tpaewr wrote:

The problem is the UA brand is so damaged at this point. It was not great a time the merger but won out. The disaster that was PSS did nothing to help the new United. And now this! I can't help but notice the media drags out old premerger livery for any negative story. Cause they wanna cash in on all the negative legacy they can!

The problem is where to go from here? The easy answer is rebranding as CO. But this would fix nothing and cause huge drama.

It is almost like UA needs a bullshit identity like "Altria" to hide what they really are....

pmCO's didn't have impeccable history either.

Even though Munoz managed to state "Customer can't be wrong" on TV, it appears he and his PR still thinks they are right and can fight this on internet.

Actually UA is very lucky, from spring break to Easter weekend, UA missed the onslaught of mainstream media and late night comedians.

Further clarification from UA re: Mr. Hohl. I'd say he was lucky UA transported him to Costa Rica the following day instead of cancelling his ticket and setting him free:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/united-ai ... 50141.html

And the fallout continues. How long was the Dr. Dao dragging incident on UA, 3 weeks ago?

Two weeks after a passenger was forcefully dragged from his seat on a United aircraft, the airline is still facing serious blowback from the incident. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tribeca Film Festival organizers have decided to stop screening a 30-second spot advertising United’s Polaris Business Class before films due to “a wave of comical reactions from audiences.”

You can read more here:

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2017/04/2 ... tival.html

2 can play at that. United plays Tribeca Film Festival movies on AVOD, those can easily be removed too.

So, guess which airline has made the news for the death of a giant rabbit! ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39715188

Rumour is, the flight was overbooked, and they were trying to use a carrot and a stick to get him off.
When that didn't work, they hit him with the stick......

I suspect United Airlines will try and bury this story in a burrow. But there is talk of an inquiry as it's thought it could be a conspiracy, the Warren Commission will hold another investigation. Any suggestion that the inflight catering was to blame is also speculative. Mr Harvey the Rabbit was seen having a number of toasted sandwiches on the flight, a salad toastie, a cheese toastie and a vegetarian toastie. Cause of death could be mixing-my-toasties.

Where was he flying to? Chicago O'Hare wasn't it?


United just seem to be going to one of those phases where everything that goes wrong is reported.

So, guess which airline has made the news for the death of a giant rabbit! ...

Since some weeks everyone is focused on United. But it's unfortunately not good also, for American Airlines, Delta Airlines and Alaska Airlines. I don't have stats about airlines based in Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and in America (North, Central and South), is it better ?



http://www.thirdamendment.com/AnimalReports.pdf

I'm not a UA apologist (I think their handling of Dr. Dao was awful), but I fail to see how this is UA's fault. Flying in a cargo hold is stressful for animals. You take a risk any time you ship animals via cargo hold. I could see an oversized rabbit having heart issues compounded with the stress of flying leading to heart failure.

Until we see evidence that this was directly caused by UA's actions (or inactions) I will withhold blame.

n729pa wrote:

Rumour is, the flight was overbooked, and they were trying to use a carrot and a stick to get him off.
When that didn't work, they hit him with the stick......

I suspect United Airlines will try and bury this story in a burrow. But there is talk of an inquiry as it's thought it could be a conspiracy, the Warren Commission will hold another investigation. Any suggestion that the inflight catering was to blame is also speculative. Mr Harvey the Rabbit was seen having a number of toasted sandwiches on the flight, a salad toastie, a cheese toastie and a vegetarian toastie. Cause of death could be mixing-my-toasties.

Where was he flying to? Chicago O'Hare wasn't it?


United just seem to be going to one of those phases where everything that goes wrong is reported.

Anything United is click bait gold right now. More clicks is more advertising exposure, so this will go on as long as UA stories stay popular. This rabbit one took a while to show up on the "top news" stories for Fox, but it's there now.

UPDATE...Woops...It's doped off Fox front page completely now, and has fallen down to the "News and Buzz" section on CNN. The clicks must be slipping.

