off — witness the troubled marriage of People Express and Continental Airlines in the 1980s or the continuing problems in integrating America West and US Airways six years after their merger. So when Delta Air Lines acquired Northwest three years ago, executives knew they would have to resolve major labor, technology and financial issues.
_______________
How to Merge Two Airlines
Delta and Northwest announced their merger in April 2008. They immediately began planning for what turned out to be an 18-month sprint to integrate 1,200 systems across the two airlines — everything from customer loyalty programs to aircraft operations, all without interrupting service. Managers built this master guide to break down when these systems would need to start working together. Each note represents a project that could involve thousands of tasks.
What they had not fully anticipated were the thousands of tiny details that go mostly unnoticed by passengers but can make the difference between a successful merger and a failed one.
All airlines have their own way of doing things, developed over time and through labor negotiations. All have specific working rules, flying procedures, maintenance schedules and computer programs. And all have their own cultures. Delta always thought of itself as the gracious host. Hence its flight attendants poured the requested drinks. Northwest was the practical carrier; its attendants just handed over the can.
“It was like Noah’s ark out here,” said Peter Wilander, an executive at Delta responsible for in-flight services. “We had two of everything.”
Delta executives agreed earlier this month to discuss the minutiae of the Northwest merger to make the broader point that combining two airlines is an incredibly difficult task. The Delta-Northwest tie-up is now widely seen as a success, and that view laid the groundwork for two other, more recent mergers: United Airlines with Continental last fall and Southwest Airlines and AirTran, which was completed just last week.
“If you look at the history of mergers, the assumption was that you couldn’t do them successfully,” said Richard Anderson, Delta’s chief executive. “Everybody had come to the conclusion that these things are too big, too complex and too unwieldy to manage.”
Delta’s merger with Northwest was announced in April 2008 and closed in October of that year after receiving regulatory and shareholder approval. And yet it still took 14 more months for the airlines to fly as a single carrier, in January 2010.
Delta scored a major point by getting its pilot unions to agree to a common contract by the time the merger closed. Many analysts said this gave the airline a critical advantage by getting a crucial labor group on board from the start.
But that did not put an end to Delta’s labor issues. Flight attendant representatives accused the airline of using intimidation tactics after they lost a bid to unionize the carrier’s work force in November. The matter is under review by the National Mediation Board, which could call a new election.
Meanwhile, flight attendants from Delta and Northwest continue to work under separate contracts, each with their own work rules, and cannot be scheduled to fly on the same airplanes.
And some merger-related work is still going on. The last Northwest plane was repainted only six weeks ago. Delta expects to spend another year completing an inventory of all airplane parts and maintenance procedures into a new database.
Each airline has hundreds of different technologies that book seats, print tickets or dispatch crews that need to be integrated. Failure here can leave thousands of travelers without a seat if bookings are misplaced.
Delta’s chief information officer, Theresa Wise, said the airline had to merge 1,199 computer systems down to about 600, including one — a component within the airline’s reservation system — dating from 1966.
The challenge, she said, was to switch the systems progressively so that passengers would not notice. Ms. Wise, who has a doctorate in applied mathematics, devised a low-tech solution: she set up a timeline of the steps that had to be performed by pinning colored Post-it notes on the wall of a conference room.
A major switch happened when the new airline canceled all Northwest’s bookings and transferred them to newly created Delta flights in January 2010. It required computer engineers to perform 8,856 separate steps stretched out over several days.
More than 140,000 electronic devices, including printers, had to be replaced. The size of the paper at airport kiosks was even checked to make sure it could print boarding passes for Delta’s new flights.
“This sounds insane,” Ms. Wise said. “But each reservation system has its own personality.”
Financially, the merger provided a big boost to Delta’s bottom line. Delta posted its highest profit in a decade last year. But even as the integration into a single carrier was hitting its stride, Delta’s operations struggled.
The airline had the worst record among large carriers for on-time arrivals last year, and it accounted for a third of all customer complaints, the worst of any airline, for categories like service and lost bags, according to the Transportation Department.
When United and Continental announced their own tie-up, in May 2010, they picked a hybrid approach to emphasize that the combination was a merger of equals: the new airline would keep its headquarters in Chicago but would be led by Jeff Smisek, Continental’s chairman, who was a driving force behind the merger. The carrier’s new livery combines Continental’s globe on the tail with United’s name on the fuselage.
United and Continental continue to operate as separate airlines until they receive a single operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration by the end of the year. At that point, the new United will overtake Delta as the nation’s largest carrier.
