United Airlines--On the Ropes? An Essay

I have been a fairly regular flyer on United Airlines for more than 20 years. The primary reason? Because I go to Denver a lot, and United takes you there more conveniently than any other carrier. Though my complaints with their service have hitherto been rather minimal (too little leg room, etc.), I think that something has been happening in the past few months that has had a significant impact on United's ability to deliver quality service to customers. One might blame high fuel costs or market oil speculators, but what United is doing, in my judgment, is putting less emphasis on fleet maintenance so that, in fact, many of their planes are simply not ready to fly. The result is widespread cancellations or delays in service, many of which are explained through enigmatic announcements about delays/cancellations. For example, when waiting for a flight from Denver airport two days ago, I calculated that about 30% of United flights were delayed or cancelled. This essay probes these problems, as well as an issue that is dear to me--clarity and completeness in communication.

Recent Personal Experience

My most recent experience flying United was from Denver to Portland on Sunday, July 13. My flight was to leave Denver at 9:25 p.m. and arrive in Portland at 11:00 p.m. It is a 2 hour 15 minute flight, and they "pad it" on either end by a few minutes to allow taxiing time and getting to the gate. I decided to arrive at the Denver Int'l Airport at about 6:45 p.m. because I got out of a meeting early and I learned that there was an earlier flight out (7:55 p.m.) to Portland. When I arrived at the airport, I discovered that both of the flights were delayed, the 7:55 only by 20 minutes but the 9:25 by more than two hours. Yikes. I knew I better try to get on the earlier flight, lest I face a long flight back to Portland in the middle of the night. Luckily, I got about the last seat on the early flight, which left shortly after 8:15 and got me into Portland about an hour before my original plane would have arrived. I only mention the experience here because, as it turned out, my scheduled plane didn't leave Denver until 1:15 a.m., about four hours late. So, both of the planes were late in departing, but the later departure of the first allowed me the chance of arriving home earlier. Why, then, am I complaining?

Well, the obvious reason is that customers shouldn't have to plan on negotiating several possible flights in order to get out of town. But I am complaining because precisely the opposite happened to me in June on United, and it worked to my disadvantage. Let me explain. On June 12, 2008 I was flying to Denver in order to get up to Cheyenne, WY for the National Spelling Bee. My plan was to get there on Thursday the 12th, rest on Friday the 13th and then be as ready as possible on the 14th. I arrived at the Portland airport for my 4:49 plane about 3:00 p.m. The 2:30 United flight to Denver still hadn't left, and so I cleverly tried to get on that flight. To my surprise and delight, I was able to get on that flight. We took off about 3:30 p.m. I secretly congratulated myself for being clever and quick enough to change my plans at the last moment.

But then, trouble happened. The plane seemed to have trouble climbing. People began to complain about the pressure in the cabin. Then, a few minutes later, the captain broke in to say that we had to return to Portland because some system allowing us to cross the Rockies wasn't working well. Yikes. So, we pulled back into Portland about 4:30 p.m. They quickly decided to cancel the flight, and I hustled over to my original flight counter, only to discover (as expected) that my seat had been given away. Because the 4:49 plane was the latest of the day, more than 160 of us were "stranded" in Portland. Finally, I decided I had to get a car to drive all night to make it to Cheyenne for my spelling bee. It was probably one of the dumber moves I have made in the last several years, but I thought it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. I was #69 in line for the next day's planes. I wasn't going to "chance it."

I experienced similar delay problems when I returned from Denver to Portland in mid-May. In this case, however, an hour delay in take-off actually worked to my advantage, since I had to get a medical problem taken care of. But even though I could find good coming out of bad, that isn't the way most people try to live.

A Letter From United

While mulling all these things and wondering if United was really on the rocks, I got an email from the United CEO (don't worry; probably millions of other people did, too), urging us to do something about rampant oil speculators. According to this email, twenty years ago 21% of oil contracts were purchased by speculators who "trade oil on paper with no intention of ever taking delivery." But today, according to the same email, "oil speculators produce 66% of oil futures contracts, and that reflects just the transactions that are known." Congress, according to the email, has regulations to deal with all this, but these regs have been relaxed over the years. So United is asking us to urge Congress to be more diligent in enforcing appropriate regulations (big business, it seems, is anti-government until it wants government to do something for it).

But after reading the email, and following up on the link provided by the email, I realized I had no idea what the exec was talking about. Nor did I really understand what the difference was between a "speculator" who doesn't take oil delivery and me, who might buy a share or two of Exxon but certainly don't want any oil delivery in my front yard. But even if the analogy isn't apt, I wonder why speculation in oil is so bad but in hogs or other things it might not be. But then, as I thought about it further, I realize that no context and no helpful information for me to understand the "problem" was provided. In fact, this was the first email where the "oil speculators" were blamed for high prices. I had thought that America was blaming turbaned sheiks from Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries for the problem..

Conclusion

So this email brought to mind all kinds of bad experiences I had working in the "business" world. Chief execs and others would pass down things that weren't adequately explained. I tried to clarify; usually it wasn't appreciated. Lots of hackles rise when you ask for clarification--as people dig in deeper and deeper into their unclarity. Then, I realized, you just have to let people live with their unclarity, to an extent. But it is rather a shame, since taking the time to make things clear is a very valuable undertaking. But, then again, it sometimes takes a lot of time to do so. And, time is one thing we don't have as we are rushing off to meetings because we didn't understand what everyone was saying in the previous meeting...

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