Sunvox

Call me a "koolaid" drinker if you will, but my overall impressions from spending 4 days at Willis Tower were positive.

First, Oscar spoke to us twice and both times his message was consistent. In simple terms he was saying he believes in the philosophy that change starts at the top and treating people like you want them to treat you is a key to success in business so no more reprimanding employees for trying to do what they believe is right instead he wants a culture where employees have respect for the work of others and feel empowered to do what's "right" even if what's right is not perfectly inline with company policy. He recognizes that people will make mistakes, but he feels this is a far better approach to running a business than trying to tightly regulate every decision UAL employees make.

His philosophy most definitely has influenced his top managers because everyone had the same message that they are there to support the frontline troops and are eager to hear from people when they find problems that need solving.

Next . . . the NOC was simply astonishing. I had been there years ago, but it has more than doubled in size and the resources available on that one floor are mind boggling. Just know that if you have a real emergency there is an incredible support team that goes to work on your behalf.

Next . . . Flight Ops is concerned about where the next generation of pilots will come from because they do not see a pipeline. They said they are down to the same 5000 applications at all 3 majors. They are exploring some interesting options even going so far as to have talks with military leaders about developing "dual track" careers where pilots would join the military initially but have a guaranteed airline job after initial training was complete. Of course, they are also actively setting up feeder programs with college aviation programs. To that point there were a half dozen interns working at Willis all of whom I would expect to see on the line within a few years. That was common in the mid-90s as well.

Next, Howard wants to know how to change the United culture on aircraft refusals. Apparently we average 2 per day where as Delta and American have less than that per month. He feels United pilots are too quick to shoot down a plane when conditions are not warranted. He was quick to point out that if one had a situation like being dispatched to LGA with anti-skid inop in a 737-900 he would be the first to support turning down that plane, but he felt that simply rejecting an airplane because "I don't take planes with inop APUs" was an example of a culture tendency he'd like to see change.

Finally, the word from Oscar was more used Airbus confirmed for 2018 but not mentioned in the last call with a deal being negotiated for an additional 20 or so plus ongoing discussions with Boeing about the 767 replacement for a time frame around 2025 and although they said in the investor conference they were only looking out to 2020, they had a plan thru 2024 that includes 4% or more growth in mainline flying.


Oh, and the course itself . . . it was a well run and interesting class in "team building". They are definitely trying to produce captains that are more engaged both with other employee groups and with passengers.

webecheck

Would be interesting to see the number if the cost of refusing an aircraft could be quantified.

Sunvox

I asked that exact question and he said that they don't break that information out, but he did say that any international refusal that resulted in a canceled flight had a minimum price tag of $1 mil.

cal73

Sounds positive to me. I’m cautiously optimistic this isn’t the same “free beer tomorrow “ stuff we’ve already become accustomed to hearing. Thanks for the quick brief. Pardon the pun please


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CLazarus

Nice post, thanks. Very interesting to hear that last fall's rumored purchase of an additional group of used Airbii is not dead after all.

oldmako

Kool-Aid,

Not to be a total jerk but comparing our refusals to anyone else's is meaningless. They should be comparing our refusals to last years and the year before and looking only at UA.

Take an A320 into LGA with no A-Skid? (etc.) No problem. Take the uber-guppy? Well, that might not be such an easy decision. How many of those Top-Fuel funny planes do we have? How many does DAL?




Not sure if it's still the case, but for a while at Brand-X airline, guys were immediately pulled off a trip and suffered pay loss when they refused a plane. How often did that policy effect pilots decisions? How many guys took broken trash because of it? How many of those flights should have been refusals and was there a potential (negative) impact on the safety of those flights? At some point, the guy with the cool hat is obligated to say "Nyet!"

To minimize refusals, fix planes promptly, and when that's impossible, route them in a manner which will minimize impact to the operation.

Years ago a 767 was dispatched to GRU without an APU. A whole mess of guys refused it, over and over. Finally, Marvin took it. Well, guess what, it shat a gen and they did the 0300 divert into a Big E. The plane sat for days. Whose dumb decisions affected the operation the most?

*Very glad to read the positive from OM and the rest of your post.

PowderFinger

Good post.

Until The Deltoids have a comparable ETOPs fleet, and retire all of the guys and gals that picked the straight back chair as opposed to the rocker, it's just not a fair comparison.

Fortunately for Howard there will be a "slight improvement" in the culture in just under two years.

Probe

I believe the answer to their refusal problems is there to diagnose, and it should have been done years ago. A small number of pilots are responsible for a large amount of our "buffoonery". They should have either paid them to go away years ago, or fire them, and let them sue United.

The problem is flight ops leadership has no balls, and hasn't had in a long time. A simple cost benefit analysis would have shown this was the cheaper option. The amount of money these guys have cost not just the airline, but our passengers, in missed meetings, holidays, missed daughters weddings, etc, is staggering.

Nobody wants to make the hard decisions.

ron kent

Sounds like Oscar got a heart from an actual human...too soon?

oldmako

Probe,

The hard decisions are being made by Captains who are paid to make them. You seem to insinuate that some Captains are buffoons and need to be disciplined, or worse, for taking their responsibility seriously when they refuse an airplane. I find your finger pointing a tad unseemly.

Do you know the facts under which such "buffoonery" occurred? Unless you work in the Flight Office I don't expect that you do. And neither do I. I've only seen a Captain refuse a plane one time which I would have taken. And after he explained his reasoning, I agreed with him.

I've had to make my opinion very clear on an occasion when I would not accompany a Captain on a flight should he decide to sign for the jet. I guess that was buffoonery on my part and I should be disciplined.

I don't second-guess Captains decisions publically and I would appreciate it if they didn't second guess mine on this forum, if I were a Captain.

Individuals are what they are. Managements job is to minimize the opportunities for refusals by keeping the parts required to keep the planes MEL free.

Years ago during a PC we were presented with a half a dozen or so hypothetical situations and asked, "refuse or take?" We probably came down with a 50 50 split. The Std Capt then gave us one little additional piece of information for each event and our decisions flip-flopped on over half of them. It was an excellent exercise.