Analyze,
I'm one of those customers (US1) who continues to fly US through these "times of trouble". I assure you that your elites ( who are mostly the pax who lurk here ) especially want to know what's going on inside the hearts and minds of people at US. I don't take everything I read here or hear on my trips as the final word, but I do obtain a context by which to make my own decisions about what this management team in Tempe is doing to the airline and to the pax who fly it. I find all of this very valuable information and it's had some impact upon my decision to stick it out despite the ugly miscues by a management which won't even come clean and admit it makes a mistake.
But I do appreciate your concern and admonitions. Thus far, it's the employees who keep me in the fold. Just had a wonderful PHL-MAD-PHL flight experience with some great folks in those cabins --and of course they go way back to other legacies on the US history chart. So folks like you are doin' just fine in my book. Of course NYCbusdriver reflects another point of view towards the pax, but then again, they sound like . . . like . . . a NYC busdriver.
I won't promise that I'll stick with US given the rough ride people are getting at times. But if I do bolt, it will because of a management team which lacks character and credibility and not for lack of effort on the part of employees or remarks made here. I'm on the employee side no matter what.
And I'm sorry, but I must disagree with you on SHAREs.
It remains a shoddy and unreliable system. To keep this system is a measure of a short-sighted management which is also cheap -- and pax and agents are paying big time for this mess. I receive a real education in MAD from the IB agents about the entire history of US reservation systems from the first flights in the 90s. They've all got little notebooks with post-its loaded with workarounds etc. As you say, people have to learn to deal with it. But some of the comments I garner from speaking with folks over there are: during those first flights to MAD, US had ( "a very difficult and limited system then" ) through the SABRE years ( "good system, flexible, logical, easy to use" ) to this SHARES nightmare ("very difficult and clumsy . . . some terrible days at times . . . obvious problems yet no one fixes them" ). Someone also tells me that "an airline in the west buys US Air and they decide to save money with the cheap system when they merge the reservation system". Gee, I've heard that somewhere before. :huh:
But hey, best wishes, and keep on speaking yer minds as Tempe sure as hell ain't gonna listen.
Barry