IPFreely wrote:

Further clarification from UA re: Mr. Hohl. I'd say he was lucky UA transported him to Costa Rica the following day instead of cancelling his ticket and setting him free:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/united-ai ... 50141.html

And we're still waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Hohl's lawsuit.....<crickets> <crickets>

aviatorcraig wrote:

So, guess which airline has made the news for the death of a giant rabbit! ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39715188

I love reading these types of articles where the owner leaves out pertinent information to make UA look bad.
Today at work we found out why the rabbit died is was do to stress and perhaps a heart attack which was caused by it being loaded in the bulk pit with 2 very large breed dogs. The dogs were already booked and check in and were flying with their owner on the flight. The owner of the large rabbit was informed of this and still decided to check in their rabbit because they were also flying on the same flight but the rabbit was booked last minute it was a late add on. Even with the knowledge of knowing dogs were already book and checked in for the flight the owner of the rabbit still decided to check-in their rabbit even though they were given the option to have their pet take the next flight the customer did not want to separate from their pet rabbit. Rabbits and dogs travel in the same cargo compartment all the time however they are separated by cargo or bags in my 20 years this is the first time I can recall a rabbit dying because it was loaded in the same cargo pit as dogs, but then this was in international flight. However in this case it was confirmed that LHR cargo agents and LHR ramp did separate the rabbit from the dogs with cargo and bags however from the reports that I've seen it seems like the rabbit suffered a heart attack brought on by stress. So while I understand the customer wanting to blame UA for the death of their rabbit the reality is LHR gave this customer the option to separate from their animal and book their animal on the next flight they declined and now UA is responsible for the death of this animal?

There are times I wish UA would just publish the internal reports because I'm tired of people only telling half the truth to garner sympathy on social media. The customer made a choice UA abided by that choice now I'm sorry the rabbit died but the only other option available to UA was to leave the rabbit behind against the wishes of its owner.

Rabbits are very susceptible to dying from stress. Our pet rabbit died when a cat got into the area it's cage was in. The cat didn't touch the rabbit but the rabbit died anyhow. I'm glad that this owner has not experienced that in the past, but it doesn't mean that something amiss happened here.

jayunited wrote:

aviatorcraig wrote:

So, guess which airline has made the news for the death of a giant rabbit! ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39715188

I love reading these types of articles where the owner leaves out pertinent information to make UA look bad.
Today at work we found out why the rabbit died is was do to stress and perhaps a heart attack which was caused by it being loaded in the bulk pit with 2 very large breed dogs. The dogs were already booked and check in and were flying with their owner on the flight. The owner of the large rabbit was informed of this and still decided to check in their rabbit because they were also flying on the same flight but the rabbit was booked last minute it was a late add on. Even with the knowledge of knowing dogs were already book and checked in for the flight the owner of the rabbit still decided to check-in their rabbit even though they were given the option to have their pet take the next flight the customer did not want to separate from their pet rabbit. Rabbits and dogs travel in the same cargo compartment all the time however they are separated by cargo or bags in my 20 years this is the first time I can recall a rabbit dying because it was loaded in the same cargo pit as dogs, but then this was in international flight. However in this case it was confirmed that LHR cargo agents and LHR ramp did separate the rabbit from the dogs with cargo and bags however from the reports that I've seen it seems like the rabbit suffered a heart attack brought on by stress. So while I understand the customer wanting to blame UA for the death of their rabbit the reality is LHR gave this customer the option to separate from their animal and book their animal on the next flight they declined and now UA is responsible for the death of this animal?

There are times I wish UA would just publish the internal reports because I'm tired of people only telling half the truth to garner sympathy on social media. The customer made a choice UA abided by that choice now I'm sorry the rabbit died but the only other option available to UA was to leave the rabbit behind against the wishes of its owner.

The animal was alive upon arrival to ORD, and was last seen alive around 30 minutes after arrival. Probably a stress related death, unfortunate.

jayunited wrote:

There are times I wish UA would just publish the internal reports because I'm tired of people only telling half the truth to garner sympathy on social media. The customer made a choice UA abided by that choice now I'm sorry the rabbit died but the only other option available to UA was to leave the rabbit behind against the wishes of its owner.

Did United have this valuable animal (its carcass) cremated (incinerated)?

It's really difficult to know what went on when the reporting is from The Sun UK and the New York Post, a couple of Rupert Murdock newspapers (scandal sheets?).

Photos of different bunnies, a woman wanting surgery to look more like a bunny. I don't vouch for any of this.

http://nypost.com/2017/04/30/breeder-sa ... ermission/

http://nypost.com/2017/04/25/one-of-wor ... ed-flight/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3414045/b ... jet-to-us/

More hare-raising details emerged today:

From USA TODAY

Giant rabbit that died after flight may have been put in freezer

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 312824001/

And United allegedly cremated the carcass.

