Blog 2: United Airlines Background || Louis Albano

Source: United Airlines Website

Background

United Airlines was founded by William Boeing in 1916 as Boeing Airplane Company. United Airlines officially came about on March 28, 1931 when the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation needed to manage its airline subsidies. United Airline is currently the larget airline company in the world, with over 86,000 employees. According to their website, "United Airlines is the world’s most comprehensive global route network, including world-class international gateways to Asia and Australia, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East with non-stop or one-stop service from virtually anywhere in the United States" In recent years, United Airlines has been involved in many ethical issues with their cosumers, causing the company to not have the best public perception. 

Issues

Source: Cagle Dave Granlund

Currently is many regulation within the airline industry, that may affect convienence, pricing, travel rates, etc. Currently the airline indurty as a whole is fairly small, making it extremely difficult to competete. A big issue on airlines is the heavy cost per seat that is not filled on the planes. Many companies have tried different strategies to try and combat empty seats on airplanes, but the most popular strategy is overbooking. While the specifications vary from company to company, the industry norm is that many airlines will not only completely book their planes, but they will also overbook by 10% of seats available. According to Business Insider, the reason they do this is to ensure every seat is filled and the airline is not loosing any profit from those who cancel or do not arrive to their flight. The issue with this strategy is that sometimes everyone shows up for their flights. When there is a full capacity on plane, and a surplus of customers waiting to still be boarded. When a plane is overbooked, that means people wll need to be removed from the plane to make enough room. There are many different methods of figuring out who to replace such as offering incentives for people to volunteer leaving their flight, to automated systems that pick passangers at random, which is used by United Airlines. It has been an ongoing ethical dilema in the ariline industry, but it began gaining more attention after the incident with United Airlines and their forced removal of a customer due to overbooking.  

Source: United Airlines Website

Vision Statement

"Through our Diversity and Inclusion strategy, we find innovative and effective solutions to engage employees from diverse backgrounds and cultures in taking our flyer-friendly service around the globe."

In the vision statement, it is clear that diversity and inclusion are the most impoartant values to United Airlines. United doesnt seem to talk about the type of coutresy cusomters may expeince with them, ecept for thier brief mention of "friendly-flyer service". However, they do expand further on their website, talking about theri commitment to quality employement, and again theri friendly serivce. I do specualte that this vision statement was written prior to the incident they face, as the statement makes no mention of security, cusomter loyalty, etc.

Resources

• "Corporate Fact Sheet." United - Newsroom. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2017. (Click Here)
• Thompson, Cadie. "The Frustrating Reason Airlines Overbook Flights." Business Insider. Business Insider, 11 Apr. 2017. Web. 15 Apr. 2017. (Click Here)
• "Diversity and Inclusion." Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion | United Airlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2017. (Click Here)
• "History of United Airlines." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Apr. 2017. Web. 19 Apr. 2017. (Click Here)