United Airlines Reviews in Washington, DC Area

Pros

Good flexibility if you are senior. Leisurely life style if you are senior

Cons

restrictive work rules.. cap on earning potential..

Advice to Senior Management

Get Rid of AFA!!!

Pros

United has a great route structure.

Cons

The airline industry has been very uncertain financially.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your workers the same as you treat yourself.

Pros

*Global brand
* Large network
* there are some humane and competent middle managers ( but they are few and far between )

Cons

* very bitter incumbent coworkers. They are angry and management, angry and new hires, angry at customers...just plain angry
* policy and procedure changes on a regular basis...the only thing consistent is inconsistency.
*organization is obsessed with metrics with little concern over human factor impact on customers or employees
*willingness to outsource anything and everything to the lowest bidder with little consideration for quality control and impact on the brand

Advice to Senior Management

The new leadership is bringing some humanity back into the UAL culture. Please empower your front line employees, who have years of airline experience, to make decisions that have positive outcomes for customers and employees and let the metric stats take care of themselves.

Pros

Travel Benefits
Great Co-workers
Health Insurance
Schedule Flexibility

Cons

Extremely low pay
Management disrespectful
Long days
Treated as a number, not as a person

Advice to Senior Management

I still enjoy aspects of my job at United but am becoming more and more disillusioned by the day. I am a good employee, with many commendations in my file, however this is never acknowledged. I am expected to work longer and harder for less pay. To become the airline of choice, United needs to value their employees, making them feel proud to work for the airline. This attitude will of course translate to better service and happier and repeat customers.

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.

Pros

If you aren't interested in respect for a job well done and can afford to not need to work, then this is the job for you. It's easy and it's fun. You will see the world and have a great time doing it.

Benefits are outstanding, medical, dental and vision. Standby flights encompass the world at a very inexpensive price.

Cons

You will never increase your position by doing a job well. You increase your standing at United by getting old. The longer you stay, the better your seniority gets. It's a simple process but doesn't encourage hard work.

Management treats employees horribly, trying to constantly figure a way to fire you.

They change the rules but hide them at the same time. You must pay attention to the rules or risk beginning the discipline process. Don't even think about getting sick. They want paperwork for everything. One missed trip and they start adding 'points' against you to use in their discipline process. Very juvenile experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Start treating the employees like adults. We behave the way we do so often simply because you treat us like children. Shared sacrifice...what was that? Try to encourage a team effort instead of the adversarial positions we all maintain now and this good airline can become a great airline.

Pros

The flexibility for getting time off or picking up hours from other agents. The medical and flight benefits are among the best in the industry. The people I work with daily are like my second family. We are what keeps one-another happy at United.

Cons

Upper Management at Dulles have their "favorites" that they keep bringing into the station. They fire good people to only back fill the positions with their people. The current upper management is the worst we have ever had. They are not by any means personable to the employees. Half the agents don't even recognize the Station Manager because she is not personable like some managers we have had in the past. A lot of our Supervisors are afraid to make a decision for the fear of losing their job for that decision. The Supervisors are like puppets at Dulles, I have never seen so many so unhappy. Our current Management regime needs to be reorganized.

Advice to Senior Management

I never could understand why the Higer Ups come from headquarters in the slowest time of the day. They come to observe, but they leave the station before the action truly begins on the afternoon shift. They leave because they want to make sure they get out early enough to get back home to Chicago. I never could understand why people that sit in offices think they REALLY understand how an airline works. I would ask the new team to stay a whole day at the ticket counter and not on a wed. Try a Friday, Tuesday, Thursday or a Sunday to really see how hard our agents work their butts off and see if they don't deserve the money they make. They do have difficult jobs. Dulles is a large International Station, and we do a lot of document checks prior to passengers being able to travel. And, does anyone in our Headquarters have any idea how these pax pack their bags? They are heavy and oversized etc. these issues require excess charges etc. So, instead of going by what a computer matrix shows you what kind of manpower is required to work the amount of flights we do daily, come see for your self what REALLY goes on at the airport , and not just when you are flying out.

Pros

Travel is great of course. Nearly free. Flying for a living also great. The workers in the company are the reason you come in every day. They/we labor through the day trying to keep the operation safe and friendly.

Cons

Company pride and team spirit are as low as you can get. Reason: the company is being treated like the CEO's personal stock portfolio and ATM, rather than a living/breathing entity. Nothing new in today's world of corporate raids and ridiculous bonuses for consistent poor performance.

Advice to Senior Management

Put employees FIRST. Yes, first. The rest falls into place naturally. Just look at actual successful businesses. The people who work there love to come in because they are a family. We at United feel like nothing more than an entry on your "expenses" ledger. We know you only care about elevating your self within your management/executive circles. We know you have no interest in building a durable, sulf-sustaining operation. We see you outsourse every job but the one you personally hold.

Pros

My fellow comrades in pain. .

Cons

Oh My....Total lack of respect from our management, which reflects in every aspect of this job.

Advice to Senior Management

Basic Business 101, if your frontline employees are not happy....you are never going to be able to pull off the promises you've made to customers.

Pros

There are people who are trying to make a go of this once good company. I think they are simply wasting there efforts and energy on a dying entity. The slave traders and robber barons called united management will get their blood money from the employees as long as they are ready to keep giving more these vampires. Someone or some group is going to have to strike this company to get there attention. Nothing else is going to bear fruit except to shut it down. Anyone who believes otherwise is simple delusional. There are no got reasons to work for ual except for not having any other prospects. Ual really sucks!!!!!!!

Cons

Pay, benefits, lost pensions, broke airplanes, no brand, treat passangers horribly, try to make pilots take mainteneace questionalbe aircraft. Glenn Tilton is the most incapable airline CEO since Frank lorenzo, His mangement teams could not find employment at a Taco Bell. Someone please tell me one thing they have done in the last 5 years besides take from the employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Just go away and take your executive embarassment to some other industry.