Dr Dao should consider himself very lucky...

Link/Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/united ... spartandhp


"United Airlines again pounced on the chance to build hype around its brand April 10, when it tweeted congratulations to Wilkerson for winning his free year of food. “Hey @carterjwm, congrats on your world record! It’s time to decide where in the world you’d like to visit a @Wendys!” the carrier tweeted."

"Twitter users weren’t having it. Before long, people responded to United Airlines with memes about its string of recent passenger incidents, the most infamous of which was when Dr. David Dao was beaten and bloodied while being dragged off an “overbooked” United Airlines flight in April."


It certainly has been a rough couple of Months for United. Once all of this overhyped news stuff goes away, things may return to "normal"

This thread is dedicated to all the ones who said it'll all blow over in a day or two.
Even if UA was 100% right, just chalk it up to the cost of doing business. Apologize, compensate and move on. Instead, you've caused your brand (and frankly, the whole industry) substantial damage.
It's going to be a while before people forget this. Every story associated with UA for the foreseeable future will bring this up.
Regardless of the actual lesson that should have been learned from the Dao incident regarding treatment of passengers, I hope the PR lesson has also sunk in.

tlvflyguy wrote:

This thread is dedicated to all the ones who said it'll all blow over in a day or two.
.

Oh please....take a look at any of the twitter feeds for any of the airlines (or companies in general) and you will find people trolling on all of them.

It is what we have descended to as a society....this is a non-story.

United tried to piggyback off of hamburger chain Wendy's.....it did not go well.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/unit ... 39745.html

727LOVER wrote:

United tried to piggyback off of hamburger chain Wendy's.....it did not go well.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/unit ... 39745.html

I think this whole thing sets a bad precedence. Where is my free flight and chicken nuggets? Can I go into the nearest airport to the UA counter and demand a free flight since this kid gets one?

Nothing that an airfare sale will not fix. This bothers Anet more than the common pax.

william wrote:

Nothing that an airfare sale will not fix. This bothers Anet more than the common pax.

I'm not even sure if that is needed...UAs April stats were really strong year over year and even when you take into account Easter weekend moved from March to April this year UAs loads, RPMs, and ASMs were all considerably up. While the PR reverberations will continue for a while this doesn't seem to be impacting UAs numbers in the slightest...

http://newsroom.united.com/2017-05-08-U ... erformance

Actually none of the US airlines that have recently been having a string of high profile incidents seem to be much the worse for wear.

United1 wrote:

william wrote:

Nothing that an airfare sale will not fix. This bothers Anet more than the common pax.

I'm not even sure if that is needed...UAs April stats were really strong year over year and even when you take into account Easter weekend moved from March to April this year UAs loads, RPMs, and ASMs were all considerably up. While the PR reverberations will continue for a while this doesn't seem to be impacting UAs numbers in the slightest...

http://newsroom.united.com/2017-05-08-U ... erformance

Actually none of the US airlines that have recently been having a string of high profile incidents seem to be much the worse for wear.

Having only three large US network carriers is definitely helping UA, that and those hub captive folks just don't have a choice but to fly UA. If there were still 6 large US carriers, I can guarantee you UA would be feeling the heat big time. Consolidation in this case has been UA's best friend. In other words, people just don't have a choice but to fly the Unfriendly Skies of United. Its not that they want to.... UA can probably get away with a beat em down, drag em off episode very week and it wont matter.

jumbojet wrote:

United1 wrote:

william wrote:

Nothing that an airfare sale will not fix. This bothers Anet more than the common pax.

I'm not even sure if that is needed...UAs April stats were really strong year over year and even when you take into account Easter weekend moved from March to April this year UAs loads, RPMs, and ASMs were all considerably up. While the PR reverberations will continue for a while this doesn't seem to be impacting UAs numbers in the slightest...

http://newsroom.united.com/2017-05-08-U ... erformance

Actually none of the US airlines that have recently been having a string of high profile incidents seem to be much the worse for wear.

Having only three large US network carriers is definitely helping UA, that and those hub captive folks just don't have a choice but to fly UA. If there were still 6 large US carriers, I can guarantee you UA would be feeling the heat big time. Consolidation in this case has been UA's best friend. In other words, people just don't have a choice but to fly the Unfriendly Skies of United. Its not that they want to.... UA can probably get away with a beat em down, drag em off episode very week and it wont matter.

