Posted by Seth on May 6, 2012 under News | 
Several months ago United Airlines announced that they would be changing the configuration of the 757-200 aircraft they have running in their "premium service" routes between New York City‘s JFK airport and both Los Angeles and San Francisco. The changes include removing the first class cabin and replacing the business class seats with the flat-bed models used on their transatlantic 757 service. It also means adding in more economy seats and changing from an all Economy Plus layout to both regular economy and Economy Plus. The target date for the conversions to begin was sometime in the second half of 2012 but nothing more specific was ever announced. Looking at the timetables today, however, it appears that a bit of information about a possible start date for the conversion has been sighted.
Flight number 161 is operated by a sCO 757-200 with lie-flat seats.
The change appears to start on September 1, 2012. In many cases I’d discount changes such as this one which show up on weekends, particularly with all the schedule changes that United is running on weekends still. This one, however, changes the operating carrier of the flight on that route making it seem much more likely to be legit.
The change makes sense for a number of reasons. The company will need to pull at least one aircraft out of service at a time to fit them with the new configuration. This move comes after the peak summer season for trans-Atlantic trips, allowing the company to shift a properly configured 752 over to the route and to provide the new premium service to customers. It isn’t enough seats – 10 fewer than the new config will eventually have – to offer it to everyone, but it is definitely better than putting a non-flat bed config on the route.
The sCO 752 also has the new AVOD IFE system and Economy Plus seating, but it does not have gogo wifi, unlike all the other p.s. aircraft. It remains to be seen which in-flight connectivity solution the p.s. planes end up with after their conversion but I’d bet on them ultimately having the Panasonic-supported satellite-based system. They might have to go with gogo in the interim if the new system isn’t ready yet, but I would expect them to end up there eventually.
The overall conversion timeline is still somewhat in question, but this is a pretty good indication that things are finally getting started.
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Posted by Seth on May 6, 2012 under News |
As United Airlines moves to unify the service offerings between their two legacy operations there are only a few bits left to reconcile. One of those is the catering setup for long-haul flights, where the current service varies depending on which legacy carrier the route is operated by. Starting June 1 the new catering plans go into effect, with the goal of harmonizing the service across all premium cabins, regardless of whether it is operated by a legacy United or Continental aircraft. Alas, even the new plan isn’t quite so harmonized.
Business Class
On the plus side, the company appears to be migrating the legacy Continental BusinessFirst concept towards the legacy United side of things. This means expansion of the ice cream sundae cart and four entrée choices coming to all business class offerings (legacy United was only 3).
Still, depending on whether it is a 2-cabin or 3-cabin aircraft the service will differ. On a 2-cabin plane there will be a choice of appetizers offered and they will be served from a cart in the aisle per passenger request, separate from the salad course. On 3-cabin aircraft there will be only one appetizer and it is served on a tray along with the salad. In both cases the appetizers will only be cold offerings now in BusinessFirst.
At dessert time the 2-cabin aircraft will continue to serve the cheese course from the cart in the aisle while the 3-cabin aircraft will have the cheese pre-plated and served from the galley, and possibly fewer choices of cheese on the plate. Additionally, the petit fours are disappearing from BusinessFirst on 2-cabin aircraft for the dessert course.
Also of note is that the actual entrée choices being offered will be transitioning to those from the legacy Continental operation, at least in the European markets.
First Class
The new United Global First meal service is seeing a few tweaks as well. The overall six-course meal service will otherwise generally remain the same. Appetizers, however, will now be served from a cart in the aisle and there will be two hot choices for passengers to select from.
On 3-cabin flights it also appears that the actual entrée selections will be the same in Global First and BusinessFirst, further blurring the the lines between the two offerings. Dessert will still have more choices in Global First (petit fours along with the sundae) and the appetizers will be hot rather than cold. Plus there is a soup course. Definitely not an identical meal service but still very similar. For service to/from China the Global First cabin also gets cookies during the mid-flight snack while the BusinessFirst cabin does not.
Other bits
The company has decided to retire all of their patterned china; the new service will be from plain white dishes. Hard to know if that actually matters or not, but it is part of the update. Also, the company will be moving towards the legacy Continental glassware in the business class cabins. This includes the water, wine and cordial services. Also, and apparently this is a big deal. the company is shifting to using tongs rather than spoons for some portions of the service. Amazing, huh?
