United Bolsters Reliability Guarantee to Its Corporate Travel Customers – Skift
I’ll admit it’s a stretch to include this here since my blog was quoted directly – it wasn’t a separate interview. But I thought it worthwhile to see some of the numbers at the bottom. It shows what kind of issues would have to occur for company’s to get certain payouts. Fascinating stuff.
7 comments on “Cranky on the Web: United’s Corporate Guarantee”
So, if an airline’s performance sucks, and corporate travelers are inconvenienced, it’s their employer who gets compensation? This is fair for what reason? 1) It’s the travelers whose time is wasted. 2) It’s not just corporate travelers who are inconvenienced. What’s wrong with compensation for EVERYONE? The airlines have all your name/address information. On the other hand, I’m not sure even a monthly stipend from Untied would pay me back for all the times they’ve screwed me around and cost me $$$ for hotels, food and having to use one or more vacation days from work more than I’d planned. Now that I’m retired and have a choice of airlines, I avoid Untied like the plague, and have a far better travel experience.
Well it is fair since the employer who is paying for the flights in the first place, and the travelers are being paid for their time as an employee. Whether or not the company compensates the travelers reasonably for their time is an issue with the company, but my guess is that any job that requires significant travel would cover travel expenses and be reasonably well-paid.
As for (2), the payment as compensation is to attract and keep the company’s business, not really for direct compensation. For individual travelers, either fly a different airline (like you have), or buy travel insurance since the airline knows that there is no incentive for infrequent travelers to take any particular airline other than price.
Miss Informed – The reality is that this is more of a sign to corporate buyers than anything else that it has its operational performance under control. Nobody ever expected the airline to pay out. But if it did fall apart, then yes, the corporate buyers who determine which airlines with which to enter into contracts would be the beneficiaries.
Lowest carbon footprint? C’mon United, whose corporate travel policy is based on carbon footprint?
Really, that is jingoism at its worst. The only reason United has a low carbon footprint is because it has shiny new airplanes. That will last until Delta, American or Southwest get newer airplanes. And with unofficial statistics like that, carbon foot print is truly crap.They can make it say anything they want.
How about better service and roomier planes.
If their commitment is still based on not being the last operationally among the US3, they might as well be honest and just peg it to AA.
CF — are you going to write an article at some point about United’s computer incident today?
A – Nothing specific planned for that failure. If I find out anything interesting then I might write it up.