Not sure where you're getting captive hubs from as all of UAs hub markets have at least one competitor of size in them.

People choose to fly United for many reasons, sometimes it's our corporate policy, sometimes they have the right schedule, sometimes it's the right price and sometimes it's because we generally get a good and consistent product something you might realise if you ever flew on United rather than just simply bash and troll. None of the recent PR fiascos on any airline, including DL, are indicative of the big picture at any of the airlines.

As a point of order the only airline that has reported any fiscal blip related to any of the recent PR fiascos is DL...remember when they canceled 4000+ flights and had to accommodate 600.000 plus passengers? That little IROPS and IT meltdown will cost them around $120.000.000 in profits this quarter and 2 points off PRASM.

United1 wrote:

As a point of order the only airline that has reported any fiscal blip related to any of the recent PR fiascos is DL...remember when they canceled 4000+ flights and had to accommodate 600.000 plus passengers? That little IROPS and IT meltdown will cost them around $120.000.000 in profits this quarter and 2 points off PRASM.

That's because these PR events are a big deal on a.net and for heavy twitter users but aren't really noticed by most of the population. Consumers generally make buying decisions based on their own experience not based on message boards and twitter. If United dragged you off a plane you might not fly United again. If Delta cancelled most of their flights for 5 days because of one day of rain in one city and you were forced to drive halfway across the country you might not fly Delta again. Comparing customers' experience with these recent events, United negatively affected one customer and Delta negatively affected 600,000 customers. That's a huge difference.

[img]

n729pa wrote:

Rumour is, the flight was overbooked, and they were trying to use a carrot and a stick to get him off.
When that didn't work, they hit him with the stick......

I suspect United Airlines will try and bury this story in a burrow. But there is talk of an inquiry as it's thought it could be a conspiracy, the Warren Commission will hold another investigation. Any suggestion that the inflight catering was to blame is also speculative. Mr Harvey the Rabbit was seen having a number of toasted sandwiches on the flight, a salad toastie, a cheese toastie and a vegetarian toastie. Cause of death could be mixing-my-toasties.

Where was he flying to? Chicago O'Hare wasn't it?

IPFreely wrote:

United1 wrote:

As a point of order the only airline that has reported any fiscal blip related to any of the recent PR fiascos is DL...remember when they canceled 4000+ flights and had to accommodate 600.000 plus passengers? That little IROPS and IT meltdown will cost them around $120.000.000 in profits this quarter and 2 points off PRASM.

That's because these PR events are a big deal on a.net and for heavy twitter users but aren't really noticed by most of the population. Consumers generally make buying decisions based on their own experience not based on message boards and twitter. If United dragged you off a plane you might not fly United again. If Delta cancelled most of their flights for 5 days because of one day of rain in one city and you were forced to drive halfway across the country you might not fly Delta again. Comparing customers' experience with these recent events, United negatively affected one customer and Delta negatively affected 600,000 customers. That's a huge difference.

I have no actual statistics to back me up (such as column inches of reporting, millions of video views, comments posted on blogs/twitter, newscasts, etc), but my overall sense of what I have seen tells me that the adverse publicity earned by United (re. Dr. Dao) might have been 20 times or more greater than the negative publicity earned by Delta (rain storm and partial IT meltdown).

Of course Delta suffered greater immediate costs due to immediate lost revenues and increased expenses. Such costs, to greater or lesser degree, are a normal part of airline operations. Everyone gets hit by them periodically.

But United's short-term losses were measurable and, to a lessening degree, will continue far into the future.

People remember cruelty far longer than they do thunderstorms. Brands suffer from this.

BobPatterson wrote:

IPFreely wrote:

United1 wrote:

But United's short-term losses were measurable and, to a lessening degree, will continue far into the future.

People remember cruelty far longer than they do thunderstorms. Brands suffer from this.

But thats my point we are not seeing any short term drop off in traffic or a softening of UAs PRASM guidance or really anything to suggest damage. Yes people will remember this but this didn't seem to affect UAs finances or market share.

BobPatterson wrote:

IPFreely wrote:

United1 wrote:

As a point of order the only airline that has reported any fiscal blip related to any of the recent PR fiascos is DL...remember when they canceled 4000+ flights and had to accommodate 600.000 plus passengers? That little IROPS and IT meltdown will cost them around $120.000.000 in profits this quarter and 2 points off PRASM.