There are a number of matrices describing which routes and aircraft get which meal service, based on number of cabins, destination region and departure time. The charts are filled with tiny print over many pages. Needless to say figuring out what the meal is supposed to be isn’t a particularly trivial process.
Overall the idea of harmonizing the services is a good one. I probably would have taken a different tack in some of the choices, but I understand that there are limitations, both financial and practical, which preclude that in some cases. Making things more consistent for customers helps improve the ability to deliver the product. Alas, there are still going to be differences for the passengers depending on which type of aircraft they are on, among other things. Such is life, I suppose.
Posted by Seth on April 29, 2012 under frequent flyer, News |
A last minute change to the schedule of an event is rarely a good thing; swapping out speakers and shuffling slots is a pain for everyone. But when given the opportunity to have an official from the United Airlines Customer Experience group come in and talk with 200+ frequent fliers about the changes over the past 6 weeks, including the challenges they faced and the troubles they’re still facing with the merger and the PSS integration progress, you accept the pains and make the changes. At this weekend’s Frequent Traveler University event a representative from United’s Customer Experience group stood up in front of the group with pretty much no restrictions on what could be asked. A potentially risky move.
Much of the discussion focused on upgrades and the policies and processes around upgrades. Not particularly surprising given that the upgrade processing has been probably the most visible and, for many passengers, the greatest pain point. Perhaps the best news is that the company knows the system still isn’t working correctly all the time. Among other useful things said:
Upgrades are clearing more reliably, but still not happening all the time
We’re really bad at transparency for upgrades right now.
We’re telling gate agents to "Please don’t police upgrades. If the person is on the list don’t worry about how they got there."
Some people love the companion upgrade policy and some hate it. Some like the Y/B/M-Up policy and some hate it. And, not surprisingly, many don’t understand how the policies are built and how they work. The issue of wait-listed upgrades not being cleared when the award inventory opens up was also brought up again. There are some theories on why it is happening but nothing solid yet. Overall, some hints were offered about how things in the future that are going to be better. But just hints. Nothing confirmed.
There was also a decent amount of discussion about the agents and the seemingly new party line of "we cannot do that in the new system." There are some things that actually cannot be done anymore, but many of the examples provided, such as protecting on a later flight without canceling the existing segments, turned out to actually not be true.
There was the usual (and well deserved) abuse of the Newark station. Nothing to report on anything potentially getting better there, but it was discussed.
There was also a ton of abuse piled on top of the social media strategy, namely the Twitter account. The UA rep was shocked when he asked how many folks in the room used Twitter and saw nearly everyone raise their hand. And based on my personal experience I agree that the approach has been quite passive and low-key, almost to the point of seemingly non-existent unless they’re hosting a chat or similar. Constantly referring customers to the "official" channels which are also horribly back-logged and unresponsive isn’t helping their case. This was, after upgrades, probably the most significant area the group felt the company was failing horribly in.
It wasn’t all questions from the crowd. In some cases it was just comments about how things have run the past 6 weeks and months. Particularly pointed and brutal was a simple line offered up from one attendee:
You’ve broken every rule of customer service since the merger
And all he could do was accept that one; not really much of a leg to stand on to dispute it.
Finally, a few minutes were devoted to discussion of things not entirely related to the post-integration issues. It was quite interesting to hear from someone focused on the Customer Experience part of the organization what about the carrier he thought was compelling for customers and where he actually wanted that experience to be. Things like the route network and the non-flying earning possibilities were big on his radar.
On the route network front, the 787 was a big focus. Among other telling comments,
The 787 is going to be unbelievable…going to be exciting what we’re doing with it and where we’re going with it.
That’s not new but knowing that he’s on the inside and can see more about the potential routes makes me excited, too.
To the point of loyalty and the future of the experience it was interesting to hear discussion of how they want loyalty to be not to the mileage program but actually to the carrier and the in-flight product. They want loyalty to be focused on actually doing right by customers rather than being focused on rules and policies. That came out explicitly in the discussion about the upgrades and not wanting agents to be policing why the upgrade should be processed or not, for example, and it came out explicitly in one of the closing comments offered up:
I want you to be loyal because you know United will use common sense to take care of me.
It is going to take a while to build that level of comfort with many customers. Whether due to issues with agent training on the new platform, inconsistent application of policies or just the typical variances in terms of in-flight crew experiences, it is never going to be perfect. But the company has quite an up-hill battle in front of them on the trust and common sense front. It will be interesting to see how that develops.
