After reporting a 30% increase in profit even with a higher fuel bill, United Airlines finds itself in a strong position.
United’s stock is up 24% this year. Meanwhile, Delta has dropped 5% and American has dropped 36%. Although critics were skeptical of President Scott Kirby’s domestic capacity expansion, it seems to be working.
A flight attendant from United shared the following email she reviewed from CEO Oscar Munoz concerning the excellent numbers.
Dear United team members,
United’s third-quarter financial results were some of the best we’ve delivered yet, which we will discuss tomorrow during our third-quarter investor calls and will be followed by our Earnings Live event. While fuel prices remain a challenge, since we set forth on our multi-year growth strategy in January, United’s stock has materially outperformed major U.S. rival carriers.
While we missed our ops targets, except for MBR, we still outperformed most of our competitors on all metrics, coming in second and well ahead of Southwest and American.
I think it is important to distinguish between the factors under our control and those that we cannot control.
When we do that, it’s clear just how outstanding your efforts have been this quarter in the face of really tough challenges.
We had a long summer of very high load factors. A series of bad weather conditions across the system, especially in Newark – punctuated by a series of hurricanes and storms – took a toll on our operations.
I’ve made a personal mission to travel as frequently as I can throughout the network and I’ve met with so many of you, in galleys, kitchens and ready rooms system-wide. I’ve heard understandable frustration in people’s voices and my goal has been to relay a very direct message about the challenge and opportunities in front of us.
Simply put: External factors like weather and fuel affect all airlines and we can’t control that. What will set us apart from the competition is how we deliver on the factors we can control.
For example, we did control our JCBA implementation. We cleared that hurdle and are finally flying on common metal, allowing us to operate more efficiently and reliably.
We do control the quality of our customer service and that matters more than ever during IRROPs. We have the most exciting pipeline of innovations and improvements in the industry – from “Better Boarding” to “Every Flight Has a Story” to “In the Moment Care.” You’ve put those tools to the absolute best use, consistently improving our customer feedback, even under really trying circumstances.
We do control how we run an efficient airline. I appreciate the zeal with which so many of you have taken the effort to make us as efficient as possible.
The test of what we’ve built is not how we do when things are easy, but when the going gets tough.
That’s what you’ve demonstrated this quarter. As we head into the final quarter of 2018, we have an unprecedented opportunity to realize the full potential of this airline.
Gratefully,
Oscar
Clarifications
Let’s clarify some terms in Munoz’s letter above.
- JCBA means Joint Collective Bargaining Agreement. Former Continental and pre-merger United flight attendants now operate under a single contract, meaning crews will no longer be segregated by former division. Instead, crews will be mixed as seniority lists have been merged.
- “Better Boarding” refers to the new boarding process I outlined here.
- “Every Flight Has a Story” refers to the new specific updates for delayed or cancelled flights I outlined here.
- “In the Moment Care” refers to the FA app that allows for special recognition of frequent flyers and instant compensation I outlined here and here.
I stand by what I wrote last week:
…I cannot help but feel that United has turned a corner when it comes to customer service. Operationally, my recent 3.5 hour delay was my first major delay of the year. What a difference from just a few years ago. Better operational performance naturally leads to better customer service, because customers have less to be angry about. Even so, I’ve logged over 90,000 United miles already this year and I generally witness excellent service when I fly United…
It truly has been a good year to fly on United. Let’s hope the momentum continues.
> Read More: Wow, United Airlines’ CEO Actually Gets It…
image: United
Upgrades are gone. I’m 0% as a 1K on a flights over 1.5 hours. All year. All markets. All days.
So interesting. My upgrade % as a Plat is much higher.
I got 6 complimentary upgrades cleared this year (out of 46 flights) as a Plat. 5 years ago I was clearing about 80% as 1K.
Keep 1K if you can. Those will get easier with the new requirements that are in place, I think.
LOL these posts always amuse me. “Fewer people as 1K so easier upgrades!” No, they will just sell more of them as TODs, or keep “rightsizing” the cabins.
weird. Also 1k, and I’m about 90% for complimentary upgrades, 100% on upgrades with certificates this year.
then again, maybe you’re flying out of SFO? Those are the ones I never get.
I think UA has turned the corner and it shows in the product. I am 100% with upgrade requests and on Friday while flying from SFO to ORD, I was chatting with the purser who was pleased with the JCBA. She was a senior as she showed me her pic in her Pan Am uniform in 1979.
The service on this flight was great, food was good and the plane was clean. I think their transparency with IROPS is refreshing. Information is available quickly, its generally accurate and updated. It’s what we have been asking for, for a long time. I think UA has the best technology of the US majors, especially their app.
Unlike the past when I dreaded flying them and lately its been great.
Now if they could only do something about that arm pit which is EWR….
The past few months, I have had exceptionally poor service on United. Unprecedentedly poor service. While a few flights with their partner airlines have been good, I’ve had extremely bad service lately.
For example, last week, on a 4+ hour flight, the flight attendants did not start handing out meals in the forward rows. They parked the cart midway in the plane, and started handing out meals. when i asked the FA about this, they said “well, you should have said something when we were in your row.” I pointed out that they were never in my row because they didn’t come far enough forward. They simply shrugged and continued past me. A few minutes later I heard them gossiping about another passenger that had 1K status (like I do) and so I didn’t complain any further – knowing that complaining to the flight crew wouldn’t get my anywhere…
Of course United profit beating and deplaning old people for people that pay higher rates for seats or killing pets they care more for the almighty profit then sentient passengers
It’s a solid airline these days. Service is definitely better. Employee morale is way up. Now if only they’d invest some of those profits into upgrading the domestic product . . . .
