United Airlines, a domestic and international airline, was founded on April 6th, 1921 and it is headquartered in Chicago. Previously known has Varney Airlines, United has risen to the third largest airlines in accordance to revenue. Its founder was Walter T. Varney and its current operating CEO is Oscar Munoz. The company currently houses 86,000 employees and 744 fleets with 24 ordered for the future. In 2010, United merged with Continental Airlines adopting their logo creating a new brand for themselves. This improved sales for United since they had emerged from bankruptcy just a few short years ago. Today, United is flying to 342 destinations and constantly growing.
This short history about United was courtesy of Wikipedia. It is very surprising that United Airlines does not have a page about their history or even a small paragraph honoring their founder. Moreover, it is difficult to even find their “About Page” as well as their Mission, Vision, Philosophy and goals. I spent some time looking for a paragraph that defines their values and had no luck. I found myself upon a page called “Our United Customer Commitment.” On this website, it starts off with the following paragraph.
“We are committed to providing a level of service to our customers that makes us a leader in the airline industry. We understand that to do this we need to have a product we are proud of and employees who like coming to work every day.
Our goal is to make every flight a positive experience for our customers. Our United Customer Commitment explains our specific service commitments so that we can continue a high level of performance and improve wherever possible. The commitment explains our policies in a clear, consistent and understandable fashion. We have detailed training programs and system enhancements to support our employees in meeting these commitments, and we measure how well we meet them.”
In a way this is their mission, vision, goal, and philosophy. I have purposely bolded those two sentences to show the vagueness and how their “goal” is not aligned with SMART goals. When learning what a vision, mission and a SMART goal is in business classes, this is the exact opposite of what we are expected to learn when learning about SMART goals.
In the following webpage, they have the specific “service commitments” and what their promise is to each of those.
It is really interesting to see a company so large not having a clear defined and dedicated page that defines their values, highlights their mission and vision. After their recent scandals, perhaps the first move of their PR strategist should be to create goals and define United’s philosophy. I also find it funny that their slogan is "Fly with Friendlier Skies." At some point, they should really bring their slogan be made more known to people. 
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines
2. https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/customerfirst.aspx
From Erin R:
ReplyDeleteI see that one of the items in the customer commitment list is "Treat passengers fairly and consistently in the case of oversales" so I went to their site and looked it up. It says that oversales will be handled before boarding. Did United ever say anything about why this happened post-boarding? Do you think that would have prevented this whole fiasco?
You bring up a really good point. United definitely knew that their flight was overbooked so I don't know why they chose to handle this after boarding when it clearly says in their policies that this should be done before. I really believe that this could have been completely avoided if it was done before. There have been multiple theories that the flight was not even overbooked, do you think thats true or people are just trying play on this matter further?
DeleteI think it is important that if you mention SMART goals to define what that means. I am a business student and I am even unaware of what that means. To be a leader in the airline industry that sparked my interest because maybe they are a leader in the industry partly by ensuring that their employees are where they need to be to do their job. You can't deny an employee work and they needed to be on that plane so that they could get there to perform their tasks.
ReplyDeleteCould part of the solution be to make it more obvious when a customer is buying a ticket, what their rights are and how they may be taken off the plane if business operations require it?
There are definitely two sides of the story. I agree that United needed to get their employees for work however there was a need for their customer too. Again this situation could have definitely been better handled if it was done before boarding. Since many people are unaware of these policies, it would definitely be a good move for United to highlight the policies and rights of a flyer. How do you think they can go about this without offending the customer?
DeleteI believe that in that situation if United explained to all of the passenger their situation and that if someone volunteers they will be compensated someone on that flight would have gotten off. When I put myself on that plane as one of the passenger I would have definitely volunteered if i was being compensated and it wasn't imperative that I got where I was going immediately. That is my viewpoint though.
DeleteHave you ever flown with United and if so, what was your experience like with the company? Before the scandal, all of my worse airfare experiences occurred with United (delays, cancellations, etc.). Also, just like their mission, the United experience seems eh...I guess just bland and undefined. Like you said, their company culture is definitely lacking.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this was just a slip up in employee misbehavior or empty values. I have flown United once and it was very pleasant. Wifi, easy flight, quick take-off, snacks, coffee, etc. normal flying stuff. I personally think this does NOT represent the company well. It was just a couple employees who do not know how to handle situations well.
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