Work action/slowdown the last few days?

[ThirdSeatHero]

question: who do you think is a better UAL CEO...Tilton or Wolf?

Wolf.

Many(myself included)disliked his tactics/brand of management, but he grew the airline.

 

[Bear96]

I agree. Hate him all you want to, Wolf made United into the international powerhouse it is today.

Not to say he is necessarily a "better" CEO than Tilton. Tilton, it could be argued, saved UA from extinction. So maybe it can be summed up as: Wolf did the job he was hired to do, and so did Tilton. Different points in UA's history; different problems; different talents.

 

[casual rat]

Actually, Dick Ferris oversaw the Pacific Purchase, so I think he made UAL an International powerhouse...Plus, Ferris made alot of money for UAL in the real estate market. Wolf wasn't as obvious as Tilton in lining his pockets, which may give him the upper hand in 'the skills' department, but both are shrewd and push the legal limits when it comes to personal wealth enhancements.IMHO.

 

[ThirdSeatHero]

One other item, although some may think it only a subtle difference, those who have enjoyed/suffered both understand.

Wolf was "Airline"

Tilton is "Oil"

 

[UAL_TECH]

I would vote for Wolf because at least he had the foresight to snap up the Pan Am Europe operation. Just about everywhere else he was a disaster.

Timing and opportunity.
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
B) UT

One other item, although some may think it only a subtle difference, those who have enjoyed/suffered both understand.

Wolf was "Airline"

Tilton is "Oil"

Lorenzo was 'Airline' also.
How did that work out?
B) UT

Actually, Dick Ferris oversaw the Pacific Purchase, so I think he made UAL an International powerhouse...Plus, Ferris made alot of money for UAL in the real estate market. Wolf wasn't as obvious as Tilton in lining his pockets, which may give him the upper hand in 'the skills' department, but both are shrewd and push the legal limits when it comes to personal wealth enhancements.IMHO.

I agree, Ferris was more of a visionary and diversified our presence while Wolfe was hired to sell everything off.

There are very few 'Officers' that are thinking of the long term viability of 'any' company. Just the short term gain to put on the resume'.

JMHO,
B) UT

 

[Busdrvr]

Maybe the sheer shortage of manpower numbers is beginning to show. They've got front-line employees running around like chickens with their heads cut off--eventually bodies/minds break down...Of course there's no mathematical equation that can prove/disprove that, but I'd imagine that people are getting burned out by now...JMHO

Spot on, but you CAN model the situation mathematically. That's what "operations research" (also know as management sciences) is all about, and folks who can do it well, seem to move up the chain fairly quickly (U's Pres Scott Kirby for example).

Here's the problem. The scheduling issues are a little more complex and often become "heuristic" problems. Simply put, computers can't easily figure them out because they take a great deal of logic and finding the "best" solution may be nearly impossible. I still remember old Capts telling me how much better the trips were when some old guy at "EXO" built them all himself. Trips were efficient for the pilots and the company. Then they fired the old guy and went to computer built schedules and things got bad. People solve heuristic problems much better than computer models. That's where smart people come in. That's where UAL fails.

Those who have followed my posts over the years know that I was a HUGE Glen fan in the beginning. I wanted to move away from folks like Dutta who thought too much like the computer, who couldn't be creative. Boy was I wrong, not on the wanting to get away from the those overly dependant on concrete thoery, but on on what Glen would do.

We got rid of the "smart" people who couldn't think outside the box and were rewarded with people who can't FIND the box. If you notice, UAL doesn't put educational backgrounds on the bios for most of it's upper level execs. Why? Because a good number of them don't have credible educations. We're, quite frankly, now run by a bunch of uneducated bafoons. Our management team is a bunch of idiots who were lucky enough at some point in their career to be given the "secret decoder ring". Maybe Daddy put his loser son who couldn't graduate from college into the CEO job at his company, so now junior, despite leading the company into BK, is an "experienced CEO", and we hire THESE morons to run the company instead of looking for real talent. That's the differance. That's why SWA suceeds and UAL fails.

