Thank goodness United is finally repainting their airplanes white. After 9/11, when air traffic suffered the double whammy of an economic slump and a populace that was fraid of flyin, I remember thinking, if only United would paint all their planes and get that guy who did the first A-Ha video to do their new tv ads, then I'd feel more comfortable flying United.
But no, they went about their business of announcing they were going to create a competitor to NetJets. Remember? This was because United management realized that if there was one thing the employee/owners of United understood, it was first class quality service. Why, if I had a nickel for every time I was on a United flight, and the employee/owner flight attendant screamed "arms out of the aisles!" before hauling the drink cart through....you just don't get tender service like that anymore. But then they realized that they were running out of cash, and spending 300 million on a fleet of jets wasn't the best idea, so....
They stopped serving hot nuts in first class. In hindsight, i can't believe this strategy for turning around the airline didn't work. They got rid of the hot AND the nuts! I mean, that is some serious cost cutting. It seems almost impossible that this bold strategy failed them.
Humbled by the surprising failure of the management team's "no to nuts, yes to profits" vision, the directors quickly went back to the drawing board. Not quickly enough to avoid bankruptcy, however, but hey, when your fixed costs run anywhere from 98 to 99.9 percent, depending on fuel prices, a Chapter 11 filing is bound to rear up and bite you in the ass sooner or later. As we know, companies that are operating under bankruptcy protection have little in the way of free cash with which to embark on bold new ventures, and that is precisely why United proceeded to hire Mckinsey to help them create a new airline called TED.
The idea behind TED was that people wanted to fly on airlines with cute names at low fares in a no-frills manner. So, for example, on a regular full-frills United flight from chicago to san francisco, coach has no meal service nor movie that ever played in an actual theater. On a similar TED flight, however, you might also not have the "frill" of a working headset or reclining seat. TED would also be more friendly. This would be tough because United's flight attendants have an "insolence" clause in their contract. This allows them to tell up to 14 passengers a month to "suck on it", so management realized that the best chance to make TED seem more friendly would be to ask the regular United attendants to just be LESS friendly. This was easier done than said. A bunch of signs (now known as "signage" for some reason) were also created for TED to make it sound like the airline was talking to you. So, for example, a TED counter sign might say "Hi, I'm Ted." instead of the signs at the regular United counter, which might say "Please have your boarding pass ready and shut the fuck up". See the difference?
Well, go figure, TED didn't solve the airline's problems either, because it turns out that offering the same bad service for less money doesn't get the job done.
Finally, however, after three long years of suffering, somebody in the throne room realized that people don't dislike flying United because of the actual flights. They dislike it because of the color of the planes! GREY! (or is it "GRAY"? how come they both look correct?...anyway...) Grey/gray planes just won't do. Do people like a grey/gray sky? Heck no! what kind of sky do they like? BLUE! ok, wait..ok, well, the planes are already half blue....ok, hmm, never mind about the sky, what color paint do we have lying around? WHITE! paint the planes white! And buy back the rights to that gershwin song that everybody likes.