United Airlines’ woes: a lesson for all air carriers

When Jack Creighton, former president of U.S. company United Airlines, stated he was trapped in a financial crisis and that he was compelled to cut down on spending to pay off over $1 billion in debts in just 30 days, nobody imagined the big shakeup that was looming not only over that enterprise’s skies but for the entire commercial aviation industry.

The titanic effort of leading United Airlines away from filing for Chapter 11 now rests on the broad shoulder of its new president Glenn Tilton, former director of Chevron-Texaco, according to a commentary published in the pages of Viajes, a Venezuelan tourist bulletin.

However, the crisis at United is doing some overall good to commercial flights since it’s forcing carriers to review, assess, modify and change their front office-employee relations given the fact that workers also own the companies by sometimes holding over 40% of all stocks. This situation is commonplace among pilots who, besides holding shares, have a say in the airlines and, ultimately, are the plane drivers.

Likewise, the financial crisis now sweeping the world’s largest airlines –including Venezuelan carriers- forced the creation of more and better services for passengers, let alone an eye-popping slash on plane tickets and fares. A dog-eat-dog competition then kicked off and small-fry airlines that used to be merely tiny bleeps in the bigger carriers’ radar screen, are now subjected to constant assessments by the megabuck companies to find out how they can vie and lure those demanding passengers who are pretty much aware of the situation.

On the other hand, he crisis triggered by the harrowing attacks sustained by the U.S. on September 11, 2001, renewed the interest in beefing up security both in airports and aircraft.

Airports witnessed the coming of new security guidelines and innovative methods aimed at ferreting out potential criminals and hijackers. Many a passenger blasted those excessive actions, while other welcomed and rooted for the work conducted by the security personnel in air terminals all across the U.S. and around the world. Metal bars were placed inside the planes to isolate the pilot’s cockpits from the passengers.

Quite recently, the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) ordered all aircraft flying to and from that country to reinforce the pilot’s cockpit door with special bulletproof and blast-resistant armored sheets.

In the same breath, and as part of the new wave of security guidelines, the U.S. Senate and the American Licensed Pilots Associations (ALPA) passed a new program whereby pilots, under voluntary application, can be trained in the use of firearms inside the planes.

All the above-mentioned plans, projects and guidelines pursue a common goal: make aircraft, passengers and crews safer both up in the air and on the ground. This shows how human beings learn from their own mistakes and need to evolve, both in their actions and thoughts, just to carry on.