United and Continental Airlines: Dumb and Dumber

As a marketing-communications guy, JD Power and Associates recent labeling of Continental Airlines as one of the best in the nation for overall customer satisfaction, as well as the Best U.S. Airline award CAL also grabbed from the Official Airline Guide crowd was pretty darned impressive. It’s the kind of brand recognition marketing people live for. And Continental has surely slugged its way through enough  bankruptcies to feel good about reaching this point in the aviation industry.

And it is precisely because of Continental’s strong brand that I think that airline’s CEO Larry Kellner and the board of directors at the Houston-based airline must have lost their minds when they decided to hook up with a bottom-feeder airline like United, an airline JD Power ranks at the bottom of the heap too.

If you missed this piece of recent high-level airline strategy,  Continental plans to “cooperate extensively, [with United] linking their networks and services to create revenue opportunities, cost savings and other efficiencies.” Continental also withdrew from the Sky Team alliance ( KLM, Northwest, Delta, Aeroflot and a few more) to join the larger Star alliance with United and 19 other carriers (see reply below). A merger between the two carriers was ruled out a few months ago when Continental said, “No thanks,” to a United offer to marry up.

I’m trying to figure out how the folks at Continental missed all the heavy, truly ugly baggage they’re picking up from United in this deal and why no one seems concerned about the Continental brand being severely tarnished because of this new marketing alliance. If you’re going to join forces with someone, at least make it a brand people respect, which United isn’t. The Star alliance seems to be pretty healthy, but United, sorry …no.

United is the airline that in the same week left an Airbus full of paying passengers locked up on the ground for over six hours during a weather diversion from Chicago O’Hare to Chicago Gary Airport while at the same time opening a brand new Red Carpet Club at ORD to keep high revenue business passengers happy according to United’s chief customer officer Graham Atkinson. Of course, the really lovely part of airline flying that Atkinson is all too familiar with is that when an airplane is left sitting forgotten on some ramp somewhere like the Gary incident, the high-revenue passengers are just as late as the riff raff in back.

United’s CEO Glenn Tilton – a guy who almost from the day he was hired thought his job was to find a merger partner rather then to run an airline – was among the most surprised this year to learn that none of the airlines United tried to talk turkey with wanted anything to do with UAL. No matter how hard United management tries, success just seems to evade them. Maybe those darned flight attendants, pilots, mechanics, ramp and customer service people just need to work a little harder.

Perhaps it’s really because United management can’t seem to keep their eye on the ball. At least they had the good sense to end another major airline-marketing distraction – Ted – and make an attempt to get back to the basics of running an airline. I guess no one at the HQ realized that starting a new airline when you can’t run the one you have is pretty dumb. And of course there was the United Shuttle experiment that failed before Ted … and the failed Avolar foray into business aviation that again dragged United management away from their core business, perhaps one more reason United has had the worst employee relations imaginable for at least 25 years.

Good employee relations won’t solve every problem the airline industry faces surely, but there does seem to be a certain synergy to tens of thousands of dedicated employees working with you, rather than against the management team. It’s worked pretty well for Southwest Airlines so far.

I was taught in Marketing 101 that one of the easiest ways to be successful, is find a person or a company that is already achieving what you want and emulate them for starters. Perhaps the folks at United and Continental might want to check out the Southwest Airlines blog for a few pointers. After 25 year of success those folks in Dallas aren’t just lucky.

But maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on the Continental folks just yet.  It is still early in their dating relationship with United, so maybe they’re hoping a much better invite to the prom will come along. Things could change. At least for the sake of the United passengers and employees who still depend on UAL, we can always hope, because if United falls headlong into bankruptcy a second time, they’re probably not coming out.

Now of course I might have missed something completely here. But why would a good company link up with a loser … just for the money?