Unlike Delta, however, United has not secured a new contract for all its pilots yet, some of whom recently picketed in front of nine major airports across the country, including Los Angeles International Airport. Mr. Smisek said during a recent conference call that the airline had made some progress in the merger. Passengers can now print boarding passes from either airline at all United and Continental kiosks, and loyalty programs are getting more closely aligned.
“I remain committed to reaching agreements that are fair to our co-workers and fair to the company,” Mr. Smisek said on the call. “And I want to reach those agreements promptly.”
Likewise, Southwest closed the purchase of AirTran on May 2, and quickly appointed a new leadership team to handle the combination.
“All good things take time and change won’t be immediate, many important decisions are ahead, many questions still need answers,” Gary Kelly, the chief executive of Southwest, said in a video statement after the deal closed. “Once integration is complete, we will have one brand, one customer experience, one livery, one operation under a single operating certificate and one mission.”
If Delta’s experience is any indication, it will be a long road for Southwest and United, littered with seemingly trivial questions.
Pilots at Delta, for instance, used to ring the cabin bell four times as they began their final approach, while those at Northwest rang it twice. The merged airline now signals just two times.
Likewise, the food catering operations of both airlines had 8,000 pages of one-line codes describing everything from soda orders to the price of strawberries. Each airline had different codes, however, and paid different prices for everything.
No decision, seemingly, was too small. Before the merger, Delta used to cut its limes in 10 slices while Northwest cut them 16 ways. The lime debate was even mentioned at a meeting attended by Mr. Anderson, the chief executive, who was told it saved Northwest about $500,000 a year. In the end, Delta stuck with its 10 slices. But the airline also realized that it had been loading more limes on its flights than it needed. So it is now carrying fewer limes.
Delta, based in Atlanta, used to serve the hometown drink, Coke. Northwest, Pepsi. “That was an easy one,” Mr. Anderson recalled. The airline stuck with Coke but adopted Pepsi snacks.
One other issue has apparently stumped everyone. Delta and Northwest each used different trash bags in their cabins. Northwest’s was large, held up better and was easy to use. Delta’s was smaller, like a high-end shopping bag. The airline is still working on finding the perfect bag.
“The amount of work is boring beyond belief,” Mr. Wilander said. “It is also critical to the airline.”
nytimes.com |
| | United Airlines | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| From: Glenn Petersen | 6/11/2011 2:08:18 PM | | | | | | Airlines, Now Flush, Fear a Downturn
By JAD MOUAWAD
New York Times
June 10, 2011
So far this year, the airlines have been able to repeatedly raise ticket prices while still filling their planes. It has been a lucrative formula.
But with the economy slowing down again, the stock market sputtering and high oil prices cutting into household budgets, the airlines may be harder pressed to keep their fares up and planes packed, at least without resorting to significant cuts in capacity when the summer vacation season is over.
Some warning signs are already there. The airlines have failed to raise fares in six of their seven efforts since March, suggesting that some passengers may be balking at the higher ticket prices. “Airlines have overreached,” said George Hobica, the founder of AirFareWatchdog.com.
Still, the airlines’ aggressive pricing strategy has worked well for them. Every major airline has managed to squeeze more revenue out of its passengers this year, thanks not just to higher fares but also to a growing multitude of fees. In May, for instance, United Continental Holdings reported that its estimated revenue per passenger was 14 to 15 percent higher than a year ago, while Southwest Airlines said that measure had risen 11 to 12 percent.
It has not hurt that mergers have left fewer airlines and that they have taken a more disciplined approach to controlling capacity.
For the summer, traditionally the busiest air travel season of the year, demand for airline seats remains strong. The Air Transport Association, the airline trade group, expects 206 million people will fly in June through August, an increase of 1.5 percent over last year. The association even expects the number of passengers on international flights this summer to break last year’s record.
Fares, meanwhile, are at the highest seen since their peak in the third quarter of 2008, when the financial crisis hit, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Transportation.
While fares change daily, the cheapest nonstop round-trip flight from New York to Las Vegas for the July 4 weekend was selling on Friday for $597. The cheapest flight from San Francisco to Boston and back, operated by United Airlines, was selling for $664, but that included one stop. Southwest Airlines was charging $703.80 for the trip, and that was with a stop in both directions. A week in Paris is also expensive — with round-trip fares for nonstop flights starting at $1,442 on American Airlines out of New York.
