From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback

Chapter 10. Keeping die Lines of Communication Open

When Continental announced that the controlling block of our stock had been purchased in our new alliance with Northwest Airlines in early 1998, I learned how successfully we had changed the way we communicated at Continental.

See, I felt as if I had spent the first two years as chief executive of Continental telling my employees we weren't merging with America West Airlines. Chapter 4 discussed the code-sharing arrangement that Continental entered into with America West. Faced with some western routes that were losing money but that we felt we still needed to serve, we consolidated some destinations with America West, which was in the same situation with some eastern destinations. America West took over staffing of some of our western gates in places like Phoenix, combining our operations with theirs to enable them to run one profitable gate with, say, eight flights a day instead of each of us running unprofitable gates with four a day. But the city was regarded as one that Continental served, and the flights both companies shared had a Continental flight code so that our passengers could fly there, even on an America West plane, and never feel as though they had left Continental. The converse arrangement was made for America West in places like Orlando and other east coast cities.

This meant that we had to increase staff in some cities and drop staff in others. We had to ask some employees to relocate, and people didn't always ...