United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Now, when it comes to passing out cold snacks, by all means.
I'd just as soon not have to shuffle my laptop or book around to make space for lousy food.
But what I hate flying about isn't the food or CA service.
It's flying into and out of JFK. Everyone working there is f'king miserable. They treat people like live stocks. And their customs and immigration are incredibly inefficiently run.
At least some of which is for reasons that, properly, wouldn't fly in the US. They hire young, attractive, college-educated women who are enjoying flying the world for a few years before they settle down and get married. And who are not expected to stay on once they've enjoyed those few years.
Look, I don't blame the front-line workers for any of this. This is almost all management's fault. Look at Southwest. Their attendants are better trained, more motivated, and are happier.
Better work environment and management are important, but they're paid 25% more than other airlines. SW will attract better talent and retain them. I'm sure other airlines wouldn't mind having SW style employees. But their management is not willing to pay for it.
When I was waiting at impeccably maintained Osaka Kansai airport, I saw a flight attendant pickup small gum wrapper on floor that somebody else left behind. It's completely different mentality.
Now look at North America. There are only 3 countries here. United States airlines are the largest carriers. In the past 20 years consolidation has reduced the number of airlines. That's why despite the huge drop in oily our not seeing ticket prices go down.
In most cities / airports there is one dominating airline and they know chances are you will take their flight.
There's times of the year (not holiday) when it's marginally more expensive for me to to Vietnam for a vacation then to visit my family living in Austin. This is from NYC.
* Security (a stressful PITA)
* Boarding (never goes smoothly)
* Environment (tiny seats, loud, sick passengers, babies, etc)
* Service (rude/inattentive FA's, overpriced small extras that feel insulting)
* Delays (taking off, getting there, getting your bags)
And then then there's the one-offs. A bag gets lost, a connection gets missed, mechanical problems..
Most of this stuff can be addressed directly.
There are market-based products that would address many of your concerns if you are willing to pay. Prefer a larger seat or priority boarding? Try economy plus, which will also decrease the likelihood of sitting next to a baby and may get you more attentive service. The reality though is that collectively we prefer lower prices and choose flights almost exclusively by this metric, but then gripe about all the ways air travel could be better.
One study on the cost of airfare over time: https://www.aei.org/publication/the-cost-of-air-travel-in-th...
I also don't believe there was a historical glory day of air travel. It used to be far more expensive, with far fewer routes. International travel was MUCH more expensive, again with fewer routes. Fatal crashes were more frequent. We all used to complain about how bad airline food was...then they took it away and we complained about that too.
Remember - little things. Yeah, having a few more inches of legroom would be nice, but $50 nice? I'm well over 6" here, and the seats are designed for the lowest common denominator. Unless I get a reclining seat in first, it's gonna suck.
Priority boarding, I never understood the point of. Okay, you get on the plane a bit faster to spend more time in tiny seats. If you didn't get a window seat, you're still moving over people. For another extra $30 or so.
Say I get 'em both. I've spent an extra $80 on a ticket, and from there, I'm about halfway to first class. The extra ~$120 would get me more legroom and a mediocre meal that I could have gotten in the airport for a tenth of the price and some positive multiple of the quality. Some might bring up the free drinks at this point, but I swear the FA's are trained to tactically ignore you after about two drinks.
On top of all that, there's the psychological aspect. It feels scummy and exploitative (indeed, it is scummy and exploitative).
So a victory for the "market", I guess, at the expense of basic humanity.
All I am saying is that the market responded to our collective preferences for airlines to compete on cost -- and we benefited from this in some ways because costs have fallen over time. It's likely that the $50 you might pay for economy plus would put you even on real terms with tickets/legroom from 10-20 years ago.
>Priority boarding, I never understood the point of.
A lot of it has to do with having overhead space. On a packed flight, you'll often have to check your carryon if you can't fit it under the seat in front of you if you're in a late boarding group.
At most employers you're lucky if they provide coffee (mine currently does not).
I've literally had them quote a 42 min connection at me getting from IAD international to domestic. This is literally impossible unless the flight was very significantly early/they put me on Concorde by mistake. I phoned up when I noticed and asked to change flight. Nope, some huge change fee + additional difference in airfare due.
Gave up and sure enough I missed the flight. They just stuck me on the next one anyway, but probably lost the revenue for the flight I was meant to be on. This has happend multiple times (I've it take as much as 4 hours at EWR to go through immigration -> go through TSA-> get bag -> recheck bag -> go through TSA -> board plane.
It must cost them millions of dollars. And as far as I can see there is no option on the scheduling system to say I want a longer layover. Not crazy long, just some room to breathe. Annoying.
> And as far as I can see there is no option on the
> scheduling system to say I want a longer layover
> something that can be almost trivially handled
Their general MCT for IAD is 45 minutes domestic-domestic or domestic-international, and 90 minutes international-domestic. There are a few connections which allow all the way down to 65 minutes international-domestic, but nothing allowing 42. So if something quoted such a connection at you it would have been invalid per United's published times.