It's tragic, and I've had several epiphanies on the subject over the last few years. A more recent one was seeing that we paid BIG bucks to buy a program that would minimize our cost on a given flight by factoring in ATC expenses for the canadian overflight when going over the pond. My first response was YGTBSM!! Frankly, give me 3 months and my choice of 3-4 guys and I could have done the same program. More troubling is WE JUST FIGURED THIS OUT. This is BEYOND BELIEF. It's time for Glen to go, and hopefully he'll tke his "underpaid" losers with him.

Busdrvr
MS Econ w/ specialization in Quantitative Business Methods (financial risk management, "real options" and traditional asset valuation) and Operations Research

 

[AIRBORN1]

Spot on, but you CAN model the situation mathematically. That's what "operations research" (also know as management sciences) is all about, and folks who can do it well, seem to move up the chain fairly quickly (U's Pres Scott Kirby for example).

Here's the problem. The scheduling issues are a little more complex and often become "heuristic" problems. Simply put, computers can't easily figure them out because they take a great deal of logic and finding the "best" solution may be nearly impossible. I still remember old Capts telling me how much better the trips were when some old guy at "EXO" built them all himself. Trips were efficient for the pilots and the company. Then they fired the old guy and went to computer built schedules and things got bad. People solve heuristic problems much better than computer models. That's where smart people come in. That's where UAL fails.

Those who have followed my posts over the years know that I was a HUGE Glen fan in the beginning. I wanted to move away from folks like Dutta who thought too much like the computer, who couldn't be creative. Boy was I wrong, not on the wanting to get away from the those overly dependant on concrete thoery, but on on what Glen would do.

We got rid of the "smart" people who couldn't think outside the box and were rewarded with people who can't FIND the box. If you notice, UAL doesn't put educational backgrounds on the bios for most of it's upper level execs. Why? Because a good number of them don't have credible educations. We're, quite frankly, now run by a bunch of uneducated bafoons. Our management team is a bunch of idiots who were lucky enough at some point in their career to be given the "secret decoder ring". Maybe Daddy put his loser son who couldn't graduate from college into the CEO job at his company, so now junior, despite leading the company into BK, is an "experienced CEO", and we hire THESE morons to run the company instead of looking for real talent. That's the differance. That's why SWA suceeds and UAL fails.

It's tragic, and I've had several epiphanies on the subject over the last few years. A more recent one was seeing that we paid BIG bucks to buy a program that would minimize our cost on a given flight by factoring in ATC expenses for the canadian overflight when going over the pond. My first response was YGTBSM!! Frankly, give me 3 months and my choice of 3-4 guys and I could have done the same program. More troubling is WE JUST FIGURED THIS OUT. This is BEYOND BELIEF. It's time for Glen to go, and hopefully he'll tke his "underpaid" losers with him.

Busdrvr
MS Econ w/ specialization in Quantitative Business Methods (financial risk management, "real options" and traditional asset valuation) and Operations Research

Very well stated!
Yesterday between LAX and DEN so many planes on the TV monitor was delayed due to mechanical. After 4hr delay over 757 mechanical late arrival from SEA. Once it arrived into LAX, it had the same mechanical again. Once we got to Denver last night our 757 on decision to SJC was 2hrs late. Next the crew desk paged us to relieve another 757 crew on mechanical to OMA. We got on the OMA flight to relieve the f/a crew and
the agent came next to tell us the plane was going to hangar for repairs. It took 12hours from LAX-DEN- SJC hmmmm I mean now OMA
and 4 757 airplanes by the time we finally took off. Oh.. get this we had to wait one hour to get a fueler to fuel the aircraft finally. Is this how it's going to be now at ual. Instead of the passenagers upset with csr and crew my best answer now to them is to write UNITED.COM Tilton and ask him why he doesn't give back some money and buy new airplanes or give us a bonus for all this drama. Oh- I am not even on reserve and this is how our contract is now. No such thing as line holders anymore.
WHAT HAPPEN TO IT"S TIME TO FLY ??? Tilton, wake up and don't make us look like Northwest... Those Global Service people are starting to get tired of this mess and will switch over to American or Delta or Maybe CO since they are ranking the top now