That's because these PR events are a big deal on a.net and for heavy twitter users but aren't really noticed by most of the population. Consumers generally make buying decisions based on their own experience not based on message boards and twitter. If United dragged you off a plane you might not fly United again. If Delta cancelled most of their flights for 5 days because of one day of rain in one city and you were forced to drive halfway across the country you might not fly Delta again. Comparing customers' experience with these recent events, United negatively affected one customer and Delta negatively affected 600,000 customers. That's a huge difference.

I have no actual statistics to back me up (such as column inches of reporting, millions of video views, comments posted on blogs/twitter, newscasts, etc), but my overall sense of what I have seen tells me that the adverse publicity earned by United (re. Dr. Dao) might have been 20 times or more greater than the negative publicity earned by Delta (rain storm and partial IT meltdown).

Of course Delta suffered greater immediate costs due to immediate lost revenues and increased expenses. Such costs, to greater or lesser degree, are a normal part of airline operations. Everyone gets hit by them periodically.

But United's short-term losses were measurable and, to a lessening degree, will continue far into the future.

People remember cruelty far longer than they do thunderstorms. Brands suffer from this.

There has actually been no measurable impact on United thus far. In fact, Kirby's plan to bolster domestic growth seems to have outweighed any potential impact the Dao incident may have caused.

BobPatterson wrote:

I have no actual statistics to back me up

You could have stopped right there. Especially if you consider youtube videos, blogs, and twitter as a source of reliable statistics or information.

If you pry yourself away from interweb blogs and message boards, people who weren't affected by the Dao incident have largely forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. And people who weren't affected by the Delta IT meltdown have also forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. The only lasting financial impact will come from the people who were affected. In United's case that is 1 and in Delta's case that is 600,000. Hence Delta has a much larger and longer lasting financial hit than United (which has had no measurable hit) from these two incidents.

IPFreely wrote:

BobPatterson wrote:

I have no actual statistics to back me up

You could have stopped right there. Especially if you consider youtube videos, blogs, and twitter as a source of reliable statistics or information.

If you pry yourself away from interweb blogs and message boards, people who weren't affected by the Dao incident have largely forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. And people who weren't affected by the Delta IT meltdown have also forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. The only lasting financial impact will come from the people who were affected. In United's case that is 1 and in Delta's case that is 600,000. Hence Delta has a much larger and longer lasting financial hit than United (which has had no measurable hit) from these two incidents.

Wow, let me go put my boots on because the 'you know what' is getting pretty deep. Give me a break. Did you come up with that nonsense all on your own? DL is the much better and far, far superior airline in ALL measurable and meaningful categories. Customer Service, profit, hard product, soft product, on-time percentage, fight cancellations.. The only real good thing UA does is basically follow DL's lead.

People will continue to fly Delta because of brand reputation. People fly United because they have to. Like I said up thread, if there were still 6 major US airlines, United would be in serious trouble.

Uniteds image is so badly damaged at this point. I know A.net we hold the airlines to such a different standard but to normal people United is now considered the lowest of the low. Things are not passing over.

-Tribeca Film Festival United advertisements had to pulled at the beginning of screenings because people were laughing so hard about the friendly skies being a united ad
-United cant even tweet anything without getting heckled by the masses on the web (united tried to get in one Wendys positive fun on twitter) got destroyed
-Will Farrell gave a USC commencement address and all reported the largest laughter was Jokes about United Airlines

What can United possibly do here? Their current strategy of hoping this will pass over isn't working too well. This PR disaster keeps going for them. This Summer with delays and overcrowded planes(like we will see on all airlines) isn't going to be pretty for United, as the media will be fast to pickup anything. I do think United has to do something better then they are.

slcdeltarumd11 wrote:

Uniteds image is so badly damaged at this point. I know A.net we hold the airlines to such a different standard but to normal people United is now considered the lowest of the low. Things are not passing over.

-Tribeca Film Festival United advertisements had to pulled at the beginning of screenings because people were laughing so hard about the friendly skies being a united ad
-United cant even tweet anything without getting heckled by the masses on the web (united tried to get in one Wendys positive fun on twitter) got destroyed
-Will Farrell gave a USC commencement address and all reported the largest laughter was Jokes about United Airlines

What can United possibly do here? Their current strategy of hoping this will pass over isn't working too well. This PR disaster keeps going for them. This Summer with delays and overcrowded planes(like we will see on all airlines) isn't going to be pretty for United, as the media will be fast to pickup anything. I do think United has to do something better then they are.

