United Airlines Reviews in Elk Grove Village, IL

Pros

The airline industry is very complex, if you enjoy working in an environment where there is always something new .

Cons

Layoffs, business model is very suspectible to the economy (layoffs), in some areas a punitive cuture is still strong

Advice to Senior Management

Look at the leaders that are not forming positive realationships with their piers and others.

Pros

every person is very committed to helping United succeed

Cons

Many people here are unsure of their future after the merger

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

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

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

Travel benefits begin immediately
Training available in all facets of company
Transparency of decisions by management
Management appreciates and understands work life balance

Cons

Unfortunately, the airline industry is highly unstable. I left a good job to work for this company. At the time, there were no obvious signs that an "implosion" of the airline industry was coming. Then with oil at $140 a barrel, the bottom dropped out, and the company started laying people off. To management's credit, they did try other cost reduction methods before laying people off.

Advice to Senior Management

I wish I still worked there, but I understand why upper management made the decisions it made. I hope that union management discord gets better.

Pros

-travel benefits
-managment is okay with taking time off
-work life balance
-low expectations

Cons

-career progression
-executive management
-pay is below similar positions at other companies
-no exposure to sr mgmt
-layoffs are the norm
-no job stability
-departments are siloed

Advice to Senior Management

be more open

Pros

Great flight benefits, and the ability to travel domestically for $0 + no taxes, and internationally for $0 + taxes.
Instant professional credibility as UA is a Fortune 500 company.
Airlines are fun, and UA has a great history involving US aviation!

Cons

Combative employee culture: HQ employees vs. Airport employees.
Internal information and news tends to be somewhat propaganda-ish and skewed.
Everything is seniority based, not performance driven, even including "management" work groups.
Pay is not competitive with other airlines considering cost of living in the Chicago area.
From a customer perspective, employee dissatisfaction is obvious and awkward.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management would benefit from having "airline people" in positions of leadership and strategy, and by "airline people" I don't mean people who've worked for UA for 20 years, but I mean people young or old who have a great passion for the airline business and who also possess top notch degrees. They tend to reward either the 30 years-seniority (complacent) veteran, or the accomplished-ambitious businessperson from an unrelated industry (who therefore is not invested in the airline biz). I guess the answer is to find the right mix of leadership. In a related observation, it seems that while lots of data analysis occurs; ultimately managers make decisions based on feelings rather than data.

Pros

Flight benefit ! Great colleagues .

Cons

We lived in cut-throat environment. Management does not focus on long term solutions. New blood were brought in to replace hard head managers. Instead of bringing in new ideas and approaches, those new bosses heartlessly destroyed knowledge and expertise that were well established, over and over. They got rid of good and royal veteran employees. Then, they moved on to next level and left the company. No work ethics here! New bosses could bring his/her allies to replace old employees. Regardless of how good the old employees or his/her skill set or performance or year of service. The reason to cut was "new leadership business direction".
High turnover in HR department. They being laid off first.

Advice to Senior Management

Please use work ethic. Bring back great company.

Pros

Some employees there still are not corporate drones have a genuine passion for the industry and understand that customers are the ultimate judge of the company's future viability.
Hopefully the airline can somehow be reborn & revitalized (a la Continental Airlines' experience).

Cons

Current and foreseeable economic conditions will keep the company stuck in a precarious holding pattern. In this overly simple analogy, fuel = cash. If the business environment somehow materially improves over the next few quarters, then UAUA may be able muddle through, make a controlled landing, and restructure its onerous debt load (with or without help from a second bankruptcy filing) and keep flying. But if revenue performance continues to lag badly and credit markets remain tight, then the airline will run out of fuel/cash, and sadly, even a second attempted landing into bankruptcy may not keep it in the air. At this point, it is clear that credit market conditions are as critical to the airline's viability as fuel prices are.

Advice to Senior Management

It's clear that top management is only the game for a big pay day from selling/merging the company and not really interested in trying to turn around the company from its present course. Their hope is that United will not flame out like Eastern or Pan Am did, otherwise they along with the rest of the shareholders will get very little for their so-called trouble. There is no Frank Lorenzo on the horizon who'll be able to swoop in and make things easy for the BOD.