Thread: United/Continental Merger -- Let's Fly Together

Originally Posted by imon32red

Just a little curious about United benefits. How do employee flight benefits work at United?

That is what I would like to know as well....especialy for us retirees!!!

Originally Posted by drewmeister_sd

Uh, what exactly is Air Mike?

I think this is a great thing. My wife works for United out of SFO, and I really hope it goes through both from the economic and personal perspective.

There will probably be some capacity cuts, and this is exactly what the industry needs.

United employees are also glad that CEO Tilton's time is short, but not short enough.

' He ' made a wish, it all came true. Consolidation, we are told, is the only way forward. Who knows?! Time will tell .....
Internationally, UA's fleet consists of First, Business & Economy. CO has ' Business-First '. Do we lose First or does CO gain First ..... time will tell.
We are told that the ' intent ' is to retain the status quo in terms of routes, makes sense, since routings played such a large part in this courtship.

With that in mind - and of course, no one can predict what the outcome will be, but if we hang on to that thought, Pilots and F/A's should feel relatively safe.
That takes care of getting the aircraft in the air. Looking at what we do in order to get that aircraft into the air : Sales, Marketing, PR, Interline, E Commerce, General Ledger Accounts, Refunds, Revenue Accounting, Sales Auditing, Fraud, Training, Industry Affairs, Regulatory Affairs, Customer Relations, Accounts Payable, Cargo Accounts, Cargo Sales, Inventory Management, Pricing, Purchasing, Internal Audit, Human Resources, Payroll, Reservations, Tickets By Mail, Rate Desk ... probably a few I have forgotten.

There will be direct duplication of these Departments - at Head Office and at International locations. I would hedge my bets, as night follows day, these areas will be faced with major heartache.
Re interviewing for your own job affectively. One can only hope that an attractive package will be offered to those who have that in mind.

Accepting the route network will remain the same : Ramp, Ticketing Agents, Check In Agents, Gate Agents, Baggage Services etc will remain in tact ... the natural course of technology enhancements requiring less people is a given , regardless of mergers. I accept that, it's not unique to any one particular airline.

I'm sure there will be America West/US & Delta/Northwest members who will be able to share their experience of what their experience has been thus far ... the good, bad & the ugly:-)

I read relatively positive comments regarding Smisek ... let's hope he's the right man for the job.

We are going through this (albeit on a much smaller scale) with Frontier and Midwest. italgreco is correct in that the admin positions were all consolidated. Midwest no longer has a headquarters and many of Frontier's positions are also being moved to Republic in IND. Most positions involving customer contact and operations have remained, except for the few outstations in markets that were closed.

The absolute worst part is merging the computer systems. We still have to jump back and forth between YX and F9 systems...which isn't too bad except for our DEN-MKE flights, which both systems have flights on, and we frequently have to move non-revs back and forth between the systems.

Add in the code share complexities and it can get bad (like around spring break this year when the F9 systems weren't pulling seats out of inventory for YX flights and our Airbus 136-seaters were overbooked by 40 people!

But there are always growing and merging pains, and this too shall pass. :-)

Our main concerns for the time being is

1. Where will we end up in seniority, which in turn decides if we either stay in our station or have to relocate, or in some cases, will it cause a job loss. Not a major issue if you have alot of seniority. But a big issue if you have less than say 7 years. (And that's just a figure I threw up there because nobody really knows.)

2. Pension plan we have now is it going away or will it get frozen or rolled into 401k, go to the Pension Guarantee Benefit System or start with a fresh plan ????

Alot of other things will have to get hashed out. Like flight benefits, seniority versus company time, operation systems used, how the subsideries will get effected, recall rights, union negotiations, and everything else that goes along a merger. But seems everyone is pretty much taking it in stride. Not much we can do about anything right now. No control. It is what it is.

I am upbeat about the merger but I plan to retire soon from UAL. Should I wait to ensure non-rev benefits all both UAL and CAL routes? With a terminated pension from UAL, passes are my main concern. Any ideas?

Originally Posted by pacificlaura

I am upbeat about the merger but I plan to retire soon from UAL. Should I wait to ensure non-rev benefits all both UAL and CAL routes? With a terminated pension from UAL, passes are my main concern. Any ideas?

Pacificlaura : That's a difficult one to answer. To be honest, the only reason why I came into this industry 100 years ago. When PA was split between UA/DL, UA honoured PA seniority. Thus if you completed
say, 20 years with PA and were due to retire within a year of UA taking over, you were entitled to the same flight benefits as if you were UA for the same period.
Whilst it was not a merger per se, UA took over the PA routes it had acquired. I'm still not sure what benefits CO enjoy, ours are certainly very good. They spoke today about a timeline and I'm lead to believe it will be 2 years .... can you hold for that long ???? It may be worth having a word with HR, likewise, CO staff in the same position as yourself. Thinking out load though, if the new company is set to be named United, surely they cannot restrict you on routes : I.e. these were true CO and these were true UA ... but I guess stranger things have happened !

Throw that flight benny question along with the other 100 or so questions undetermined thus far. We just don't know. UA has good flight benefits? I sure hope so because I thought ours was pretty good. I would suspect that upon the merger, you can fly all UA routes regardless of wheather you retired from UA or CO. Looks like in this merger, we (CO) is the smaller fish by far. Was looking over the UA seniority list and its quite intimidating to say the least. But we don't really know what's what, how they will hash it out and how many technicians are actually working as A&P's. How many will take the early out, how many will not want to move around or relocate. So its not even worth looking at this list. Check your PM box, for a rough estimate on travel benefits.

I'm excited. I'm a CO retiree, living in Bangkok. Now that we will be able to fly on United, I can use them out of BKK, since CO doesn't fly here. How soon should we be able to fly on UA? I hear some say not before the end of 2010.

You're right, at the very least. End of 2010. I fly to Philippines and I don't see UA flying in there. So no real boost from my angle there. Looks like same OAL from NRT to MNL.