And these figures do not count the extra fees the airlines now charge, for everything from checked bags to priority boarding to reservation changes or fuel surcharges in international flights.
“It’s getting ridiculously expensive,” said Kevin Currie, a representative with the Teamsters union, who said he might soon curtail visits to relatives in Florida if ticket prices kept rising. “There are more people flying right now, so shouldn’t their prices go down?”
Of course, the airlines do not think that way. Since more passengers are vying for every available seat, they can keep raising fares and still fill their planes.
But there are cheaper fares to be had. Mr. Hobica, of AirFareWatchdog.com, noted that travelers could still buy a $280 round-trip fare between Newark and Los Angeles between July 3 and July 11, for example. “If you are willing to be flexible, there are deals.”
Steven Tilston, the senior director for analysis at Expedia, an online travel agent, agreed. “Flights are getting a little more expensive but that is not happening uniformly.”
Given the steeper fares, some travelers may be tempted to drive instead, despite the rise in gasoline prices. One Web site, BeFrugal.com, developed an online application that helps travelers compute the total cost of flying versus the time needed to drive between any cities.
The Web site calculates that it would take four hours and 50 minutes to get from a specific location in Salt Lake City to downtown Los Angeles by air, and cost $762, including cab fares along the way. The same trip could be made by driving about 11 hours for a total round-trip cost of $292.
This certainly has not been an easy year for the airlines. While air travel has recovered from the recession, fuel prices have surged this year. In addition, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the instability in the Middle East cut travel to those places. As a result, the International Air Transport Association slashed its forecast for the global industry’s profitability this week. The global trade group said it expected airline profits to fall sharply this year. Profits for North American carriers will drop to $1.2 billion this year, from $4.1 billion last year, the group said.
Nicholas E. Calio, the president of the Air Transport Association, the trade group for United States carriers, voiced a similar concern. The association said that in the first quarter of the year, domestic airlines spent $11.4 billion on fuel, a 30 percent increase from the same period in 2010.
“Even as demand for air travel continues to improve, high and volatile energy prices could hamper recovery efforts,” Mr. Calio said.
Still, the airlines have long been adept at fine-tuning their fares to maximize revenue on each flight. Ray Neidl, a senior aerospace specialist at Maxim Group, an institutional brokerage firm in New York, said he expected that flights would be packed through the summer but that the airlines might have to make some major adjustments in the fall.
“This is the first cycle I have ever seen where the airline industry has had strong discipline in controlling capacity,” Mr. Neidl said.
The airlines have already anticipated a drop in demand in the fall and have started to take steps to curb their capacity by the end of the year.
Delta, Air France KLM, and Alitalia, which operate a joint venture on flights between the United States and Europe, said they planned to slash the seats they offer by as much as 9 percent after the summer.
In the meantime, the numbers remain strong for the airlines. Delta said this week that passenger traffic in May rose by 2.2 percent compared with last year while its load factor — or the percentage of seats that are filled — was nearly 84 percent. On American Airlines, the load factor on domestic flights was 86 percent in May.
Tim Winship, the publisher of FrequentFlyer.com, said such numbers were a sharp shift for the industry, which only a few years ago was satisfied with filling 65 to 75 percent of seats.
“Be prepared to confront your own claustrophobia when flying this summer, because it is going to be congested,” Mr. Winship said. “This is going to translate directly into high levels of discomfort for customers. If you are thinking of having an empty middle seat on your flights this summer, the odds are very good that you will be disappointed.”
Ask Liz Elder, who stepped off a flight from Salt Lake City to visit one of her sons in New York recently. It was her fifth time flying since February. “Every flight I’ve been on this year has been absolutely packed,” she said. “Planes are absolutely stuffed.”
nytimes.com |
| | United Airlines | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (82) | 7/8/2011 9:11:43 PM | | From: John Vosilla | | | | Good move. Got lucky on the one day runnup in RJET and got out the next day when it failed to break the highs. Strange times with the transports at new highs yesterday even with oil prices back up the past few weeks.. A stronger economy with much higher oil prices later this year would not make this the sector to be in though.. A continued sluggish economy with declining oil prices is what I'd bet on though..Looking to get back in some airline but want some strength in UAL first..
finance.yahoo.com |
| | United Airlines | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (83) | 7/8/2011 9:16:37 PM | | From: John Vosilla | | | | | What I like is so much capacity was taken out of the system the past decade and even in the dark days of 2008-09 seemed most flights were packed.. It really is all about the price of oil IMHO.. |
| | United Airlines | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Glenn Petersen | 9/2/2012 4:37:11 PM | | | | | | Everything carries a price in this business climate
With airlines leading the way, a la carte fees help boost profits
Phil Rosenthal
Chicago Tribune
September 2, 2012
By now, the idea of airline baggage charges, extra legroom at a cost, paying for food and so on, has become for travelers a bit like the preflight safety spiel about how seat belts work.
