The annual airline rankings came out and United was ranked dead last in total performance and last or next to last in all the individual categories. Does anyone there care? Does anyone equate the performance ratings with lower revenue and lost business? Do they think you can be the worst year after year and rely on your brand to carry you? When does the brand equate to the rankings? Remember Schlitz beer? They cheapened the beer and their customers stopped drinking the beer and they are gone.
I’ve written about United before in this blog. I’m just using up my miles and when they are gone, I’m gone from United. I used some of those miles for two round-trip, first-class tickets to Phoenix for my wife and me. They farmed it out to USAir. That’s right, farmed out a frequent flier to another airline. Think about that for a minute. This is a lose/lose for United. If USAir does a great job, why go back to the worst airline in the country with your heavy use business that generates lots of miles? If USAir does a lousy job, who are you upset with, United or USAir? United Airlines sees themselves as cattle haulers. Off to the stockyards, never to be seen or heard from again. One time trips. Let’s see, with over 300 million potential customers, when do they fly the last one for the last time?
Farming it out is one thing, but let’s have some more fun with those 300,000 plus mileage accumulators. Let’s have a little treasure hunt. Let’s change something on their return flight, but keep what we changed a secret, and see if they can figure it out. Of course that will require them to dig out the ticket, compare the ticket to our e-mail, and see if they can find what we did. Isn’t this fun?
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Reservation Change Notification
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So, guess what the answer might be in this big announcement? Did they change the day, the time, the flight number, etc?
Come on, you, guessed it right? They eliminated the meal. Well, they didn’t, USAir did. But, United passengers who coughed up all those dollars or miles to fly first class and get the meal, don’t get the meal.
Can a major corporation that has been in and our of bankruptcy more than once sustain this attitude? Makes you want to go out and buy a big block of United stock, doesn’t it? They just announced they are eliminating more jobs. There are only a couple dozen jobs United needs to eliminate. Those at the top of the house, starting with the CEO.