Posted by Seth on April 23, 2012 under Flying, News, Review |
It was on a United Airlines 767-200 somewhere near Memphis that I awoke with a chill running down my spine. The chill was two-fold. First, I had been having a dream that the United Club in Terminal E at IAH was setting up a space for the ShamWow guy to sell his wares in the club. Plus, I was actually cold. Given that at least one of these could be somewhat reasonably addressed, I asked the flight attendant for a blanket. She noted that they had the new ones on board. I got excited. She shook her head, suggesting that I get over it quickly. She was quite right.
The good news, I suppose, is that the blanket has a bit of texture to it. I actually like that feel a bit. But that’s the only good that there is to share.
The blanket is small. I measured it at roughly 24"x48" (photo below is it laid out on a beach towel that I normally travel with). The FA noted that I could use it like a shawl, covering either my torso or my legs but not both. She was quite right about that.
The other problem with it is that it isn’t really a blanket so much as a gauzy wrap. It provided nearly zero warmth until I doubled it over, making it even smaller than the as-built size.
There are new "blankets" coming to the United Airlines. And they suck.
Here’s hoping the ShamWow part of the dream doesn’t come true, too.
Posted by Seth on April 20, 2012 under News |
I am, once again, back at the airport headed out on a quick trip (Rio for the day, but that’s not so important to the story) and I had some time to kill prior to my flight so I headed up to the United Club (the former CO one) to check in for my flight, get my SDC processed to an earlier flight and to grab a snack. Having reasonably quickly completed those three tasks I decided to chat with some of the folks here a bit to see if there was any new news about the consolidation efforts of the split operations here. Much to my surprise, there is!
United Airlines is currently split between the A and C piers at LaGuardia. They operate two clubs and have a few dozen daily flights to Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston and Washington – Dulles. The operation is one of the larger non-hub setups and there is definitely a need to consolidate the operations. The question has always been how to do that without ceding gate space that they actually need and while maintaining the number of flights they have.
The current version of the story is that operations will be consolidated into Terminal C (the legacy UA gates) as much as possible. This will include closing the old Ionosphere lounge and expanding the old Red Carpet Club. The former RCC is larger anyways and it has room to grow over the terminal and security checkpoint area. The construction effort will also bring the entrance past the security check-point, making it much more convenient for most passengers. This construction plan has supposedly already been approved by the Port Authority but I have not yet been able to confirm that.
Moving everything to the C pier will be a challenge from a gate utilization perspective. There are four gates in that pier which United doesn’t operate from; they are run by American Airlines (Eagle express flights, really) which also operates from the adjacent D pier. It is highly unlikely that AA will be looking to yield any of those gates and there aren’t many other options for shuffling things around to make them work out well. It will be interesting to see if they can juggle the schedules enough to make just those gates accommodate the demands of the flight timings.
Now it just remains to be seen if they update the signage in the terminal. There are some pretty entertaining remnants from the days of yore still visible.
Posted by Seth on April 19, 2012 under Flying, News |
For each of the past several summers sales for premium cabin travel have been offered by a number of airlines, looking to cash in on the lower demand for business travel during the period. This year’s sales launched today. In addition to the first class sale that Lufthansa is advertising (coverage from Lufthansa Flyer here) there is also a business class sale on offer, with United Airlines publishing a number of fares.
The bad news (and it comes as no real surprise) is that the prices are higher than they have been in the past. Definitely still discounted fares, but not so many of the bargains that there used to be. Here are some sample numbers:
Definitely worth looking in to the numbers if you were thinking of dropping $2500-3500 on a trip to Europe anyways this summer and you can meet the advance purchase (60!! days) and minimum stay requirements. Some more of the fine print includes:
Travel must be booked by May 31, 2012, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. Sale is valid on UnitedBusinessFirst® fares for travel starting between June 29, 2012, and September 1, 2012. Return travel must be completed on or before September 6, 2012. Saturday night stay required. A 60-day advance purchase is required. Fares are nonrefundable and require a $400 USD change fee.
Also of note is that the fares, while advertised by United, are available across the anti-trust immunized group of carriers, so if you’d rather fly on Lufthansa or Swiss odds are you have that option.
