United Airlines Reviews

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.

Pros

Best reason to work for United include, in no particular order, travel benefits, changed to 401k match, people are great, and feel leadership did well to communicate during tough times.

Cons

The downsides of working for United were primarily a function of the economic times. Obviously, layoffs, pay reductions, beneft reductions are considered "downsides", but I feel those items appeared through the very difficult times the industry as a whole endured.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to communicate openly as I felt you did. High levels of employees complained regarding this topic, but I do not agree. I felt Officers of the company were incredibly diligent and made efforts to continually communicate company position during the hardest of economic times.

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

Benefits are average. Flight benefits were much better when they were offering free upgrades.

Cons

Currently stuck at 1994 wages while Senior management are enjoying top wages and plenty of bonuses. Retirement stripped away and burden laid on the tax payers during bankruptcy, again while senior management were rewarded millions for saving the company. Shame on the company and the Feds!!!

Advice to Senior Management

Quit being gready and spread the wealth. United used to be a family oriented company who believed that the secret to a happy customer is a happy employee.

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

Fairly flexible work schedule with decent benefits.
Great people who do their best and are very loyal.
Flying is nice when you can get on a flight.

Cons

The usual big company problems. Individuals are lost in the weeds. Managers look out for number one. Communication is poor and responsibility is non-existent.

Advice to Senior Management

Take responsibility for mistakes and be honest with employees. Try harder to help employees develop instead of treating them like cattle.

Pros

I have seen many people move around in the company, so you get different kinds of experience without having to go through an interview with another company - you still need to interview internally, though. The people I worked with were mostly very nice to work with. But it is a large company, so your experience may vary.

Cons

I was told that the pay was below industry standards for "generic jobs" such as IT jobs. But I never felt the need to investigate. Financial situation lead to lay-offs from time to time, but I believe with all the mergers and bankruptcies in the industry the supply/demand situation will improve.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the people engagement and continue the information flow as you work through the merger.

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

Innovative work in the marketing/e-commerce department. Good opportunity to gain exposure to interactive marketing projects focused on B2C product delivery, driving revenue via conversion of consumer transactions, and brainstorming and implementing creative strategies to significantly impact the customer experience and satisfaction (when not constrained by administrative budget issues).

Cons

The company has been impacted by too many volatile industry variables, such as fuel costs, and has a recent trending towards frequent labor shifts (i.e., layoffs/furloughs, bankruptcy, salary paycuts, reduction-in-force/cost saving initiatives, etc.). Additionally, the travel industry is very fossilized, which results in a reliance on traditional business practices and methodologies, many of which are impractical in a constantly evolving industry-specific sector. Professional growth and career advancement can become stagnant and/or be omitted as a result of frequent cost-cutting and labor dislocation.

Advice to Senior Management

A more organic approach (bottom up vs. top down) to managing employees--namely, more transparency with internal communications and strategic operational plans within the industry--might foster employee loyalty. It would certainly foster a more cross-functional business operations, which could also result in productivity efficiencies.

Pros

A great company with a wonderful worlwide route structure. Lots of opportunity to travel. The mid-level supervisory staff generally does a good job in taking care of the customer contact employees (some much more so than others!).

Cons

Unfortunately, promotion is still based on who you know versus what you know and how well you do your job. As with any "administration transition", when new station management takes over, current management personnel are let go-often under very curious circumstances-in order to free up positions for former colleagues and friends of the new administration. The pay rate is lower for tenured management employees than it is for new hire management employees with less experience and seniority.

Advice to Senior Management

Manage your valuable resources - frontline employees - better; let them know that you place a high value on what they do. Don't mire them down in projects that neither improve the customer experience or the bottom line. Improve the flow of information from the top.