It may annoy. Or perhaps it has become so common that it no longer elicits much response. But these transactions are helping keep the planes flying, and they illustrate a market reality increasingly faced by a wide spectrum of consumers and businesses.
"Back out that ancillary revenue and some airlines that posted profits would not just have posted losses but significant losses," Henry Harteveldt, chief research officer and co-founder of California-based Atmosphere Research Group, said Friday in an interview.
Efforts by airlines around the world to increase revenue apart from ticket prices have grown almost tenfold since 2008 to $22.6 billion, according to a new study by IdeaWorks Co., a Wisconsin-based industry consultant. And, even with that, the International Air Transport Association is projecting overall global airline profits will be down in 2012 for a second successive year to about $3 billion.
That's a profit margin of just 0.5 percent, so what some see as nickel-and-diming is viewed within the turbulent airline industry as pennies from heaven.
"The whole economics of the business have been an absolute disaster since the fuel crisis of 2008," IdeaWorks President Jay Sorensen explained. "Airlines are just desperate for money."
The economy has ensured that this desperation is not unique to airlines or even the travel business, where hotels may look to charge for a Wi-Fi connection that Starbucks will give you for free, or assess a resort fee on top of the cost of whatever the resort's room rate is and maybe tack on a housekeeping surcharge.
You see this batteries-not-included mentality elsewhere, with customers reeled in by a low introductory price and then given the upsell pitch. Cellphone companies that once touted all-inclusive services look to sell data and voice separately. Banks try to assess new fees to cover costs they once absorbed.
Strap yourself in for more — at least for a while.
"In an industry cycle, in the beginning, when you're in a high-growth period, you tend to see a lot of bundling, giving a lot of things at one price," Jean-Manuel Izaret, a partner and managing director of the Boston Consulting Group, heading their pricing practice, said by phone. "At the other extreme, when you are in the super-mature area, you'll have low-cost providers entering certain markets with no-frills offers.
"If (the legacy companies) price above (the newcomers), everybody goes to the low-price guys, and if you match the price but with the frills, you lose money," Izaret said. "So in a mature market, where low-cost challengers have come in and undercut the prices of established players, the only option for established players is to unbundle and price every little thing separately."
Then after a while, another maverick tries to cut through the clutter and simplify matters for consumers, by offering several a la carte services for one fee. Maybe a carmaker touts simplified pricing. Others follow. The cycle continues.
"Airlines are … going to have to be careful of nuisance fees, like checked bags and seating, and focus instead on inventing services that have not been offered before that people value," Sorensen said.
That value proposition is critical. But within a company the ability to generate revenue through a service often means more resources will be devoted to improving it. So the baggage service, for example, not only has benefited from fewer checked items in the system but greater investment in that system by airlines.
"Air fares consistently trail the rate of inflation," United Airlines spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said in an email. "Charging for specific services like baggage handling lets us invest to provide greater reliability for those who check a bag, without passing on the cost to customers who don't."
According to IdeaWorks, Chicago-based United gets 13.9 percent of its revenue from ancillary streams like baggage fees, premium coach seating and cash paid by companies offering bank cards with benefits like frequent-flier club points and waiver of fees.
"Airlines seem more prone to disclose this information because it's a hot topic in the investment community. It's something that's now expected by analysts," Sorensen said.
It's also helpful motivation for employees, who understand why they're hawking snacks.
Those flight attendant/beer vendors are right to feel sheepish.
"I have seen over time consumers expressing their dissatisfaction with a la carte fees, particularly the growing trend of having to pay extra for window and aisle seats," Erin Bowen, a Purdue University professor and lead researcher for the Airline Passenger Survey, said by email. "A la carte pricing looks more like hidden fees or 'nickel and diming' to many people — and it doesn't endear the airlines or invoke loyalty in passengers."
An April TripAdvisor survey of more than 1,000 Americans found 41 percent identified more legroom as the greatest improvement airlines could make, but 71 percent said they wouldn't pay for more legroom on flights less than four hours long. Even for longer flights, only 35 percent said they would pay at least $25 for that space.
