United Airlines Reviews

Pros

The regular workers are more supportive than management

Cons

Management very hard on its people

Advice to Senior Management

Please let the folks you hired do their job

Pros

The travel is great. You get a chance to travel the world and stay in nice hotels while doing so. You get paid holiday pay for your birthday.

Cons

Your life is ran by a computer. There can be long hours with no actual work breaks. You can be away from your family for long periods of time. When you are very junior in the company it's vey hard to get weekends and holidays off.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your operations employees with respect. They are the faces of the airline.

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

Flight Benefits
Mobility
Decent Health Benefits
Opportunites to change jobs
Good Training

Cons

Lack of respect by Management

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue

Pros

I had a very good experience working at ISD. I had good career growth, good support from senior management and was I am proud of what I achieved. My peformance was well rewarded.

Cons

Constant change at CIO level did not help the organization. Current leadership (though not very familiar with situation now) seems to be not interested in recruiting ex-UA folks (????)

Advice to Senior Management

Create stability. ISD should have professional recruitment process at senior leadership level.

Pros

Family 3 generations, Father mechanic, Uncle (CSR,Frieght,Res) reited 33 years
Travel see family
grew up around planes

Cons

taken away pay, vacatoin, some holiday pay, etc... benefits decrease over the years...
never returned...executive big $$$ for the deal. United painted new planes already a couple of years ago..now going to spend more money...on repainting for both sides. ect... etc... just glad to have a job thou.

Advice to Senior Management

give back our payscale from 2004 contract 27.00 and vacation and floating holidays, bring back, better managment of manpower -bring full-time jobs back. Alot of people have 3-4 jobs if that to surive. I myself only have one job did have 4 at one time, i'm single no kids. But others have families. And are truely stuggling...

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

Long history and reach of this carrier. Ability to move about country by bidding process. Still does a fair amount of work in house.

Cons

Poor management decisions over the last fifteen years have compromised what had was once an excellent career choice. The upcoming merger with Continental Airlines may turn things around. Or not.

Advice to Senior Management

Poor management decisions over the last fifteen years have compromised what had was once an excellent career choice. The upcoming merger with Continental Airlines may turn things around. Or not.

Pros

The employees in all work groups are the best people I have ever worked with. Employee groups continue to try their best to work together, despite pay-cuts, layoffs, and news of senior management bonuses (while we are taking pay-cuts). I am proud to work with "My United Family" and am inspired by my co-workers, of course I do not consider senior management part of this family. The merger with Continental is also inspiring, as the new CEO also looks at his company as an inter-related group (family). The pride is still there, under the muck of the past couple years. With the right leadership, the new United/Continental could be a great place to work, providing the best airline service in the world. Last, but not least, the medical/dental and flight benefits are fantastic.

Cons

As stated above, it is very dispiriting to take a pay-cut as senior management is giving itself raises and bonuses. You get the idea that senior management considers themselves above the rest of the company. Shouldn't everyone participate in compromises to help support our company? I have also witnessed many actions that seem to hurt morale, when the workers actually need more action to promote morale and show support for the hardships that they have had to endure (pay-cuts, lay-offs, hours cut, or relocation to maintain full-time employment).

Advice to Senior Management

Get out as soon as possible and give a successful management team a chance (Continental's). If you treat the workers as second class employees, you are going to get second class work.