United Airlines.... Waddaya Think?

pljenkins

Resident Knucklehead
Well, it looks like United managed to spool up the retirees pretty good, to the point that they've got the bankruptcy judge raising a baleful eye at it.

Kinda scary. They have, in the last year, managed to alienate the active employee group by restructuring their labor contracts, the investors by declaring the existing stock worthless upon emergence, the retirees by encouraging them to retire early to retain benefits only to pull the carpet out from under them once they were out the door, and the industry analists by spinning up Ted in spite of warning by just about anyone with a remote clue about the industry that it would be not smart to spin up a "low cost carrier" with costs that are higher then similar mainline flying.

Since, ultimately, my paycheck comes from the Big U, I'm a little concerned about where this is going...

Opinions?
 
I work for Frontier, so everyday I look down over at Ted and laugh my ass off. To me it just looks like a huge joke! Today they actually were using 737-300s for TED flights and one of the TED A320s was running as a mainline flight over at concourseB. Are they just trying to confuse their customers now?

As for the real United, I hope they make it, they have to but they seem to keep making stupid decisions. Does anyone actually still like working over there? I mean I am sure there are some but if your workforce isnt happy how productive can they be? Just see some of the TSA employees. There are a million things United needs to do and they seem to keep ignoring them and changing stuff that isnt on the "need to do list".

Perhaps the only thing that will save UA is when/if US falls off the map as their situation looks even worse? At this point though, its just a matter of time.

Tim
 
The whole UAL thing scares the bejeezus out of me. When I was younger I really wanted to work for UAL. They had the best aircraft, the best bases and the fastest transition to international ops and fastest upgrade to captain... In fact, we had about 2 guys per new hire class leave Delta for UAL while we were hiring.
 
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In fact, we had about 2 guys per new hire class leave Delta for UAL while we were hiring.

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Kinda blacklists you with Delta, eh?
 
I doubt it, I dunno!

We had a guy leave after probation was up for USAir because he lived in Pittsburgh and all of his buddies were bragging about new Airbuses, no commute, yadda yadda yadda.

So during his first week of ground school, he got a real good look around, saw how poorly it was being run and literally begged for his job back at Delta. Luckily, the chief pilot had mercy and let him come back with his seniority.

Apparently, things were massively mismanaged there prior to 9-11.
 
"the chief pilot had mercy and let him come back with his seniority."

Seems like that would have caused a greivence from anyone junior to him when he quit. He should go to the bottom of the list.

We had guys from my class leave to United, Southwest, and, yes, even America West.
 
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We had guys from my class leave to United, Southwest, and, yes, even America West.

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Why would anyone go from UPS to America West? Pay-wise, isn't AmWest the lowest of the nationals/majors?
 
He never flew freight before. He had worked for Braniff 2 before they went Chapter 7. Not sure why AWE instead of the others at the time, other than maybe they were the airline that offered him a job. He might not of stayed there, either. I remember AWE had a furlough a couple of years later.

The youngest guy in my class came from a regional and had always wanted to work for US Air. He wasn't too excited about UPS and got fired after missing a few trips. Not sure what happened to him.

UPS wasn't considered a great job back in those days.....
 
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He never flew freight before. He had worked for Braniff 2 before they went Chapter 7. Not sure why AWE instead of the others at the time, other than maybe they were the airline that offered him a job. He might not of stayed there, either. I remember AWE had a furlough a couple of years later.

The youngest guy in my class came from a regional and had always wanted to work for US Air. He wasn't too excited about UPS and got fired after missing a few trips. Not sure what happened to him.

UPS wasn't considered a great job back in those days.....

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Would personally take cargo over pax any day, especially having already done freight dogging. Just a different lifestyle that I enjoy more than the pax side.
 
"Would personally take cargo over pax any day"

Yeah, me too. It's funny how every chance I had to move up the career ladder, it turned out it was a freight company. I didn't think, or really wish for, a career in freight until I had worked for UPS for about a year. After that, I was trapped by the seniority game because I got pretty senior fairly fast and was holding good schedules. Now, I like the fact that I don't have to stand by the door and say "have a nice day" to the pax or have to put up with people being rude.
 
Never had to throw an unruly box off an airplane?
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Passenger problems suck because people haven't the least bit of respect for any employee, nor do they chill out when the police arrive.
 
passengers are rude to the captain/FO???? I thought it was a big deal for flight attendants, but am surprised about the crew- I mean, the captain and FO can basically kick your butt if you "step on their shoes" ... you can be off a flight in not time, at least I thought...
-B
 
Usually it starts out with a passenger being rude to a FA. Then the FA gets the "A Line" or the "Lead Flight Attendant" involved.

Then they'll normally play "OK, I'll be good" and then a few minutes later they're back up to their normal behavior.

Then they finally get around to notifying us that there's an issue, unfortunately after it's been brewing for about 10 minutes, then the captain will step back to see what the problem is and then the passenger will be removed from the aircraft.

Normally, I'd say about 50% of the problem passengers mellow out completely when the captain steps back, but a growing percentage of people even start smarting off to pilots as well and pretty much get the boot off the jet at that point.

Pilots are pretty much authority figures to other pilots and kids but there's been a noticeable deterioration of basic respect over the last eight years of me being an airline pilot.

I think a lot of people have the 'cruise ship' mentality of that we're supposed to shine their shoes, be affable and take verbal abuse from them while we trip over ourselves to jump at their every whim and that just isn't going to happen when my priorities are flying a $25 million dollar 150,000 pound jet at 76% the speed of sound!

I'd love to show up at a problem passenger's place of business, sit down in his office, put my feet on his desk, demand a drink and spout verbal insults at him, blow my nose and hand them the kleenex snot side out much the way they do on my airplane.
 
Me too.

We had 'passengers' the other day that were shackled hands and feet and to the seat, accompanied by two big armed guards and a nurse for sedation.
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I see lots of people on airline flights that I could only wish got that treatment.
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Me too.

We had 'passengers' the other day that were shackled hands and feet and to the seat, accompanied by two big armed guards and a nurse for sedation.
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I see lots of people on airline flights that I could only wish got that treatment.
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I've transported many a prisoner & their guards, usually two guards to a prisoner. We had specific procedures as to where they can/can't be seated.

Also I've had deportees headed to MIA to get kicked out of the country.
 
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I've transported many a prisoner & their guards, usually two guards to a prisoner.

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Yeah, it was 2:1.

They towed us to a remote spot on the ramp to unload/reload, then surrounded the plane with four unmarked cars and guards armed with shotguns.

Interesting first trip, for sure.
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