United Airlines Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

Work is interesting and challenging, and benefits are great. Most of the people are very enthusiastic about their work, and love airlines and the airline industry. The work-life balance is great, which gives you an opportunity to travel on weekends or socialize with friends and colleagues.

Cons

A big, lumbering bureacracy that often has trouble adapting quickly to market changes. This is further exacerbated by union work rules and pay structures that make cost savings difficult. Senior management spends too much time chasing the industry "leaders", often at the expense of United's success

Advice to Senior Management

Stop focusing on the short-term metrics and focus instead on the infrastructure and cultural changes that are needed for long-term sustainability. Make the best decisions for United, not the decisions that will make United look like another airline and make our numbers "look good". Industry metrics and financial performance rarely correlate.

Pros

- Compensation is fair compared with other airlines.
- Interesting and challenging work.
- Many highly talented colleagues with great skills to learn from.
- Travel benefits.
- Nice employee discounts at numerous companies.

Cons

- Way too many Managers and Directors and not enough staff to actually DO the work.
- Totally convoluted org charts that result in a huge amount of "passing the buck" as no Manager or Director ever seems to want to actually MAKE a decision. Instead it gets discussed in circles, meeting after meeting, for months on end ... a completely ridiculous process that they then label "collaborative". The man hours wasted by this insane legacy process is staggering.
- No leadership resolve to ever see anything through - too much reactive and not enough proactive.
- Totally unfair employee evaluation and advancement process. It's far too political and subjective.
- Corrupt and totally out of touch senior leadership spending all of their time managing Wall Street instead of running an airline.
- Most of middle management are nothing more than spin doctors and empire builders who create massive amounts of non-value work to justify their paychecks. The company would be much more effective and efficient with MORE staff to do the work required and HALF of the Managers and Directors.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior leadership needs to stop spending ALL of their time focused on Wall Street investors and trying to find a merger partner and focus more of their attention on RUNNING the airline. They need to take a seriously hard look at their ridiculously ineffective middle management structures, processes and cultural practices and bring them out of the 1970's if they ever really want to compete on a global scale.

Pros

Travel Benefits. You meet wonderful people.

Cons

Some very senior flight attendants have a sense of "entitlement", some are bitter and do no enjoy working there anymore. They do not want to work as a team. However they do not quit. Some other ones are really nice no matter how many years they have flown.

Advice to Senior Management

Rotate the schedules no matter how senior you are.

Pros

There is good work being done to bring UA back to the customer with it's products...

Cons

but too much cutting being done in the area of service.

Advice to Senior Management

You have an employee experience and customer experience group but they don't seem to be working with the operational groups. Cutting front line staff is not employee or customer friendly.

Pros

Good pay and benifits were among the top reasons to work there. The friends I made in the 36 years there are still in my thoughts every day.

Cons

The management was never anything to write home about. The leads ran the show. The supervisors were always gone from the work areas and had to be called whenever they were needed.

Advice to Senior Management

You have to learn how to manage your job better. Get involved with the employees and trust them to do the job the right way. The down from the top leadership did not work.

Pros

After recent IT restructuring, its now a good place to work. The obvious benefit of working in Airline is the space available travel and I am sure there are lot of people who are working only for that. Salaries are slightly less compare to market but if you use some traveling benefit, it compensate for that.

Cons

Just like any other travel industry, United Airline is very sensitive to Overall Economy. Till last year back, atleast in IT, there were constant hiring and firing. As soon there is improvement in economy, they will hire people and if the oil goes up or on slight market condition, they will dump you. Overall its better to be in technical position from a job security point of view

Advice to Senior Management

I think there is lot of insecurity due to merger news and the belief of senior management that no airline can survive in this market without merger. Our management is trying so hard to merge that it seems like they are taking a loosing position while negotiating ( particularly with Continental ).

Pros

passionate employees, great industry to be a part of with rich history, management is taking the right steps to return to profitability

Cons

more focus on frontline employees needed. its time for senior leaders need to walk the talk and put egos aside to improve teamwork and collaboration across the enterprise

Advice to Senior Management

remove silos, reduce the hierarchial org structure you have in place (too many layers between ceo and frontline), be genuine and dont look for talent outside when there are so many good employees at all levels within the company

Pros

* The benefits are great.
* I enjoy interacting with customer and colleagues, the overwhelming majority of whom like flying with United and working at United.
* The pay is competitive.

Cons

* The hours can be long.

Advice to Senior Management

Considering our recent airplane order, new meals and snacks onboard, and the improvements in performance this year: keep up the good work.

Pros

Our travel benefits are amazing! We have the ability to travel anywhere we want for almost nothing. There are also a lot of opportunities for someone with my education, skills and background.

Cons

We work in a somewhat siloed environment and could benefit from more inter-departmental cooperation. We have some great people in leadership positions today, but there are a few that do not exhibit much respect to employees and they don't walk the walk.

Advice to Senior Management

Hold everyone, including senior leaders, accountable for effectively managing their people and showing them the respect and recognition they deserve.

Pros

Excellent benefits, great people to work with, and of course the flight benefits are unbeatable.

Cons

Salary will always be lower than comparable job in any other industry, extreme boom and bust business cycle leads to job instability, HR policy of hiring people with MBA degrees who have absolutely no real world airline experience or business sense and then placing them in decision and policy setting positions. The company places WAY too much weight on an MBA degree and not enough on a persons abilities or experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't forget that your core business is that you are an AIRLINE. Stop hiring these kids with MBA's and placing them in decision and policy making positions. Start promoting ONLY from within. Become a leader and innovator instead of following the rest of the industry.