UPNAWAY
You should be responding to the situation. I will do it for you
You know fair and balance
US Airways CEO Doug Parker Responds to Letter from the CWA/IBT Association Leaders
June 18, 2007
CWA
June 14, 2007
Dear Mr. Hoffa and Mr. Cohen:
First let me apologize for the length of time in responding to your March 12, 2007 correspondence citing your concerns over Customer Service Res migration and associated issues with training, kiosks, and airport staffing. We have all been hard at work making improvements to our operation. We have kept your local CWA/IBT representatives well informed of our progress on this front and assumed that served as being responsive to your letter. Recently one of your representatives suggested to me that I still should respond in writing, though, and I am happy to do so.
On the kiosk front, we have implemented many software changes to fix the initial problems encountered after cutover. Beyond that, we announced in April that we planned to purchase over 600 state-of-art kiosks to be deployed system wide. That rollout is now underway and should be complete by this summer. The good news is that the kiosks are now functioning well, and we're striving to make them more reliable and functional than ever before.
We have also been working on many changes to the Shares / QIK system to improve functionality including standby processing, flight close out, involuntary reroute processing, flifo, over sale processing, and others. Many of these enhancements are being driven straight from agent working teams in our airports and call centers. In addition, our Technology Group is improving the stability and reliability of the infrastructure across our network, including common use locations and remote islands in the Caribbean.
We are also addressing Customer Service staffing system wide. We announced in April that we intended to hire over 1000 new employees in our airports and we are well on track to meet that objective. We are working to actually obtain a staffing buffer above authorized levels in order to help with the heavy summer traffic.
You mentioned a concern that we hired temporary employees during the migration. I have checked with our team and they indicate that we did not hire any temporary employees. During some of the initial days where kiosk reliability was low, we did use airport agents and other employees to staff a temporary center where airports could call to obtain help in driving boarding passes, as available overtime had been exhausted. As soon as was practicable we stopped that practice and even while running, it was largely comprised of represented agents from PHX.
In summary, none of us was happy with the immediate aftermath of our reservations migration. The good news is that, thanks to our outstanding employees, we are again functioning well and taking care of our customers. We still have steps to take on this front, but we are very encouraged by the progress.
Thank you for your interest in our customers and our employees. I appreciate your feedback very much.
Sincerely,
Doug Parker
