That ticked them off (to put it in language this publication will permit), which caused further reductions in service. Gone are the days when Continental put the meat, potato, and vegetable in a little ceramic dish and heated it until they all tasted the same. But Continental had been cutting costs in ways that sabotaged its product. The airline could not have been saved if everyone in the company, and I mean everyone, had not pulled together. That lowered the cost per seat mile by adding more seats, but it alienated Continentals best business customers and often resulted in an all-coach airplane on long flights when airplanes were swapped during adverse weather conditions. Please select OK to allow all cookies. Over a period lasting mere seconds, this seemingly. I wasnt sure if I should celebrate or commiserate with my colleagues. 3. Continental Airlines. Here are the lowest-priced Continental Airlines flight tickets from hundreds of providers. None will knock your socks off, he acknowledges, but all are well worth considering for any company. With the right travel insurance, you wont lose out on money if your flights with Continental Airlines are changed or cancelled or your trip is cut short. As you all know, cash is the lifeblood of any business. . (two gongs and sound of switch, followed by another switch and sounds likened to objects being moved)Pilot: (unclear, sounds like exertion)Pilot: (unclear, sounds like exertion)Pilot: (unclear, sounds like exertion)End of recording, The flight was chartered by German company Peter Deilmann Cruises. I have never seen the team that managed a company into a crisis get it back on track. A couple of days later, I found myself in a room with our largest creditors. Of course, wed be fools if all we did was talk at our employees. [24][25] According to Jock Lowe, a Concorde pilot, until the crash of Air France Flight 4590 at Paris, the British Airways Concorde operation made a net average profit of about 30M (equivalent to 44M in 2019) a year. Two engines were damaged as a result of the accident. For more than 20 years Fly.com has been the leader in cheap flights and discount airline tickets. Climbing Again Continental Airlines has undergone a dramatic and profitable turnaround in the past several years. Departure time came and went, and people continued to trickle on board for another 40 minutes. The aircraft was overloaded by 810 kilograms (1,790lb) above the maximum safe takeoff weight. But he didnt stop there; he cleaned house from the top floor to the baggage handlers, keeping or recruiting only individuals who were smart, driven to get things done, and team players. But both David Bonderman of Air Partners (the LBO firm that owned the airline) and Gordon were pushing me to join. Deciding to focus more on customers desires rather than on cutting costs is actually the easy part. It was going to take hard work, but that didnt worry me. When peoples lives are at stake, certain rules and procedures are not open to interpretation or reinvention on a daily basis. It is the flag carrier of Republic of China with its headquarters in Dayuan Township, Taoyuan County. Continental ranked tenth out of the ten largest U.S. airlines in all key customer-service areas as measured by the Department of Transportation: on-time arrivals, baggage handling, customer . Because I was not a frequent flier on Continental, I was seated in the last row of an unattractive and dirty DC-9. New York $ 415. When AF4590 subsequently departed, Concorde's left main landing gear tires struck the strip of metal and were punctured. Youre asking for a four-year project. My response: If you cant get it done, well find someone who will. Lo and behold, within six months, every plane was painted the same color inside and out, and all of the terminals had new carpeting. We went through the entire organizationfrom the highest supervisors to the baggage handlers. Every turnaround involves creating a new culture. In the broadest sense, we refers to my 40,000 coworkers at Continental. Continental Airlines, simply known as Continental, was a major United States airline founded in 1934 and eventually headquartered in Houston, Texas.It had ownership interests and brand partnerships with several carriers. We were on our way to a third bankruptcy. I believed the pilots were getting a fair deal, and I said so. Talk about sending a message about who matters and who doesnt. October 1993: Tyre burst on a BA plane during taxi at Heathrow, puncturing wing, damaging fuel tanks, and causing a major fuel leak. Worse, no one had hooked up the planes air-conditioning. Continentals was pure common sense. All 45 on board died. And to monitor the progress of our people plan, we decided to track turnover, sick leave, attrition, and on-the-job injuries. get people to their destinations on time and with their bags . And the company hadnt posted a profit outside of bankruptcy since 1978. Flight 426, bound for Wichita, Kansas, crashed near the departure end of runway shortly after takeoff. 055 to Newark. We asked the maintenance department to paint the exterior of every airplane the same and to match all the interiors. "Fire service leader: "De Gaulle tower from fire service leader, can you give me the situation of the Concorde?" But within the parameters set for safety and those we set with the Go Forward Plan, we decided that at the new Continental, the employees were going to be liberatedto be able to do the right thing by the customer and to have fun at work. . With the help of some talented financial experts, within a few weeks we had worked out a plan to restructure our debt. Thats the kind of thing that happens when you let the inmates run the asylum. Most important, even with all the work ahead, turning Continental around seemed like it was going to be fun. Continental Airlines has undergone a dramatic and profitable turnaround in the past several years. . [28][35] As the plane was about to leave the tarmac, with the aircraft rotated for takeoff at a speed of only 188 knots, 11 knots under the minimum recommended velocity. We also assigned one city in our system to each officer and asked them to go