United Airline history (from 1990 to 2000) Research Paper

United Airline history (from 1990 to 2000) - Research Paper Example â€Å"And if I did [fly with you], I wouldn’t bring my luggage / ‘Cause you’d just go and break it, / Into a thousand pieces, / Just like you broke my heart† (Carroll, n.d.). This is not a love song; it is rather a sad song about a passenger’s bad experience when he boarded the plane managed by the United Airlines. The persona in the song criticizes the â€Å"complete indifference† exhibited by the flight attendants towards him. Entitled United Breaks Guitars, the music piece subtly reveals two facets in the narrative: (1) the passenger’s plight; and (2) the United employee’s lack of professionalism. First, the needs or reasonable complaints of the customers appear to be insignificant to the employees of the United Airlines. This shows the level of treatment in which the United provides its customer-passengers. And second, the United flight attendants apparently fail to behave professionally by reacting to the passenger’s plight with the heartless words â€Å"Don’t ask me.† Communications strategy Smith, Berry, and Pulford (1999), on the other hand, states that the United Airlines has been pondering on the minds of its travellers. For instance, United inquires or explores on the daily activities of its passengers and on the persons whom these customers speak to whenever they book a flight. The underlying principle here is, obviously, the end in which the United Airlines can track and attract numerous costumer-passengers. The problem, however, is that United is more concerned with obtaining and gaining a number of customers rather than in providing satisfactory services towards them. Moreover, the focus on the traveller has a drawback to the personnel who book the flight and other United employees associated to booking and travel policy. Smith et al. (1999) argue that these people (e.g., travel agents) have the capacity to â€Å"influence over the choice of airline† made by the cu stomer-travellers. It is empirical for the travel agents, they say, to possess a much more detailed information about â€Å"routes, schedules and prices† in order to better serve their customers (Smith et al., 1999). Technology It appears that the United Airlines cares less to the passenger’s plight and more to the company’s ways of gaining more traveller-customers. Kelly (1999) writes about the United’s parallel processing technology wherein it functions as a machinery in â€Å"forecast[ing] demand† and thereby increases the company’s profit. According to a study, the United Airlines dramatically accumulates a large amount of profit from such technology by as much as $100 million per year (Kelly, 1999). Named as IBM RS/6000, the technology operates through an analysis or calculation from the given data in order to determine the passenger-demand forecast. In using this technology, United only looks and focuses on the flight â€Å"paths† of a particular travel route in contrast to its flight â€Å"legs† (Kelly, 1999). That is to say, the path that is to be analyzed or computed, from the Boston-to-Los-Angeles flight route with a stopover in Chicago, is the Boston-to-Los-Angeles path. The signifier â€Å"legs† signifies the short route (i.e., stopover) from state to state while the term â€Å"paths† refers to the ultimate destination of the passenger-traveller from one state to another. On employees Blacks The United Airlines composes employees of different colors; of the many colors, the Black stands high and bright. For one, there are numerous African Americans working in O’Hare International Airport situated in the state of Chicago. Most of them are United’