What ticket buyers tend to seek first as they check options online — for business travelers, often as a policy — is a cheap fare.
Unless that changes, there is plenty of incentive for airlines, and other industries, to take on the baggage of consumer disenchantment with add-on charges.
"Any consumer who thinks there's a free lunch has to understand there's always a cost," Sorensen said. "Something has to give."
philrosenthal@tribune.com
Twitter @phil_rosenthal
Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
chicagotribune.com |
| | United Airlines | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Glenn Petersen | 12/24/2012 6:05:14 PM | | | | | | For United, Big Problems at Biggest Airline
By JAD MOUAWAD
New York Times
November 28, 2012
CHICAGO — It was supposed to be a moment for celebration: United Airlines observing the delivery of its second Boeing 787 Dreamliner with a flight from Seattle to Chicago earlier this month for a select group of employees, while senior officers, including Jeffery A. Smisek, United’s hard-charging chief executive, served Champagne and took lunch orders.
But before the flight took off that morning, a computer glitch in one of the airline’s computer systems delayed 250 flights around the world for two hours.
So it goes at United these days. The world’s biggest airline, created after United merged with Continental Airlines in 2010, promised an unparalleled global network, with eight major hubs and 5,500 daily flights serving nearly 400 destinations. As an added benefit, the new airline would be led by Mr. Smisek of Continental, which was known for its attention to customer service.
But two years on, United still grapples with a myriad problems in integrating the two airlines. The result has been hobbled operations, angry passengers and soured relations with employees.
The list of United’s troubles this year has been long. Its reservation system failed twice, shutting its Web site, disabling airport kiosks and stranding passengers as flights were delayed or canceled. The day of the 787 flight, another system, which records the aircraft’s weight once passengers and bags are loaded, shut down because of a programming error.
United has the worst operational record among the nation’s top 15 airlines. Its on-time arrival rate in the 12 months through September was just 77.5 percent — six percentage points below the industry average and 10 percentage points lower than Delta Air Lines. It had the highest rate of regularly delayed flights this summer, and generated more customer complaints than all other airlines combined in July, according to the Transportation Department.
The airline even angered the mayor of Houston, Continental’s longtime home and still the carrier’s biggest hub, when it unsuccessfully sought to block Southwest Airlines’ bid to bring international flights to the city’s smaller airport, Hobby.
The United-Continental merger is weighing on the company’s finances. It took a $60 million charge in the third quarter for merger-related expenses, including repainting planes. It also took a $454 million charge to cover a future cash payment to pilots under a tentative deal reached in August.
While most large airlines reported profits this year, United has lost $103 million in the first three quarters of 2012, with revenue up just 1 percent to $28.5 billion. Its shares are up 7 percent this year compared with a 12 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and a 24 percent gain for Delta.
“United remains at a challenging point,” analysts from Barclays wrote last month, and they forecast that the carrier would not begin to see the benefits of its merger until late in 2013 and into 2014. Still, while airlines initially struggle, mergers increase revenue eventually, as the example of Delta’s acquisition of Northwest Airlines demonstrated two years ago.
Mr. Smisek, taking a break from serving coffee halfway through the maiden 787 flight, acknowledged that things were not going as fast as expected, particularly given the aggressive targets he set two years ago. Back then, Mr. Smisek said the merger would be wrapped up in 12 to 18 months. He has since learned to be patient, he said.
“It is still a work in progress,” he said. “The integration of two airlines takes years. It’s very complex. If you look at where we were two years ago, we’ve come a long way.”
Admittedly, the process is complicated. Airline mergers mean combining different technologies, often old computer systems, as well as thousands of procedures used by pilots and flight dispatchers, gate agents, flight attendants and ground crew.
Setbacks are common. Like United, US Airways experienced a breakdown in its booking technology after its combination with America West in 2005. Delta’s on-time performance fell sharply in the year after its purchase of Northwest.
But today, Delta is a leader among big airlines in on-time performance. US Airways had a record third-quarter profit even though it still lacks common work rules for its pilots seven years after its merger.
United has completed many of its merger tasks, particularly as far as passengers are concerned. It has received its single operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration, allowing it to run a combined fleet. Despite all the problems this summer, it claims to have finally merged the reservation and technology systems.
Mr. Smisek said passengers would see the benefits of the combination by next year as United introduces new features on its planes, including satellite-based Wi-Fi, flatbed seats in business class and bigger overhead bins on its fleet of Airbus narrow-body planes.
