United Air's Family Is Anything But

[N230UA]

[blockquote]
----------------
On 10/8/2002 714 PM Busdrvr wrote:

And you're calling me Sherlock? If we had that much control over a market segment, we'd be ROLLING in cash now instead of burning through it. Community college? Tell me which markets we have over 50% of. Denver? That's probably the only one. And you have to connect from DEN to get anywhere overseas ANYWAY. If you believe that the summer of 2000 was a job action, then you need to understand that a "job" action is ONLY successful when the cost of that action to the company is greater than the cost of meeting the demands of the union. That's why the Comair strike lasted soooo long. DAL was able to simply reroute the through pax through another hub and still had enough non striking capacity into cincinati to serve the O and D market. Had the consumer not bought tickets on UAL during that period, the company and the union would have come to an agreement MUCH earlier. Again, not condoning the actions of Management OR the union when it went beyond legal and ethical boundaries.

----------------
[/blockquote]

United/United Express have over 50% market dominance in SFO and IAD as well, but only slightly.

Market dominance does not equate to market power. People booked UA in 2000 because UA offered a time-sensitive product superior to the other airlines. When you have hubs in huge O+D metropolises like SFO, LAX, ORD, and IAD, it leaves many customer little incentive to fly other carriers when United has the choice times, most nonstop flights, etc. EVEN when market dominance is not that great (much greater than 50%). Market dominance does not equal market power.

To blame the consumer for 2000 is pathetic.

 

[UAL777flyer]

busdrver,

While it's not my intention to start a flame-war regarding the beaten to death topic of the Summer of 2000, everyone has their opinions and mine is that it was indeed a job action. But I know that nobody is foolish enough to admit it. And I'd say it was successful in that it eventually pushed the company to settle. The act of picking up extra flying on days off stopped on a dime. Pilots who attemtped to still fly extra hours were intimidated and encouraged not to do so. Sounds like an orchestrated act to me. But again, we all have our opinions. I respect yours, even though I disagree.

The main point is that UA Senior Mgmt and the employees need to learn from painful actions like this to ensure they don't happen again. As usual, our passengers were treated as pawns in labor/mgmt's contract tug-of-war. But the thinking was that passengers have short memories and that they'll eventually come back because they always do. Well, as we can plainly see now, they're not. I'm not saying that Summer 2K is what is keeping our traffic away. My point is that now more than ever before, we need to give our customers reason to choose UA over other airlines. We must work hard to keep our current customers and work harder to take customers from our competitors. Doing that means putting the past behind us and trying to forge a better working relationship to ensure our company's survival and prosperity. Deep down, I know that's what you want, I want, and every UA employee wants. Now it's just a question of all of us doing what's necessary with the stakes at their highest.

 

[KCFlyer]

[P]
[BLOCKQUOTE][BR]----------------[BR]On 10/7/2002 10:36:53 PM Busdrvr wrote:
[P][/P] But then again frugal flyers across the country buy tickets on the cheapest airline they can find (cheapest employees, oldest jets, lowest maint costs) so why should I wonder.
[P][/P]----------------[/BLOCKQUOTE]
[P]Ah, but they show that they will ALSO book on airlines with the most expensive employees (even during times of labor discord), newest jets, and highest maint costs, if the price is right. Of course, we cannot justify the overalll lowering of prices as we need those $2000 fares to subsidize the cheapskates who are flying for next to nothing. Of course, it's necessary, indeed one might say that it's of top priority, to undercut the low fare carriers to demonstrate that even big boys have a soft spot for us frugal flyers. And when we discover that -gasp- our primo business customers are taking advantage of those fares that we put out there for the cheapskates, we riddle the fare code with restrictions - hundred dollar change fees and use it or lose it rules, only to discover that the primo business customer is now reconsidering their travel needs. Hell, for the price of a unrestricted business fare ticket, a company could just charter a dang Learjet and go directly to a more desireable airport - on their own schedule. [/P]

 

[Busdrvr]

[blockquote]
----------------
On 10/9/2002 1052 AM N230UA wrote:


United/United Express have over 50% market dominance in SFO and IAD as well, but only slightly.

Are you including DCA, BWI, OAK and SJC? SWA does not have dominance in Dallas because they have most of the traffic at Love field.

To blame the consumer for 2000 is pathetic.

Never blamed them. Don't put words in my mouth. I said the consumers continued patrinage of UAL during the crisis only exacerbated the problem.
----------------
[/blockquote]