Thats true about every US carrier right now though every single one of them is under a microscope. AAs incident at ORD, DL in Hawaii, UA in MSY...none of them were really that big of a deal but as it involved aviation it made the news.

Twitter is not exacly any companies friend and if you look at the tweets on any of the airlines they are 99% negative. There are a few good ones here and there but for the most part its crap and isnt worth reading.
Hell DLs mothers day tweet got trolled quite a bit today...of all things to troll mothers day. Every US airlines reputation is garbage and has been for years. It doesn't matter if its UA DL or AA the public perception of the industry ranks it just above the post office and cable companies.

Looking at the statistics UA is doing what it should do which is continue with its growth plans, focus on operations and running a good airline. At this point all they can do is ride it out...and I think thats the right strategy as there is not much else they can do. They have settled with Dr Dao, appologised publicly and made changes to their polices...not sure what else is possible.

slcdeltarumd11 wrote:

Uniteds image is so badly damaged at this point. I know A.net we hold the airlines to such a different standard but to normal people United is now considered the lowest of the low. Things are not passing over.

You need to re-evaluate your definition of "normal people". Normal people don't evaluate companies based on what random people post on twitter. Look at United's most recent earnings report, then look at Delta's most recent earnings report. The results speak for themselves. And those results mean a lot. What is posted on twitter means nothing.

How did Delta's recent Media Day event go?

jumbojet wrote:

IPFreely wrote:

BobPatterson wrote:

I have no actual statistics to back me up

You could have stopped right there. Especially if you consider youtube videos, blogs, and twitter as a source of reliable statistics or information.

If you pry yourself away from interweb blogs and message boards, people who weren't affected by the Dao incident have largely forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. And people who weren't affected by the Delta IT meltdown have also forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. The only lasting financial impact will come from the people who were affected. In United's case that is 1 and in Delta's case that is 600,000. Hence Delta has a much larger and longer lasting financial hit than United (which has had no measurable hit) from these two incidents.

Wow, let me go put my boots on because the 'you know what' is getting pretty deep. Give me a break. Did you come up with that nonsense all on your own? DL is the much better and far, far superior airline in ALL measurable and meaningful categories. Customer Service, profit, hard product, soft product, on-time percentage, fight cancellations.. The only real good thing UA does is basically follow DL's lead.

People will continue to fly Delta because of brand reputation. People fly United because they have to. Like I said up thread, if there were still 6 major US airlines, United would be in serious trouble.

OBVIOUSLY a DL lover and UA hater. Don't say ALL measurable and meaningful categories
Cancelled flights Jan - Feb: DL 0.84% UA: 0.73% (www.transtats.bts.gov)

Please show me the metric used to measure "superior" hard product and soft product besides your own biased opinion.

Most people fly the airline they want to fly, not who they have to fly. Both of my UA flights (because I wanted to fly UA) were full today...I guess everyone else had to fly them?

d8s wrote:

OBVIOUSLY a DL lover and UA hater. Don't say ALL measurable and meaningful categories
Cancelled flights Jan - Feb: DL 0.84% UA: 0.73% (http://www.transtats.bts.gov)

Those results are for mainline flights only. If you add in Delta Connection, Delta's performance gets worse.....much much worse. And if you include April when Delta decided to cease operations for five days...well...the results speak for themselves.

When people here use twitter and youtube as references to "prove" their point, it's admission you have no argument. ALL airlines are clickbait for sensationalized stories that are only half told, that's the way it's always been and with today's penchant to be outraged and victimized at the smallest thing then the airlines are easy targets.

IPFreely wrote:

d8s wrote:

OBVIOUSLY a DL lover and UA hater. Don't say ALL measurable and meaningful categories
Cancelled flights Jan - Feb: DL 0.84% UA: 0.73% (http://www.transtats.bts.gov)

Those results are for mainline flights only. If you add in Delta Connection, Delta's performance gets worse.....much much worse. And if you include April when Delta decided to cease operations for five days...well...the results speak for themselves.

