This morning United Airlines held what was billed internally as a “John Tague” leadership call to announce, basically, what we told you was in the works two days ago.
While Tague was not officially tagged with a higher position as part of the announcements today, the fact that it was Tague making the bulk of the comments, and not Glenn Tilton, I think, speaks for itself.
In his comments this morning Tague outlined these changes for the airline:
The airline is removing a total of 100 aircraft from its fleet. As we had written here yesterday, the entire 737 fleet will be parked. (Provided the airline can work out the necessary ugly details with its lessors.)
This is going to take place over 2008 and 2009.
The airline will also retire six Boeing 747-400s in 2008 and 2009.
About 80 total aircraft are now expected to be out of the United system by the end of this year.
And yes, Ted is, indeed, dead.
The airline will kill the brand, and simply reintegrate the 56 A320s back into the mainline configuration as the airline retires its 737s.
As for layoffs, the official total number of employees who will now be laid off is between 1400 and 1600. These will be salaried management staff members. This includes the previous 500 reductions already announced, so, again, our numbers we posted here yesterday were right on target.
The one interesting twist to the announcement this morning was that Joe Kolshak, who just quit his job at Midwest Airlines Kolshak was named the new SVP of Operations. You may remember Joe when he was at Delta Air Lines. Well, he then moved to Midwest in what I always thought was a kind of strange move, and now he’s at United.
Leaving United, for the second time, will be Sean Donahue. Sean was the big mover behind the Ted product, and has already enjoyed one severance package from United previously. Bill Norman, SVP of United Services will also be leaving the company.
All in all, just about what we had told you about here previously on the bit items, for the exception of some additional personnel shifting about.
Ticker: (Nasdaq: UAUA)