United CEO: Flying With ‘Subpar Product and Subpar Schedules Doesn’t Work’
Skift Take
It's nice to see United Airlines on the offensive again. Look for more flights on bigger jets in key business markets from United, which has fallen behind American and Delta in some important urban markets.
United Airlines irritated key customers when it tried to shrink itself to higher profits under its previous executive regime, often flying smaller planes on competitive routes and dropping flights in business markets, CEO Oscar Munoz told employees recently, according to a video of the event obtained by Skift.
That strategy produced some dubious decisions, Munoz said, such as flying noisy 37-seat turboprops several times a day between United's hubs at Newark and Washington Dulles. Nearly every other airline flies large jets from hub to hub.
"A business customer will stay with you for a little bit of time," Munoz said during a Jan. 23 question-and-answer session at United's Dulles hub. ["And then] it's just 'I can't do this anymore.' And so now you've lost that market. And seats between important locations like [Dulles] and let's say New York have decreased, versus everybody else increasing. They built a market. We gave away a market. But yet we still try to play in it with littl