And that was an aberration for Delta. Everyone knows it, UA icontinually ranks much worse than DL in cancellations and delayed flights. UA did get cute though, with international flights, they just delay the crap out of them. 20 plus hour delays are not uncommon. UA still has no clue on how to run a customer service friendly airline.

its more than just the P.R. issues that plague UA. Take a look at its fleet. Only 3 or 4 planes to this point in time have direct aisle access flat bed seating. We are almost half way through 2017. The hard product is horrendous and way behind the times. Sure, I will give UA props for finally catching up to DL on the soft product side of things but folks, lets be honest here, being cramped into the middle section of a 4 abreast widebody business class cabin is not industry leading. In fact, since some on this thread like to make comparisons to Delta, Delta is already starting its 2nd refurbishment of direct aisle access seating with the new business class suite, makes Polaris look old already.

I'm keeping my eye on UA and if the time comes they can catch up and offer a decent business class seat/cabin with respectable customer service with very good on-time ratings and next to no cancellations, then I will try them again.

its more than just the P.R. issues that plague UA. Take a look at its fleet. Only 3 or 4 planes to this point in time have direct aisle access flat bed seating. We are almost half way through 2017. The hard product is horrendous and way behind the times. Sure, I will give UA props for finally catching up to DL on the soft product side of things but folks, lets be honest here, being cramped into the middle section of a 4 abreast widebody business class cabin is not industry leading. In fact, since some on this thread like to make comparisons to Delta, Delta is already starting its 2nd refurbishment of direct aisle access seating with the new business class suite, makes Polaris look old already.

I'm keeping my eye on UA and if the time comes they can catch up and offer a decent business class seat/cabin with respectable customer service with very good on-time ratings and next to no cancellations, then I will try them again. Until then, the

and NO. I do NOT hate United. Its actually just as convenient for me to travel to EWR as it is to JFK. If the flight is over the 9 hour mark, I travel upfront. Having direct aisle access flat bed seating is very important to me. All airlines go through PR nightmares, some handle them better than others. I've had DL do some amazing things for me where other airlines would probably laugh at me and hang up. For instance, I cant stand the Korean A380 prestige class seats. Worst in the world. En-route from SYD-ICN-JFK on Korean metal (A380's in business class), booked on Delta, I got off the plane in ICN, called Delta and explained to them the situation. 5 minutes later, I was confirmed on a DL metal flight to the states, no questions asked. Try that on ANY other airline and see where that gets you. With Delta, the customer truly comes first. Now, if UA would do the same for me, put the customer first, than that is another reason to try them again

I flew UA recently, and they were fine.

However, that was part of a tour and I did not CHOSE UA.

If I DID have the choice, then there would have needed to be a VERY good reason for me to have chosen UA. I would have opted to avoid that problem.

If enough people take the same approach, then that WILL add up.

TheGeordielad wrote:

Don't most airlines not allow segways anyway?

No there's even some Emergency Equipment We can't ship to an airplane that's life saving equipment On the airplane.
Because it carries Lithium-ion Batteries.

D.B. Cooper has decided to come out of hiding and sue Delta for allowing him to jump out of a moving aircraft.

Clearly Northwest Orient should have protected all of its passengers from such a calamity and he is suing for compensatory and punitive damages.

In addition he is seeking royalty payments tied to the development of the Cooper vane which was named after him without prior authorization.

Well, the whole UA posting security codes ordeal is already hitting major news. Even ARS Technica https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/cockpit-access-codes-for-united-airlines-spill-online/ is reporting it. Can't wait to see what blowback Joe Public will have with another nail in the UA public opinion coffin.

As much as I hate UA, I have lately found myself feeling somewhat bad for them considering how many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pax per week fly them with not so much as a peep.

jumbojet wrote:

IPFreely wrote:

d8s wrote:

OBVIOUSLY a DL lover and UA hater. Don't say ALL measurable and meaningful categories
Cancelled flights Jan - Feb: DL 0.84% UA: 0.73% (http://www.transtats.bts.gov)

Those results are for mainline flights only. If you add in Delta Connection, Delta's performance gets worse.....much much worse. And if you include April when Delta decided to cease operations for five days...well...the results speak for themselves.

And that was an aberration for Delta. Everyone knows it, UA icontinually ranks much worse than DL in cancellations and delayed flights. UA did get cute though, with international flights, they just delay the crap out of them. 20 plus hour delays are not uncommon. UA still has no clue on how to run a customer service friendly airline.

I have never in my career had a 20hr delay or even seen one at United! Your so full of garbage.

jumbojet wrote:

IPFreely wrote:

BobPatterson wrote:

I have no actual statistics to back me up

You could have stopped right there. Especially if you consider youtube videos, blogs, and twitter as a source of reliable statistics or information.