through the same process of apologizing to travel agents and corporate customers. We have big plans for Continental and mustnt lose our momentum. The employees were going to be liberatedto be able to do right by the customer and to have fun at work. Oh sure, people paid lip service to strategy. I will always remember my first meeting with all the officers at Continental. When we met, he said that the Greensboro pilots were not angry that we were closing the airportthey could see that there were no customers on the flights. Because it is critical to get everyone working together, we aligned employees compensation with the companys objectives. Theres not much time to think when your company is failing, says Continentals president. [42] Just before service resumed, the September 11 attacks took place, resulting in a marked drop in passenger numbers, and contributing to the eventual end of Concorde flights. Theyve seen their friends get fired. Today the plan is in place across our entire system. If it's cheaper to travel to/from a nearby airport, we'll alert you. That made our customers late and angry and ruined the lives of our employees who had to work overtime because of tardy arrivals. Those are the main reasons we decided to clean house when we took over at Continental. The fact is, you cant afford to think too much during a turnaround. Or choose Cookie preferences to customise your settings and opt out of all or some non-essential cookies. We promised them full control of their domains. The problem was exacerbated on the left gear's three remaining tyres by the uneven fuel load. Investigation revealed the metal strip was probably a thrust reverser. HBR Learnings online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Crisis Management. At the time, our stock was trading at about $7, but I told people we wanted to hire that we were going to drive it up to $80 or higher. Members of Continentals existing management team were not up to this challenge. The flight engineer shut down engine number two at only 25 feet altitude. At the time, I was a partner specializing in corporate turnarounds in Bain & Companys Dallas office. When I asked one mechanic why he had done this, he explained, When I go to Wal-Mart tonight, I dont want anyone to know that I work for Continental. His response still sends chills down my spine. Gordon and I were determined to present a united front. They all go together; they reinforce one another. Flight 1713 bound for Boise, Idaho crashed on take-off during a snowstorm at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado. How can you drop all this on us and then leave? they demanded. We also put in several programs to ensure that our coworkers would win when our investors did. The foundation of any successfully run business is a strategy everyone understands coupled with a few key measures that are routinely tracked. We decided that at the new Continental, the employees were going to be liberated to do right by the customer and to have fun at work. Actively involving employees in the turnaround is essential. This led French authorities to undertake a criminal investigation into Continental Airlines, which ended in Continental being fined 200,000 euros and ordered to pay 1 million euros to Air France. We could either declare bankruptcy or we could try to convince our creditors that the Go Forward Plan was going to work and then craft a very quiet restructuring. Then again, the patient is cured now, right? Page 32: "The maximum structural weight on takeoff being 185,070kg, it appears that the aircraft was slightly overloaded on takeoff". Ask the customer the right question. The same team that leads a company into a crisis is rarely able to get it back on track. File your flight plan and track your progress. January 1988: BA plane leaving Heathrow lost 10 bolts from its landing gear wheel. The kind of talking and listening Ive described goes a long way toward creating an atmosphere of honesty, trust, dignity, and respect. As an on-time airline, we pay out only $750,000 in reaccommodation expenses while taking in $4 million. . If Continental Airlines flies to your chosen destination, you'll be able to filter your results to just those operated by them. I will never forget my first flight from Dallas to Houston on Continental Airlines. Many customers, particularly business customers with a choice, selected other airlines, reducing revenues enough to create huge losses. Truth is, the on-time incentive program is self-funding. The hard news about a turnaround is that you have no choice but to sweep out the old to make way for the new. After that crisis was over, we knew we would never lose track of our cash again. When I look back now, I realize the biggest factor in our favor was momentum. For every month we finished in the top five out of ten airlines in on-time performance as measured by the DOT, we would give each employee $65. At 16:38 CEST (14:38 UTC), five minutes before the Concorde departed, Continental Airlines Flight 55, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30, took off from the same runway for Newark International Airport and lost a titanium alloy strip that was part of the engine cowl, identified as a wear strip about 435 millimetres (17.1 in) long, 29 to 34 millimetres . I took them through the current situation, what we were doing to fix it, and the help we needed from them. As for improving reliability, we had to get two sets of folks talking to each other: those that wrote the flight schedules and those that ran the flight and airport operations. It was our story and we were sticking to it (to borrow a line from a country-and-western song). In spite of my reservations, I signed on. [18][19][20], All the passengers and crew, and four employees of the Hotelissimo hotel were killed in the crash. The program did decrease fuel costs, but it motivated many pilots to skimp on air-conditioning. The aircraft was leased to Air France on 6 January 1976. Six other people in the hotel were critically injured.