United Airlines Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

On the one hand, if you want to be lazy and just slide by, United Airlines is the place to work. You can get by doing barely anything. Your co-workers are aware of it, but not management.

Cons

If you actually care about your work, United Airlines is not the place to work. There are so many slackers, unqualified workers, overlap in job duties and superfluous personnel that it's actually really hard to get your job done. The tools and resources provided to personnel is abhorent (Airline operations however had a good repuation. I would still fly United...). The organizational structure and strategy is also a joke.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management spends so much time in unnecessary, poorly managed, inefficient meetings, with such a crazy organizational structure, that they have no idea what is actually happening in their department on a day to day basis, and how much better, how much more productive their department could be. This ultimately results in a negative product. (Again, I'm not speaking of airport ops.) I worked in their e-commerce department.

Pros

Extremely important work given to intern with 0 experience. Colleagues took immense time to teach me everything they knew. Ability to fly to Europe, Hawaii, ...everywhere for a token fee, every weekend, on standby. Lots and lots of freedom, great team structure, and the ideas I presented were implemented with little hesitation. Smart managers with diverse experiences; lots of former consultants who sought a better life-work balance are working in management.

Cons

No clear path how to advance through airline. Worked during United-Continental merger, so advancement opportunities were murky. Internship program is small, but flight-benefits for interns is the best benefit out there!!!

Advice to Senior Management

Grow the internship program. Undergrads are cheaper than MBA-interns. Keep the flight benefits for interns... they made this job to-die-for!

Pros

One of the main reason is the flight benefits. If you like to travel, even though its based on seniority, it would be ideal. Also, the aviation industry is very dynamic -- always changing. There was never a dull moment at United.

Cons

Absence of a work/life balance at the corporate level. also, the pay was not on par with market data if you were below a director level.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to step up and make decisions in a more timely manner. Also, the communication style tends to be stuffy and always coming from the top down. High performing companies have information flowing downwards and upwards.

Pros

United has a great benefits package. Even part-time employees get the same medical and travel benefits as full-time employees.

Cons

United management cares more about keeping their jobs than the well-being of the people who work under them. We're always under-staffed as payroll is the most controllable expense, resulting in more injuries. When you're injured on the job, they care less about treatment and recovery and more about finding you at fault. They're always looking for new ways to get rid of people. And with shoddy union representation, they do a good job at finding them.

Advice to Senior Management

Start caring more about your workers. Boost employee moral. If safety is important, do something to improve the conditions rather than making your employees have walk the line between safety and getting the job done quickly. You can start by hiring more workers.

Pros

Flight Benefits are pretty good

Cons

Layoffs are like clockwork, executive enrichment at the expense of growth

Advice to Senior Management

More training, tuition reimbursment

Pros

- soon the biggest airline in the world
- improving labor relations, performance and product
- summers in Chicago

Cons

- office politics
- merger uncertainties
- winters in Chicago

Advice to Senior Management

Needs to be more culturally diverse and open to worldwide influences

Pros

Headquarters is located downtown Chicago in a very nice building.

Cons

No one received bonuses due to company's inability to generate profits, everyone was always on edge regarding the security of their positions and potential layoffs.

Advice to Senior Management

Replace all SVPs and above with outside talent

Pros

flying benefits and challenging indurstry

Cons

Senior management, bad corporate culture

Advice to Senior Management

Just leave. I hope Continental can change the culture and revive the morale

Pros

Flight benefits are the only thing that keeps me at United. If you like to travel this is a good company to work for.

Cons

Layoffs. Over 50,000 people have lost their jobs since I started with the company. Flight benefits are getting harder and harder to use due to full planes. Many contractors from India since their is not a single person in the United States with the required job skills. Moving downtown from the suburbs.

Advice to Senior Management

There are a lot of good employees at UA; stop wasting money on bringing in worthless and expensive contractors from India.

Pros

It you love the airline business this is the place to be. It is a large airline which grapples with all the problems of small and large carriers. Travel benefits are excellent and pay at the higher levels is good too. Given enough time, there is opportunity to move around into different functions and also work on international projects.

Cons

The culture is very internally focused, people don't engage with each other socially, unless they have been working together for many (over 10 years). This makes it harder for new comers to break in. Middle management can be very "heads down" focused and conflict averse to a fault. While the atmosphere is collegiate, middle management does not take a strong stands and is usually passive resistive. Senior management tends to be more aggressive, but tends to revolve a lot and admission in to senior levels tends to be from the outside, rather than from within the company. Middle management tends to be "old hands" who sometimes simply wait for the next change over to happen.

Advice to Senior Management

At the time of writing this, United is proposing to merge with Continental. Hard to say what culture will survive. Advice for old United - encourage more dissent amongst the middle management and engage in more sharing of ideas and thoughts.