Ruehl Bulan perches on the left rear exit of a United Airlines jet and flings seat cushions, three at a time, into the chilly October night.
He’s part of a skeleton crew of mechanics swarming the Airbus A320, which just pulled into Dock 2 at the carrier’s cavernous maintenance hangars at San Francisco International Airport. By dawn, they will have stripped the plane down to its metal Recaro seat frames.
For the first time this decade, Chicago-based United is giving makeovers to every aircraft in its fleet. The revamp is part of a greater effort to reconnect with customers and restore a reputation that has been bashed in YouTube videos and The Onion.
Out: tired gray interiors emblazoned with black and red stripes, a decor known within United as “tequila sunrise,” and other outdated motifs; 1980s-era overhead bins on some planes; and, on this jet, any reminder that it once flew for Ted, United’s defunct carrier within a carrier. Over four days, the A320 will be spruced up with a new first-class cabin and outfitted from front to back with soft, blue leather seats.
The overhaul doesn’t end there.
“We’re working our way through Red Carpet Clubs, gate areas, just to get back to a common standard of this is what you expect of United,” said John Tague, United’s president, who is leading the effort.
The question is whether revamping aircraft and airport lounges will repair customer ties that have frayed since the mid-1990s, with much of the damage done in recent years as United grappled with service meltdowns, raised fees and slashed its spending on aircraft upkeep to conserve cash.
As turbulence has buffeted the airline industry, customer satisfaction has dropped for every major carrier except Continental Airlines and Southwest Airlines, researchers at the University of Michigan have found. But satisfaction rates have fallen furthest for United, which ranked last among the largest airlines over two of the last three years as measured by the school’s American Customer Satisfaction Index.
“United customer service is almost an oxymoron,” said Bob Trevelyan, a California executive, explaining why he prefers Southwest. “A new fleet and everything else is great. But until they change the attitude of management and in-flight (crews), it’s not going to matter.”
Image and service were pushed to the back burner this decade at United and other U.S. carriers as executives dealt with an unprecedented series of crises: Sept. 11, SARS, oil shocks, global recession and plummeting revenue. United also faced internal turmoil: workers embittered by pay and pensions lost during a three-year bankruptcy; management distracted by fruitless merger talks with Delta Air Lines, Continental and US Airways.
United’s reputation was further damaged by operations meltdowns in the summer of 2000 and again in late 2007, when snowstorms slammed its Chicago and Denver hubs. Since United has traditionally differentiated itself on service, its shortfalls were all the more frustrating to customers, analysts said.
By spring 2008, United executives realized it was imperative that they focus on the fundamentals of running a good airline. At a May 2008 board meeting, Tague, who had just been named chief operating officer, spelled out how United could reverse course: The airline needed to run on time, with clean planes and courteous employees, all while delivering industry-leading revenue and keeping costs in check.
United first had to make sure its planes kept on schedule after its on-time performance ranked 19th among the 20 largest U.S. carriers during the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
If an airline is chronically late, everything suffers. More bags go astray, cleaning crews have less time to pick up trash and frontline workers are likelier to be overwhelmed by passengers who have missed connections.
“So, being on time was No. 1,” Tague said. “That gives us the permission to focus on a lot of these other issues.”
United’s punctuality improved as it parked more than 20 percent of its fleet and built in longer turnaround times to load and unload passengers. For the first nine months of 2009, United ranked No. 2 among large airlines, federal data show.
Also important to Tague were consistency and reliability, making sure that things work as they should, from in-flight entertainment systems to United.com, the company’s Web site.
This included tackling what is jokingly known in the airline industry as “NEF items.” That’s shorthand for broken trays and burned-out reading lights that seemingly are “never, ever fixed.” United crews now sweep planes for cosmetic repairs every 20 days, down from once every 30 days for its wide-body fleet and every 100 days for its smaller planes.
Although United ratcheted down capital spending amid the market downturn this year, executives decided to continue their makeover. United went shopping for aircraft from Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS for the first time in a decade. It also hired celebrity designer Cynthia Rowley to fashion new uniforms for workers.
But some analysts question whether these moves will be sufficient to keep United competitive, as overseas airlines like Etihad Airways and Singapore Airlines set new standards for luxurious flying.
“The standard of performance on international routes has been unwavering, moving forward,” said aviation consultant Robert Mann. “U.S. carriers are left way, way behind.”
Tague insists United is competitive, although he estimates it will take another 18 to 24 months before its fleet will be up to standard.
“Given the challenges the industry faces, we’re not going to get there overnight,” Tague said. “But we’re making real progress.”
Over the summer, Tague’s team accelerated plans to refurbish interiors for all of the carrier’s aircraft, after internal polling data showed passengers who flew in remodeled aircraft gave United higher ratings.
“We know we’ve accomplished something if customers tell us it feels like an airplane that’s just rolled out of the factory,” said Jim Keenan, senior vice president for United Services, the airline’s maintenance division.
The new look on United planes is sophisticated and simple. But getting there is hard work for United mechanics revamping the fleet of former Ted aircraft. United’s San Francisco base outbid third-party contractors for the work and, under the lead of project supervisor Jay Patel, whittled down the overhaul from nine days to five days, and then four days, per plane.
Patel has broken the project down into a series of color-coded steps tracked on a magnetic board next to each aircraft. There’s a kit for each step — picture Ikea on steroids — containing every part needed right down to the washers.
Forty-five mechanics work simultaneously on two planes in shifts that run around the clock. They start by stripping cloth covers and foam padding off of seats, and scraping the giant “Fly Ted.com” logo off the rear compartment wall of each Airbus plane. They also remove remnants of an even earlier era: equipment once used by passengers to make calls from seat-back phones.
Later, crews install a first-class cabin, which was pulled out of the Ted aircraft to make room for more rows of seats. Then they work through the aircraft, row by row, installing new seat cushions and tugging on soft leather covers.
Along the way, mechanics fix lingering maintenance issues and clean or replace overhead compartments that have grown dingy with wear. Inspectors comb their work for flaws, right down to the seams in the new seat covers.
The metamorphosis is striking to some longtime United customers.
“I think United is slowly trying to become an airline again,” said airline consultant Darryl Jenkins. “They’re doing what airline people ought to be doing: having good-looking planes flying the schedule.”
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jjohnsson@tribune.com
Inside the makeover: See more photos of United mechanics refurbishing planes at chicagotribune.com/united-makeover
A history of flight: Over the decades, United has flown a wide variety of aircraft. chicagotribune.com/unitedplanes