[2][3]. All new hires had to have three qualities. A group of baggage handlers came to me a little more than a year ago and asked if we could tag the bags of our best customers priority and deliver them first off the baggage belt. [45], French authorities began a criminal investigation of Continental Airlines, whose plane dropped the debris on the runway, in March 2005,[46] and that September, Henri Perrier, the former chief engineer of the Concorde division at Arospatiale at the time of the first test flight in 1969 and the programme director in the 1980s and early 1990s, was placed under formal investigation. In a turnaround situationor any business situation, for that matteryou cant afford to ask anything else. They told the pilots that they should feel lucky that Continental finally had a senior management team that treated them with enough respect to deliver the bad newsas well as a good relocation packagein person. It is the flag carrier of Republic of China with its headquarters in Dayuan Township, Taoyuan County. Need customer care support or have any question regarding your travel plans? The plan also included key performance measures to track internally as well as against competitors (for example, monthly on-time performance, mishandled bags, customer complaints). First, they had to pass what we called the raw IQ testthere is no substitute for smarts. In March 1995, I boarded a 737-100, which at 27 years was the oldest airplane in our fleet. Couple fear strike by nurses . Our maintenance team worked their fannies off, and Continentals handsome new image was everywhere. July 25, 2000. Incentives were now aligned; when the customers won, the employees did, too. They fear they will be next. I know most of them thought we were on drugs. Embarrassingmaybe, if we failed. "Pilot: "Too late (unclear). I found this remarkable given that the flight time was only 36 minutes. We needed to stop flying 120-seat planes with only 30 passengers on them. The buzzer will go off before you attempt the last shot, and you will lose. In fact, when we went before the board, we told them Continental could earn about $40 million in 1995. The actions required to revive a moribund company usually arent. On the 1st of March 1978, a Continental Airlines DC-10 with 200 people on board blew a tire on takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport. In our business, revenue comes from credit card receipts. The Continental jet dropped a strip of titanium alloy from its thrust reverser on the runway during takeoff. Nineteen items of luggage, weighing some 500kg (0.5 tonnes) were loaded onto the aircraft at the last minute without being included in the aircraft's manifest, giving the aircraft a weight of 186 tonnes, which exceeded the aircraft's certified maximum structural weight by one tonne. In front of a crowd of employees, we lit a match to it. That meeting was hostile, to put it mildly. The answer is, we started by hiring people we knew, many of whom were our friends. The Continental jet dropped a strip of titanium alloy from its thrust reverser on the runway during takeoff. Continental's air operator's certificate was later merged with the certificate of United Airlines on November 30, 2011, with both airlines merging into the same passenger service system on March 3, 2012. The maintenance department was not amused. In early 1995, we took the Thou Shalt Not book to a company parking lot. In fact, were putting them to practice every day. Some of the finance people had regularly been inflating our profit projections by plugging in overoptimistic revenue estimates. The video is produced for our semiannual employee meetings, when we travel to nine locations to update everyone on our progress. Continental Airlines also operate private bus services from airport in The United States to different areas which include California, New Jersey and Philadelphia. But even with all these obstacles, Continental pulled out of its nosedive, just before it hit the ground, and it soared. If you. Continental Connection. There was next to no strategy in place. We just talked at every opportunity about our plans for the airline and how we were going to accomplish them. For instance, in the early 1990s, pilots earned bonuses if the fuel burn rate on their airplanes fell below a specified amount. He moved into the CEOs office, and I moved into his old office. When you want real change, you cant do it partway. [41], The crash of the Air France Concorde nonetheless proved to be the beginning of the end for the type. By LISA STARK and HUMA KHAN February 2, 2010, 4:55 AM Feb. 2, 2010 -- Pilot error was one of the chief causes that led to the deadly crash of Colgan Air flight, operating as Continental Connection Flight 3407, last February, federal investigators said today. They cant see any way out either. Continental Airlines was an American airline headquartered in Houston, Texas. Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor. Ask the customer in seat 9C the right question. File your flight plan and track your progress. Why are we going from Greensboro to Greenville six times a day when both customers who want to fly that route are on the first flight?. The new image had an even bigger impact on our employees. There were forms for employees suggestions on how to improve the operations, but the suggestions disappeared into a black hole. Priority bags are a big hit. And finally, Working Together was the people plan: we were going to change Continentals culture to one of fun and action and restore employees trust. "Co-pilot: "Negative, we're trying Le Bourget" (four switching sounds).Co-pilot: "No (unclear). The historical norm for delivering bad news at Continental was for a senior manager to dump the news in the local airport managers lap and then hide in our corporate office building. They were just frustrated with 15 years of poor decisions and were taking it out on melike blaming your third wife for all of your problems with the first two. But a few minutes later, the creditors came to my office and asked me to come back in. We'll let you know when the price of your flight goes up or down so you can book when the time is just right. But it would have been dishonest to back down or to fudge a reaction of sympathy I did not feel. The board