Posted by Seth on April 19, 2012 under frequent flyer |
As part of the changes to their MileagePlus program United Airlines announced that top-tier elites would receive compensation to cover the cost of the Global Entry enrollment fee. Alas, like many bits of the new program details the announcement was not followed by any details and, eventually, it was announced that the benefit would be delayed from the launch of the new program in March 2012 while the company continued to work on details. With a new target date of "Q2 2012" there was plenty of wiggle room on the delivery time for the benefit, but some grumbling was also apparent from the elites looking forward to what is a great service for travelers.
The benefit now has a target date of June 2012 ascribed to it. Specifically they intend to offer an enrollment code that can be used to pay the fee to the feds without and expense on the part of the customer. That’s both good (no cash) and bad (not until June) news on the benefit, but there is also an interim solution available for folks who have the status and don’t want to wait, so long as they also don’t mind fronting the cash and not getting reimbursed in cash.
The process is defined on the company website:
All in all, not so bad, really, and a pretty reasonable stop-gap to get the benefit out there while they’re still working on the other details.
Posted by Seth on April 16, 2012 under frequent flyer, points |
With JAL launching their Boston – Narita flights in the coming days there are a number of promos out there on the route. Other oneworld carriers are offering bonus miles and discounted redemption rates for the route. And it appears that United might also be matching, at least on the bonus miles side. Even more interesting is that the bonus miles are PQMs for elite status.
Sounds great, right? Well it is, assuming it is actually valid. But reading the T&C of the promo it isn’t completely clear that the bonus is going to work out. The very first section of the fine print includes this nugget:
Itineraries with connecting flights into or out of Boston and Narita are eligible for this promotion; however the bonus award miles only apply for segments between Boston and Narita.
And, unfortunately, that seems to be vague enough that the bonus might not actually apply. See, there are no actual flights between Boston and Narita on United Airlines. So unless all connecting flights between them are eligible the promo is actually useless. Some of the historical promos that the company has offered with similar language have required the segments to be on non-stop flights between the cities, so there is some precedent here.
Oh, and it only applies to tickets purchased after 1 April 2012 and only if you register for the promo.
Also, they don’t actually have the promo listed on the main promo page, so it isn’t clear if this is supposed to be some sort of secret deal or what.
Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t. If you want to give it a try go ahead and register here.
Posted by Seth on April 13, 2012 under Flying, frequent flyer, Mileage Run |
I’m a huge fan of Istanbul and Turkey in general. I’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences there (even with attempted scammings twice) and between the architecture, food and people it is one of my favorite places to visit and one that I return to willingly, which is a big step for me. When a visit can be had on the cheap that’s an even bigger draw. And right now there are some great deals out there for travel from the USA to Istanbul.
The deals are for the shoulder season so look for travel in September or October for great weather and even better rates. Here’s what the fare calendars look like for October, departing a few cities in the USA:
New York City
Washington, DC
Los Angeles
Chicago
In many cases the W fares on United Airlines aren’t too much more than these lowest fares (~$300 ex-EWR) and the upgrade inventory is plentiful. I’ve already confirmed my flat bed for a weekend in early October. It is going to be a lot of fun.
Tags: Chicago, Deals, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Mileage Run, New York City, Newark, Turkey, United, United Airlines, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on April 12, 2012 under Flying, News |
At first blush it seems like quite a strange development. After all, why would United Airlines be hiring the regional carrier arm of American Airlines to handle operations at 8 airports across the south plus one in New York? Turns out it isn’t all that uncommon at all, and there is actually a good reason for it.
The airports in question are:
- Waco, TX
- College Station, TX
- Killeen/Fort Hood, TX
- Tyler, TX
- Monroe, LA
- Dallas Love Field, TX
- Del Rio, TX
- Beaumont/Port Arthur, TX
- Binghamton, NY
These happen to all be airports that United Express has recently been operating to with service provided by Colgan, a subsidiary of Pinnacle, the regional operator that declared bankruptcy recently and which is moving to terminate the contracts with United.
So United needs new service in those stations. The company has pulled some ERJ-135 aircraft out of storage and their ExpressJet arm is going to be operating those, but they also need folks on the ground to handle operations. And, much like outsourcing the flying, the company is also outsourcing that to another company that already has resources on the ground, namely American Eagle.
Turns out that such arrangements aren’t all that uncommon in the industry, especially in stations where there is limited service from any one carrier. That said, it does still seem a bit strange. I wonder if the American Eagle employees will learn SHARES faster/better than the legacy employees who are still struggling with it.
Hat tip to Darren @ Frequently Flying for noting the press release on this one.
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