As noted in the readers’ comments section of a separate coulmn focusing on United’s CEO Oscar Munoz, at least for all six of my direct, in-person interactions with UA’s front-line customer service agents/reps/FA’s from mid-April (four days, and eight days after the Dr. Dao dragging incident), and then again later that month, late June, late November, and finally late December, plus as reported by my partner for United flights he took with his boss, who’s a Platinum Elite (and long ago joined the million miler club), for sure our experience in the post Dr. Dao dragging era is that United is consistently showing a vast improvement in its employees’ imteractions with passengers – which I’m confident most agree is both long overdue and a welcome change for the better!
Unfortunately, for economy flyers (especially domestically) the years of successive product degradations featuring densified cabins with 30”-31” pitch rows across the entire network, followed by the introduction the hated and reviled ten abreast Boeing 777s (brand new -300ERs and reconfigured -200s), plus eliminating DirecTV for brand new Boeing 737s and removing DirecTV from 757-300s as they undergo (even further) densification to (even more) obscenely dense configurations PLUS those atrocious, butt numbing, hard as cement blocks, seats, among the many other product degradations in both cabins, economy and domestic first/short- medium-haul (as in NON-Polaris) international flights operated with the same narrowbody aircraft used domestically (Boeing 737s, Airbus A319/320s) has pretty much made United our airline of last resort for our travel, and all business trips my partner takes except those when flying with his UA (Plat/Global Elite) boss.
To be honest, with its employees’ customer service delivery vastly improved, and most of Delta’s aircraft equally (and horribly) densified, much of this now revolves around Delta’s decision to not just keep, but install mostly fleetwide on mainline aircraft on its non-McDonnell Douglas legacy aircraft (which included its Boeing 717s that originally were MCD OEM designed and built models known as MD-95s before Boeing and MCD merged in 1998) seatback IFE as yet again just this past week, on a pair of Delta Connection flights NYC-RDU-NYC (flown fairly regularly to visit family) aboard an Embraer 175 going, and a (horribly uncomfortable even in C+ with those hideous 17” wide seats) Bombardier CRJ-900, the lack of DirecTV (as was available on two of our four UA Boeing 737 flights on the same city pair last year) or on our JetBlue Embraer 195 last year as well, we were reminded of just how inferior streaming to ones’ own personal device is in terms of programming options, but much worse, the whole ridiculousness that is the process of attempting to use the device while inflight for viewing that requires holding it in ones’ hands the entire time (bad enough for one to do on their own, but a real pain in the [numbed] butt when viewing with another person) , or hoping to stabilize it on a (slippery) meal tray.
It’s just so stupid and unrealistic, that when I saw “Always Awful’s” (aka American Airlines) commercials on tv recently (a shock itself since they seldom advertise on tv in NYC anyway) featuring passengers touting how great Always Awful’s streaming to ones’ own personal device inflight entertainment is (as a reason to squeeze into its otherwise teeny tiny, no legroom seats and too small loos that some people have gotten trapped/stuck inside of – which, of course, were NOT showcased in its commercial message!), and how they are seen in various poses with everyone holding their devices while using them inflight, I couldn’t help but guffaw and how fake and unrealistic the poses seen were, or how anyone would want to be doing that for even an hour flight (as ours was).
It Just doesn’t work!
Our flight didn’t even have anything more than a quick beverage service and one of those teensy-weensy snack bags (barely big enough to satisfy a small bird), and yet, with just one cup filled with liquid, and the teeny, tiny snack bag, that was more than enough to make viewing an episode of “Chopped” impossible to continue on that flight.
So, we ditched it completely since by the time the drinks were done and the flight attendants came by to collect the emptied cups, the captain had already announced we’d soon begin our descent, and that the on board Wi-Fi would cut off shortly thereafter.
Yeah, sure, there are some who don’t like the glare of seatback video monitors, or whom work too much anyway to see any utility of having seatback IFE when they fly.
But for a great many, ourselves included, and most friends and family, too (especially those with children), seatback IFE makes a big difference in the overall quality of our/their flights (all the more so in those truly appalling and hideous no legroom 30”-31” pitch seats).
And for that reason, to us, and those who have come to trust me to book their flights knowing that I’ll always seek out the best possible value for money options, United is basically dead last in our order of preference after Delta, JetBlue, or even Southwest (despite its obvious lack of seatback IFE, its many other significantly better customer friendly policies are a trade off that sometimes outweighs its otherwise vastly inferior streaming IFE option) – and only if none of those are viable options, then comes United now that its past redeeming feature (to us) of 737 flights *likely* to feature DirecTV are a thing of the past as Always Awful, or any of the ultra low cost fee addled airlines have long been on our “No Fly List” (and Alaska’s service in our market is extremely limited), and its densified 777s and never, ever fly nine abreast 787s are taking over the vast majority if its long haul, international flights verus Delta’s nine abreast 777s and Airbus A350s, its eight abreast Airbus A330s, or its seven abreast Boeing 767s.
To us, anyway, no matter how much improved United’s employee delivered customer service in fact has been of late – without a vastly improved hard product for economy/E+ flyers, it’s not likely to tear us away from Delta anytime soon.
@howard miller
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