The operations award was presented to Continental Airlines
When the airlines of the USA return to profitability, Continental Airlines will, by all reckoning, have got into the black early on. Its major restructuring and transformation have put it on course to reap an early reward, and its consistently satisfying monthly increase in unit revenues demonstrate that it has the right structure in place. In parallel, the carrier needs to run an excellent operation, and that is what the Houston-based carrier has done to earn this year's award.
Its achievement is magnified given the airline's dramatic European build-up and steady domestic growth in a year that saw historically devastating natural events head directly for its main hub. Last September's Hurricane Rita aimed straight for Houston before veering eastward to clobber the Gulf of Mexico's chemical coast. Mark Moran, executive vice-president for operations, explains: "A lot of people wanted us to evacuate and that would have been the safe thing to do, to just shut down before the storm, but we decided that we should get people to where they wanted to go. We got all of our flights out using hundreds of volunteers, from gate agents to flight attendants to baggage handlers. Extra pilots, over 100 of them, came down from Dallas/Fort Worth to help fly empty aircraft out. The fact that we had so many more volunteers than we had anticipated shows that people feel pretty good and pretty positive about what Continental is doing."
They should: Continental has been the major driver of growth in south Texas, going from 324 daily flights in 2004 at the Bush Intercontinental airport there to 463 in June, a 43% jump as the airline combines Houston's role as the centre of the US energy industry with its natural position as a major Latin American gateway. That is healthy growth, but Continental's European expansion - 16% more capacity for this year - outweighs it.
This growth is based at its Newark Liberty hub just west of New York City. This is a constrained airport, surrounded by highways, railways and a major seaport. Yet Newark is Continental's global gateway between its domestic network and two dozen European cities and the airline has made it work. Moran says: "We know we can't really add flights so we are using larger gauge planes as we make Newark the international hub for the airline. So we have added enhancements such as more automated check-ins as we use larger aircraft. We have installed an in-line baggage system so that people don't have to carry their bags between the domestic and international legs of their flights." As it focuses on the customer's airport experience, Continental has made Newark a strong enough hub that it has had to add 1,000 employees there in the past year.
Continental ties its respect for its employees to the maintenance element of its operations strategy, where it is bucking the outsourcing trend. "We outsource some to the original equipment manufacturers for the large airplanes because they don't provide a steady stream of nose-to-tail projects, but for the new-generation Boeing 737s we have just added a second line in-house because the work keeps coming. It adds stability and helps keep up morale."
Source: Airline Business