Recently flew Frankfurt=>Detroit=>Dallas (2 flights). I was lucky they provided 2 meals on the long first flight, as on the second leg they only gave a coke. Including the waiting time and the time after the last meal on board, we had 5 hours without food.
5 hours without food doesn't seem like any great hardship. And there are any number of places at most airports where you can pickup a sandwich or whatever to bring on board (or pack some snack bars). I guess maybe if you were expecting a meal on a transcontinental flight but airline food in economy was always a bad joke. I'd probably prefer a bag of chips when they serve me water or a Coke but it's really not a big deal if I know they won't.
In general, I find United to be ok for the travel I have done. But they aren't what they used to be. Also, my options are limited if I want to do SF -> Europe direct and not go to CDG, Heathrow, etc. KLM wasn't bad, but it's also One World and I don't fly American or Delta domestically.
* Fees. Charge baggage fees, everyone else does the same, nobody's any better off. Boarding is slower and passengers crankier. I was HAPPY to not have to tote my bag around every single layover until they started charging for bags, now I'm another unhappy customer lugging a bag everywhere, walking up and down the aisles looking for space, having my bag gate-checked (and inevitably lost -- gate checking is the least reliable way of actually getting your bag to its destination, it seems).
* Chasing "frequent flier" business travelers. I don't have the numbers to back this up, but most of them already seem loyal to their chosen airline to funnel their corporate dollars to, because they've got so many damn miles accrued. But airlines trip all over themselves to throw free shit at the 1% of frequent fliers that they piss off the 99% of occasional travelers. Yes, the frequent flier dollars are very important, but now we have a (very) long tail of less-frequent travelers who can be guaranteed that they will never, ever, ever be offered a free upgrade. You won't even get an emergency exit row (see: fees). I hate to sound entitled, but on my honeymoon, I was hoping that, for once, I might get a courtesy upgrade. Nope. I'd wager that if every airline set aside 2 slightly-better seats for a random upgrade, they'd get a lot of good word-of-mouth from the average joe like myself. But instead they waste every single bit of effort on the jaded business traveler whose opinion won't be swayed that much by small favors, because all of the airlines are throwing free stuff at them all the time anyway.
* Space, obviously. I continue to insist there's a market to pay 50% more for just a LITTLE bit more space. I don't mean economy plus; I'm not tall, I'm just an average-sized male. I just want my own goddamned armrest. I don't know why the airlines can't get this right. Business class 2x2 seating on a narrowbody would 'only' cost them 33% of seat capacity. 2x3 would even be acceptable, with an offset aisle. On a widebody, even just taking out ONE coach seat would make enough space to give passengers a meaningful upgrade. add a couple more inches of legroom to make it easier to get in and out, and bam, you have my loyalty for life. I'm happy to pay for a little comfort. I just won't pay 5x as much for business class. It's simply not in a normal human being's price bracket. I don't have to pay $100k to get a car that's a bit nicer than a Corolla. (see: frequent fliers spending business dollars).
>would 'only' cost them 33% of seat capacity
So, on today's planes, they'd have to increase fares accordingly given that utilization on most flights is pretty high. I get your point. But the market dynamics are more or less "lowest price" vs. business class is OK.
I suspect there are 2 factors at play here. For one, serving the lowest common denominator and competing on price is easier. It's easier to create metrics around, and by handling volume, it's easier to fill planes. It would be harder to provide a premium service airline with all more-expensive seats, because likely they'd end up with unexpectedly low utilization or unexpectedly high demand at various times, based on seasonality, and it might be harder to fill all of the seats as efficiently. Not to mention route planning and so on.
The other factor is probably just a bit of a herd mentality where nobody wants to go out on a limb and try something different for fear of spectacular failure. We know the existing system works, even if it doesn't work well.
I know United has Premium Service, but they don't even make it easy to purchase. They mention that it's on EWR-LAX and EWR-SFO routes, but then tout the level of "available" service in different classes -- 1st, and economy plus. They imply there's ALSO regular economy seating, and don't explain what (if anything) is better in regular economy. They don't discuss whether Economy plus is better than economy plus on other planes/routes. They also don't seem to provide any way of booking it -- I looked several times on their website, and perhaps I just need to know which flights are considered "PS" flights, and then figure out if it costs more or the same?
It's been tried and, by and large, it doesn't work because too many people just buy on price. There are some minor exceptions--e.g. British Airways all-business London City to New York route but that's obviously a pretty special case.
Economy Plus is just more legroom. It may include priority boarding as well. I believe it primarily exists as a perk for frequent flyers (which I am). I've been told that, otherwise, you may not be able to book it until some number of days before your flight.
In fact as a counter to that point I flew well over 150k miles on United last year and yet right now I'm doing a status match on American because United's service on my most frequent route (LAX -> JFK) completely changed in October of last year and I was/am hoping that American may offer superior service on that route. Regardless of the miles in my account (they truly don't matter that much to me) I care about how the customer service is, how the delays are and how often my baggage is handled properly.
When I do use my miles its almost never on a ticket for me but a ticket for a friend or family member.
As for those people who are not frequent fliers but expecting an upgrade "randomly" I'd suggest to pay more for the seats and "upgrade" yourself. The short of it is, the people who do spend as much time in the air as people like me do care and it does make a difference to the Airlines' bottom line no doubt.
