Tag Archives for united airlines.
United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz took the stage at Gotham Hall in New York nearly 3 years ago. He was new on the job and looking to make a splash advancing the narrative that his airline was turning itself around, righting the ship.
It always seemed clear that United wouldn’t sustain their new inflight offering. Although in some ways I expected that there would be more progress actually rolling out the seats before it was cut back so far.
Carry on bags are a challenge for airlines that are trying to depart on time. That’s become far more the case over the past 11 years since US airlines added checked bag fees (so passengers try to carry on more) and they’ve resisted adding flights (capacity discipline) so that planes are increasingly full.
It takes time to store carry on bags on the plane, but perhaps more importantly when passengers discover at the last minute that there’s no overhead bin space left it takes time to gate check their bags.
Banked hubs are costly to an airline, there’s a lot of activity, a lot of downtime, and they wind up paying people to stand around. But they’re attractive for selling tickets — shorter connecting times mean flights filter up to the top of search. Customers want to get where they’re going quickly. The problem is during irregular operations — bad weather can delay flight departures, then there are no gates for arriving flights, and challenges connecting cascade.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
United has been moving towards a premium-heavy strategy. The offer more international business class seats than peers using similar aircraft, and they’ve invested in really nice international business class lounges. Their Polaris business class seat allows them to do this because it gives them a fully flat product with direct aisle access without taking up more space in the cabin than their old six-abreast seats. It’s a “good enough” seat that isn’t quite as nice as American’s B/E Aerospace Super Diamond or Delta’s new Suites, but that doesn’t require actively avoiding flying business class on United. United has announced a doubling down on the premium heavy approach adding even more business class seats to a subfleet of 767-300s, as well as adding first class seats to Airbus A319 and A320s where they’ve had fewer seats…
I love the sentiment, but according to United’s announcement there’s not much to it behind service training for employees, free DirecTV on less than one third of mainline aircraft, and paying out lower bonuses.
Of course anything is better than the recent history at United of dragging and beating a passenger in the aisle, killing a dog in the overhead bin, and shoving a 71 year old man to the ground and threatening to take away his miles for complaining.
Every single day an inner battle boils in the skies, just below the service, threatening to bubble over.
A passenger videotaped a woman melting down after boarding her United flight. She said she had four hours ahead of her in a middle seat. She declares “I can’t do this.” She complains also about the size of the two passengers on either side of her. She says she’s small in comparison (she isn’t), “I eat salad.”
But that’s not what makes this story absolutely perfect. There’s an Easter egg in the video.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
United’s Newark – Hong Kong flight diverted to Goose Bay on Saturday for a medical emergency and that’s when things went bad.
The plane went mechanical and passengers had to stay on the aircraft overnight because there were no customs agents available. They were running out of food, and the cabin started getting cold. It was basically the plot of the 1993 film Alive.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