 

[casual rat]

We have lemmings running the show. The minute they sense any intelligence, they attack it and try to make it submit. Often I see employees who exhibit high work ethic get extra 'work' piled on them, and taking assignments away from the lame-minded, and not so motivated. It continues until the good worker reaches his/her breaking point and moves on to something else or physically breaks down and gets placed into the occupational injury system. UAL rewards the lazy and punishes the good. I don't know how that benefits the company, but they've been doing it for years. It seems to be backward thinking. United is burning out its horses and the ones reaping the rewards are incapable of taking up the slack.

 

[rotate]

At United, "Pay for Performance" at the officer level is actually "Pay for Perfidy".

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Main Entry: per·fi·dy
Pronunciation: 'p&r-f&-dE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -dies
Etymology: Latin perfidia, from perfidus faithless, from per- detrimental to + fides faith -- more at PER-, FAITH
1 : the quality or state of being faithless or disloyal : TREACHERY
2 : an act or an instance of disloyalty

I say GIVE the airline to CO before these guys totally destroy it!

 

[The Gopher]

A more recent one was seeing that we paid BIG bucks to buy a program that would minimize our cost on a given flight by factoring in ATC expenses for the canadian overflight when going over the pond. My first response was YGTBSM!! Frankly, give me 3 months and my choice of 3-4 guys and I could have done the same program. More troubling is WE JUST FIGURED THIS OUT. This is BEYOND BELIEF. It's time for Glen to go, and hopefully he'll tke his "underpaid" losers with him.

This is something I happen to know about... and the project to fix this was begun back in spring 2001. ISD has their thumb so far up their ass that it takes them 5 years to figure out what to do, and then 3-4 to figure out how to implement it. It's all over the company. Having worked on two RFPs the same problems exist even though the teams were completely different.

In this case, it wasn't Glenn but ISD and their archaic leadership. But, the same mindset exists: Make decisions that benefit the leadership, at the expense of the company's best interests.

 

[Busdrvr]

This is something I happen to know about... and the project to fix this was begun back in spring 2001. ISD has their thumb so far up their ass that it takes them 5 years to figure out what to do, and then 3-4 to figure out how to implement it. It's all over the company. Having worked on two RFPs the same problems exist even though the teams were completely different.

In this case, it wasn't Glenn but ISD and their archaic leadership. But, the same mindset exists: Make decisions that benefit the leadership, at the expense of the company's best interests.

Glen likes to take credit for the successes that frontline employees produce; maybe he should take credit for the failures.

I understand some of the bureaucratic issues, I've got a friend (and former UAL pilot) at another large corporation who tells me about how his boys write code to fix a problem in a couple hours that it would take the software development team months to do (after doing the requisite paperwork...). Anybody seen the TPS reports? If it takes you 5 years to do it, you get job security... I hope we gave those guys the KERP 🙄

But again, this kind of sh1t was supposed ot be fixed. This just blows my mind. The really maddening thing about it all is the arrogance. If you even attempted to call them out on it, they would cut you down to size in short order. We're just "Pilots" (or Mechs, FA's, Rampers, CSRs, ect). We're not as smart as they are. Again GMAFB. Delta's computer systems were SIGNIFICANTLY better than ours in the late 90's/early 00's. Why? They hired a furloughed pilot to fix it. There is so much talent at UAL. They just don't have the humility to tap into it. I'm not exaggerating, 3 months MAX with a couple OR PhD buddies ("moonlighting" at night and on weekends from our current gig), and I could have given them the program they just paid BIG money for. We could have even added some stochastics for giggles. But I'm just a stupid f'n pilot. 🙄

 

[JAMAKE1]

