I tried really, really, really hard not to say anything about United in the aftermath of CEO Jeff Smisek’s departure. Then I made the mistake of reading things on the internet. All the usual suspects were in play – MileagePlus changes, revenue-based, mean people, bad food, etc. but my personal favorite was a recommendation that United introduce a new business class seat today. Yeah, even if it is needed (and it is), that takes more than 24 hours to pull off, but I digress. All of these are worthy thoughts, but I’m not certain they should be United’s focus right now.
Nothing else matters until they fix the mess of an operation United has become. All the fancy seats and bonus miles in the world do not matter if an airline cannot get you and your belongings from A to B to C on time without making you feel like you’ve been beaten on the head with a plastic wine bottle in the process. Fix the airline and a lot of beautiful things begin to happen. Your employees don’t have to deal with as many angry customers which is less draining on them. Your customers begin to not dread the thought of flying you. They buy more tickets. Profits rise. Profit sharing gets paid. A virtuous cycle begins.
There’s obviously plenty to be done, but I’d start with the basics.
-MJ, September 9, 2015
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com
It will be interesting to see how this turns out. It’s overlooked a lot but culture in an organization does matter and it is particularly important when bringing two organizations together. It seems like an afterthought with this merger. There never seemed to be much concern over bringing two very different cultures together (Continental and United), particularly given the bankruptcy issues that United went through and how that impacted their labor force. The festering of an “Us v. Them” mentality is never helpful, especially when it can seep over into the customer service aspects of a business.
I hate to be the one who breaks the big news, but United had almost $2 billion in profits (excluding special items, $1.13 billion with special items) in 2014, and 2015 Q1 profits of $600 million. United already was turning the corner, whether people want to admit it or not, with Smisek as CEO. That Smisek may not have turned around United as quickly as expected is accurate. But all the big changes you outline above to improve the “operation” so as to make profits already are working. I’ve flown UA for decades now and I always get from point… Read more »
Well said. I think a style-over-substance mindset is what made United into the pariah that it currently is.
As for the poll on the right, I voted for “other”. Most airplane customers aren’t frequent flyers, and I think TV advertisements sway them more than anything.