One of the remaining sticking points, however, is getting employees of the two merged carriers to agree to a single contract. Pilot unions signed a tentative agreement with the company in August, after months of bitter negotiations. Talks are continuing for agreements with unions representing flight attendants and mechanics.
“There always seems to be some bump in the road,” said Ray Neidl, a senior aerospace and airline analyst with the Maxim Group. He said much of the merger’s benefits would kick in after the airline got its collective agreements with its work force. “Once they get these challenges out of the way, United will be a powerhouse.”
For many analysts, United’s real challenge lies in combining different work groups with different cultures, values and ways of doing things.
That is particularly true for United, which had a history of sour labor relations, and Continental, long considered one of the nation’s best-run airlines.
“You know, the cultural change takes time,” Mr. Smisek said. “And people resist change. People are sort of set in their ways.”
He added the airline was now intent on providing better operational performance and consistently good customer service. “And there are people who don’t like that,” he said. “I understand that. What I want is those people to either change or leave.”
There are few lasting advantages in the airline business. Airlines can easily match what rivals are doing, whether by lowering fares, buying new planes or installing new features on their aircraft. But United insists that its network remains its most resilient strength and will help it attract more passengers.
The carrier’s dominant market share at Newark Liberty International Airport, for instance, appears unassailable and provides a formidable gateway to the New York and East Coast markets. United’s Houston hub is a major jumping point to Latin America. And United is the biggest carrier in San Francisco, giving it an advantage in the Pacific, where it is the biggest American carrier.
United is counting on new planes to make a difference in coming years. It has made a big bet by ordering 270 planes over the next decade, including 50 Boeing 787s and 25 Airbus A350s.
The 787’s long-range ability and relatively smaller size will allow United to add new direct service between cities that did not have enough traffic to justify bigger planes like the Boeing 777. Its 787s will fly between Houston and Lagos, Nigeria, starting in January, followed by service from Denver to Tokyo’s Narita airport in March, and from Los Angeles to Tokyo and Shanghai.
United is betting that passengers will be drawn by those new services as well as by the 787’s carbon-fiber technology, which allows higher levels of humidity and oxygen in the cabin and can, Boeing claims, help reduce jet lag-related fatigue.
The airline moved its headquarters to the Willis Tower in Chicago last year. In June, it set up a new Network Operations Center, occupying a full floor in the tower in a vast open space previously used as a trading floor. From here, managers run daily operations, overseeing flight schedules, crew availability, weather forecasts and any delays throughout the system.
After the summer’s mishaps and poor performance, United has improved its on-time record. In particular, it said, arrivals on-time this month were 85 percent.
“We think we’re in a good spot given where we are in the merger,” said Peter D. McDonald, United’s chief operations officer.
Still, perceptions may be tough to fight, particularly online and in frequent-flier forums, where criticism of United’s service and performance has been particularly bitter. One critic, who goes by @FakeUnitedJeff, parodies Mr. Smisek on Twitter. One post last month read: “It’s raining in Newark. I wish we’d bought waterproof aircraft. Cancel, cancel, cancel.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/business/united-is-struggling-two-years-after-its-merger-with-continental.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print |
| | United Airlines | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: zax | 12/30/2014 10:03:08 AM | | | | | | United Airlines sues 22-year-old who found way to get cheaper plane tickets
Posted 2:54 pm, December 29, 2014, by CNN Wire, Updated at 04:30pm, December 29, 2014
kdvr.com
NEW YORK — A young computer whiz from New York City has launched a site to help people buy cheap plane tickets. But an airline company and its travel partner want to shut him down. United Airlines and Orbitz filed a civil lawsuit last month against 22-year-old Aktarer Zaman, who founded the website Skiplagged.com last year.
The site helps travelers find cheap flights by using a strategy called “hidden city” ticketing.
The idea is that you buy an airline ticket that has a layover at your actual destination. Say you want to fly from New York to San Francisco — you actually book a flight from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight.
This travel strategy only works if you book a one-way flight with no checked bags (they would have landed in Lake Tahoe).
It’s not like these tickets are the cheapest all the time, but they often are.
In the lawsuit, United and Orbitz call Skiplagged “unfair competition” and allege that it is promoting “strictly prohibited” travel. They want to recoup $75,000 in lost revenue from Zaman.
</snip> Read the rest here: kdvr.com |
| | United Airlines | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| |