767Jetz: I thank you for not waiving your duty time legalities. It is now time that the Union Coalition at UAL (read the membership) stick to their guns. WHQ has been squeezing the life force out of its front line employees with duty days that push us near the limits, with multi legs per day and minimal layover time. I am personally heartened every time I hear a story of a crew walking off. Sadly, now that the company is scheduling cabin crews on all-nighter turns across the Pacific to Hawaii (read 4 pm ck-in, 6 am return) I have grown increasing disheartened at my fellow colleagues who waive their duty time legalities just so that they can collect 5 for 1 (5 hrs of pay for 1 additional hour of duty/flight time). They end up getting shafted in the end, as payment never amounts to what they thought they were going to get for waiving. Additionally, their waiving of duty time on the Hawaii all-nighter turns just perpetuates the company's continued stretching of the safety cushion. I flew one of the all-nighters and on the return flight, the whites in two of my colleagues eyes were so blood shot that the whites of their eyes were almost totally red. I can recall being about 1.5 hours from SFO and as I stared at one of the exit signs aboard the the a/c, it became wavy because I was so fatigued. Total breakdown of situational awareness. Upon my return I immediate filled out and an OSAP report, describing my experience and voicing my concern with regard to cabin safety and stretching of the safety cushion. I was pleasantly surprised the other day when, upon returning home from a trip, there was in my home mail box a questionaire from NASA regarding the OSAP report I had filed. They're going to get an ear full. Note to my westcoast-based colleagues: DO NOT WAIVE YOUR DUTY TIME LIMITS!

 

[Bear96]

Glen likes to take credit for the successes that frontline employees produce; maybe he should take credit for the failures.

I understand some of the bureaucratic issues, I've got a friend (and former UAL pilot) at another large corporation who tells me about how his boys write code to fix a problem in a couple hours that it would take the software development team months to do (after doing the requisite paperwork...). Anybody seen the TPS reports? If it takes you 5 years to do it, you get job security... I hope we gave those guys the KERP 🙄

But again, this kind of sh1t was supposed ot be fixed. This just blows my mind. The really maddening thing about it all is the arrogance. If you even attempted to call them out on it, they would cut you down to size in short order. We're just "Pilots" (or Mechs, FA's, Rampers, CSRs, ect). We're not as smart as they are. Again GMAFB. Delta's computer systems were SIGNIFICANTLY better than ours in the late 90's/early 00's. Why? They hired a furloughed pilot to fix it. There is so much talent at UAL. They just don't have the humility to tap into it. I'm not exaggerating, 3 months MAX with a couple OR PhD buddies ("moonlighting" at night and on weekends from our current gig), and I could have given them the program they just paid BIG money for. We could have even added some stochastics for giggles. But I'm just a stupid f'n pilot. 🙄

So if I am understanding you correctly, you applied to work on this project, made WHQ aware of your relevant qualifications and skills and ideas pertaining to it, and they still turned you down, telling you "Thanks but no thanks, you're just a pilot"?

 

[Busdrvr]

So if I am understanding you correctly, you applied to work on this project, made WHQ aware of your relevant qualifications and skills and ideas pertaining to it, and they still turned you down, telling you "Thanks but no thanks, you're just a pilot"?

Good point, but lets be clear, never has the company come to us with these concerns. The culture at SWA is one that rewards innovation and savings. At UAL, an employee innovation means a bigger bonus/more stock for Glen.

I have expressed concerns to Glen in the past, as have others. Typically, you are handed off to some flunky in charge of that function who arrogantly explains to you that he's the smartest guy in the company and you need to be put in your place. Additionally, it's not that he should have called me, it's that they are THAT INCOMPETENT. If I could do it in a few months, so could a bunch of other people. But those people don't work at UAL. We paid KERPs to keep our brand of idiocy in place. See, pilots, CSR's, F/A's and Mechs are commodity employees. We are worth no more than the lowest paid pilot, CSR, F/A or mech in the industry. Meanwhile, we must pay big bucks to get "quality management...we did, and what we got was a bunch of overpaid billionare boys club baffoons.

It's the culture....

 

[Bear96]

OK, but I guess I am still missing the part where UA was somehow made aware of your skills in this area? Or are you saying that every time UA has an opening in a highly technical area for every specific project, it should interview every CSR and baggage handler on the off chance there is some hidden talent out there?

Hey, if you have these skills, great. Put your resume in for these positions.