Your suggestion of "upgrading" yourself is not realistic for 2 reasons. One, very few people will pay 5x as much for a slightly better experience. The price difference vastly exceeds the actual cost (except to the extent that premium seats subsidize coach seats, of course).
Secondly, my comment was about the customer goodwill the occasional upgrade would generate, as lowly infrequent fliers do not expect to be treated as anything but breathing, inconvenient cargo.
You say that people who spend as much time in the air as you DO care, but you also said you don't use upgrades, and you changed airlines over a major service change, not over a minor upgrade policy change. I'm not saying you DON'T care about upgrades, just that it's not really what you were addressing in your comment.
I must be missing something, because that seems like it would be an effective option. It would increase the flight cost of those seats by 8-12%, and you could charge 20-50% more for them.
I can only speak for myself, but I've never had a bad experience with United or Continental. A few small delays here or there. One 3 hour delay caused by really bad weather, but no cancellation: I still made it to my destination before 1am.
For context, I've always flown economy, by myself or in a small group, and usually departing from Austin or Houston.
[1] In this instance, 1 flight = 1 leg.
Statistically, United's performance has been absolutely abysmal. The crap really started hitting the fan in June of last year, when United reported departure/arrival on-time numbers of 42% and 66% (in other words, over half of flights departed late, and over one-third arrived late, meaning they didn't make up much time in the air).
For another perspective: if we look at "chronically delayed" flights (DOT defines this as being 30+ minutes delayed, 50% or more of the time), the most recent month published (November 2015) shows one-third of the chronically-delayed flights in the US are on United's network, through its chronically-comically-delayed Newark hub. Back in 2013 the WSJ published a report listing eleven flights through Newark which had landed on the chronically-delayed list for 8 consecutive months or more. The only carrier with more chronically-delayed flights than United... is Spirit. And that's saying something (they're also typically the only airline with worse overall on-time performance than United).
Granted, a lot of that is from affiliates running small regional jets under the "United Express" brand -- though mainline United was still dead last in on-time performance among the big three legacy US carriers in Q3 2015 -- but in turn that's mostly ripple effects of the way United manages its regionals and shops out as much flying as possible to them (in Q3 2015, Delta operated 233,000 flights, American operated 234,000 and United only 133,000; over the same time period ExpressJet, which does regional operations for all three but primarily for United, operated over 142,000 flights, and SkyWest which has over half its flying as United Express operated over 152,000 flights), which in turn was thanks to a major strategy (slashing mainline operations in the name of "capacity discipline") of the previous Smisek-led management at United.
One thing I do miss is the airline Midwest Express, which used to hand out warm chocolate chip cookies on each flight. It was a delight just smelling them warm up about 30 minutes in to the flight.
* If there WERE poor weather conditions anywhere along the way, they weren't showing up on any weather maps. I'm no expert - I'm sure they had their reasons.
I fly a lot in South-East Asia and judging by what I see from US commenters here, the things I can complain about are problems a US airline would love to have.
Next time you're eating your terrible free pretzels with your knees in the back of the person before you, don't blame the airline, blame your fellow passengers. And yourself!
If you want to make a capitalist argument then you also need to accept that customers also have the right to complain about the service they receive. It's part of the market. None of this "it's your own fault" bullshit when it's the airline that's installing the seats.
You have every right to complain, but complaining itself doesn't do anything. If you say X when you complain, but say Y when you pull out your wallet, airlines are naturally going to listen to Y much more than X.
I've lost count of how many times I've seen a conversation go like this:
"Airlines suck, I'm a tall guy and my knees are crammed into the seat back for the entire flight."
"Almost every airline these days offers an upgraded economy class with more legroom."
"Yeah, but it's too expensive!"
If you don't want to pay for it and would prefer to suffer (I'm a tall guy, and that's what I do too) then fine, but don't be surprised when the airlines listen to the signals you send with your money.
That's an interesting aspect of this trouble with United's service. They had a long period where their service was well below average. Did their passenger numbers suffer accordingly, or did everybody just put up with it?
The major US airlines all suck to some degree, but they suck differently, so if you care about that then go with the one you like best even if it costs more. If you don't, you're saying you don't actually care.
I'm sure I would have absolutely no problem collecting a long litany of horror stories about every major US airline from among my Facebook friends with status.
So I go with United for size of route system and frequency of flights at my home airport and get enough miles to have status which does help. (Alternatively, for one shorter route where United doesn't have a non-stop, I usually fly JetBlue which IMO is one of the better bets in the absence of status.)
Which, as I recall, had SNL skits about its extreme cost-cutting at the time.
EDIT: it makes sense, too. I can't blame people for that decision, I've made the same one. How many bucks is it really worth to be a bit less uncomfortable for 2 hours? 3 hours? Even 6 hours? Especially if I'm flying with a partner I'm sitting next to, which makes the leg-room/personal-space issue less annoying. And even when flying internationally, would I rather dedicate more money towards the flight itself, or to upgrading my accommodations for the time I'm spending overseas?