approved the plan, and we were on our way. All airlines. Continental Airlines flight 1760 was a scheduled domestic service that originated at the enormous George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston, Texas. I left to a standing ovation. Very quickly, we required the scheduling and operating departments to review and sign off on the flight schedules before they were loaded to be flown. With little time and even less money to save the airline in 1994, Continentals leaders devised the Go Forward Plan, a four-part strategy focused on the fundamentals. [30][6], According to Rose, former French Concorde pilot Jean-Marie Chauve, and former Concorde flight engineer Michel Suaud, spent six months preparing a 60-page report which was submitted to the investigating judge. Do it now! We lit a fire of urgency beneath Continental; we rotated quickly and picked up speed as we climbed to 41,000 feet. Leaking fuel gushing out from the bottom of the wing was most likely ignited either by an electric arc in the landing gear bay (debris cutting the landing gear wire) or through contact with hot parts of the engine. But funyes. In other words, while the word "major" may . To involve our employees even more in the turnaround, we put up 650 bulletin boards throughout the system. They pay full fare, and they travel a lot. Second, they had to be driven to get things done. The rallying cry of our turnaround was, Do it fast, do it right away, do it all at once. Most of them thought I was nuts, but as one of them later told me, I figured if you were even half right, I was still going to be worth a lot of money. (And, in fact, the turnaround created many millionaires.). We didnt say to the patientif you can call a dying company thatNow, just hold on a while so we can run a lot of tests and then perhaps perform an extremely delicate 12-hour procedure. No, we just took out the scalpel and went to work. The bomb exploded, breaking off the aircraft's tail, and the plane crashed on a farm near Unionville, Missouri. That expedited the process of screening candidates and greatly reduced our hiring mistakes. 1. Rather than to take off from the other end of the runway to take off into the wind, no change in takeoff direction occurred. By focusing only on costs, the airline had created a product no one wanted to buy. Continental Air Lines flight 54 was a service from Los Angeles, California, to Houston, Texas. Fly.com is your one stop shop for great flights, flight tickets and cheap airfare. Continental Airlines, also known as CAL was formed in 1959 by some retired Chinese Air Force officers in Taiwan. Make sure you know the difference. Continental is a fun place to work today. In the span of a couple of months, we replaced 50 of our 61 officers with about 20 individuals. Some airlines still offer the flexible booking policies. Make Reliability a Reality was the product plan: we were going to transform the customers experience with us. Over several bottles of wine, we wrote down everything that was wrong with Continental. But at the beginning of the turnaround, there was so much wrong with the companyso many parts of it to fixI really felt as if one little misstep could have brought us down. People are happy when they feel they are making a difference. List of Continental Airlines destinations, Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport, Rio de Janeiro/Galeo International Airport, So Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport, Arturo Merino Bentez International Airport, Alfonso Bonilla Aragn International Airport, Jos Joaqun de Olmedo International Airport, Toussaint Louverture International Airport, Ramn Villeda Morales International Airport, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Licenciado Gustavo Daz Ordaz International Airport, Josep Tarradellas BarcelonaEl Prat Airport, BirminghamShuttlesworth International Airport, Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, HartsfieldJackson Atlanta International Airport, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, BaltimoreWashington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, MinneapolisSaint Paul International Airport, Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport, Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, CasperNatrona County International Airport, 1955 MacArthur Airport United Airlines crash, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Continental_Airlines_destinations&oldid=1133996164, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with failed verification from February 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 14:02. Oh, Im sure it has happened some time in the history of business, but I cant believe it has happened very often. Heres a classic example. The pilots werent bad folks; in fact, many of them are good friends of mine now. In my six-odd years of working on turnarounds at Bain, I had never seen a company as dysfunctional as Continental. Find hotels with sparkling 5/5 cleanliness ratings, or bag a room with free cancellation. At the same time, we chose 15 or so key performance measures to track relentlessly and to compare against our competitors. [54][55][56] The convictions were overturned by a French appeals court in November 2012, thereby clearing Continental and Taylor of criminal responsibility. For years, different groups of employees had been pitted against one another in the effort to drive down labor costs. The aircraft struck the ground left wing low after a heading change of nearly 180, crashing into the Htelissimo Les Relais Bleus Hotel. One last thing before we get to the lessons. So when we let people go, we went out of our way to be fair by honoring their contracts and letting them resign with dignity. Think money in, not money out. Companies that are headed for disaster try to cut costs, but that can sabotage the product, which lowers revenues more. In-Service Fleets carrying 89 aircraft, including 71 Passenger Jets/ 18 Freighters. From. Its thrilling to lead people to do something no one thinks can be done. Pretty soon, we were unstoppable. The jet crashed into a hotel in nearby Gonesse two minutes after takeoff.