If you pry yourself away from interweb blogs and message boards, people who weren't affected by the Dao incident have largely forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. And people who weren't affected by the Delta IT meltdown have also forgotten it if they paid attention in the first place. The only lasting financial impact will come from the people who were affected. In United's case that is 1 and in Delta's case that is 600,000. Hence Delta has a much larger and longer lasting financial hit than United (which has had no measurable hit) from these two incidents.

Wow, let me go put my boots on because the 'you know what' is getting pretty deep. Give me a break. Did you come up with that nonsense all on your own? DL is the much better and far, far superior airline in ALL measurable and meaningful categories. Customer Service, profit, hard product, soft product, on-time percentage, fight cancellations.. The only real good thing UA does is basically follow DL's lead.

People will continue to fly Delta because of brand reputation. People fly United because they have to. Like I said up thread, if there were still 6 major US airlines, United would be in serious trouble.

United is leading DL in the month of May for ontime arrivals. We just won't talk about April since you refuse to acknowledge it.

jumbojet wrote:

its more than just the P.R. issues that plague UA. Take a look at its fleet. Only 3 or 4 planes to this point in time have direct aisle access flat bed seating. We are almost half way through 2017. The hard product is horrendous and way behind the times. Sure, I will give UA props for finally catching up to DL on the soft product side of things but folks, lets be honest here, being cramped into the middle section of a 4 abreast widebody business class cabin is not industry leading. In fact, since some on this thread like to make comparisons to Delta, Delta is already starting its 2nd refurbishment of direct aisle access seating with the new business class suite, makes Polaris look old already.

I'm keeping my eye on UA and if the time comes they can catch up and offer a decent business class seat/cabin with respectable customer service with very good on-time ratings and next to no cancellations, then I will try them again.

DL an UA are running 99.9% completion for the month of may. UA is leading DL by 5pts in on time performance in the month of May.

Again we'll just skip over April.

bennett123 wrote:

I flew UA recently, and they were fine.

However, that was part of a tour and I did not CHOSE UA.

If I DID have the choice, then there would have needed to be a VERY good reason for me to have chosen UA. I would have opted to avoid that problem.

If enough people take the same approach, then that WILL add up.

Population of the US 326 million. 1% is 3.26 million, that's probably on the high side of people that passionately care and think like you and will avoid United. There are 323 million more people out there who don't know or don't care. United will be fine.

CriticalPoint wrote:

jumbojet wrote:

IPFreely wrote:

Those results are for mainline flights only. If you add in Delta Connection, Delta's performance gets worse.....much much worse. And if you include April when Delta decided to cease operations for five days...well...the results speak for themselves.

And that was an aberration for Delta. Everyone knows it, UA icontinually ranks much worse than DL in cancellations and delayed flights. UA did get cute though, with international flights, they just delay the crap out of them. 20 plus hour delays are not uncommon. UA still has no clue on how to run a customer service friendly airline.

I have never in my career had a 20hr delay or even seen one at United! Your so full of garbage.

Delta has the worst record in the industry for ultra-late flights. I show data here for Delta and Alaska for last July. During that month Delta didn't have a 20-hour-late flight, but did have one between 18-19 hours late. I show Alaska for comparison because it is another well-run airline, but one that doesn't screw around holding flights that should be cancelled over until the next day. Delta treats this as a stunt to game the system and proclaim XXX number of days without cancellations.

Later this year I hope to be able to show such data for all airlines after almost all the regionals are required to submit their data.

JULY, 2016 - T100 Data ...............Delta................Alaska July

On Time: 0:00-0:14 mins late......68,298...................14,538
0:15-0:59 mins late.....................12,014.....................1,318
1:00-1:59 late...............................1,370........................265
2:00-2:59 late..................................680.........................51
3:00-3:59 late..................................332.........................21
4:00-4:59 late..................................156...........................9
5:00-5:59 late....................................82...........................3
6:00-6:59 late....................................61...........................4
7:00-7:59 late....................................39...........................4
8:00-8:59 late....................................14
9:00-9:59 late....................................11
10:00-10:59 late.................................12
11:00-11:59 late..................................9
12:00-12:59 late..................................9
13:00-13:59 late.................................13
14:00-14:59 late.................................14
15:00-15:59 late...................................4
16:00-16:59 late...................................5
17:00-16:59 late...................................2
18:00-18:59 late...................................1
Total Flights Scored......................83,126..................16,213