Northwest Airlines Cargo

In United-Continental merger, 1000 questions still remain

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Continental Airlines had blue carpet in its priority boarding lanes. United Airlines had red. What color would they use when the airlines merged -- purple?

And what uniform would flight attendants wear?

What design would go on cocktail napkins?

What song would play when you're getting on the plane?

The airlines' marriage last October kicked off an 18-month sprint to combine a system that serves 144 million passengers boarding 1,262 aircraft in 62 countries each year.

Meshing pilot teams and integrating a swarm of computers are two of the biggest challenges still to be completed. But the airlines also have wrestled with thousands of smaller decisions that determine exactly what passengers will experience and how they'll perceive the world's biggest airline.

Should passengers board from the back of the plane to the front or from window seats to aisle seats?

Which way should pets face as they go up the conveyer belt into the cargo hold?

Should flight attendants hand the can of pop to you along with the cup of ice or pour the beverage and keep the rest of the can for the next customer?

"As you might imagine, we've been a little busy over the past year," said Scott O'Leary, the combined airline's managing director of customer solutions. "We've been doing nothing but catching up with our passengers' expectations.

"We have a golden opportunity. We're trying to do a lot of things very fast, but that's not stopping us from taking 10 steps back and saying, 'Hey, if you were creating a new airline, would you do it any differently?' We're always asking ourselves that question."

Twenty-five integration teams working across the country have figured out how to resolve some differences. Here are things you can expect:

• Crated pets headed into the cargo pit will go up the belt loader backward. The airline said United's method is less stressful for pets than facing the yawning cargo hold (Continental's method).

• The airline is using Continental-style blue carpeting for airport priority lanes at check-in, security clearance and the boarding gate. It dropped United's red carpet in order to have a single "wayfaring" color to orient customers. "Red is not in our color wheel," O'Leary said.

• The airline flip-flopped on passenger boarding as its worked out the best procedure. United had used "zonal" boarding known as WilMA (window, middle, aisle) . The merged airline initially switched to the Continental style -- military first, then all elites and first-class passengers, followed by rows from back to front. The unintended consequence: Customers who paid more for extra legroom in the front of coach boarded dead last, when overhead bins were already crammed.

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Good news for PDX. The facility is very underserved. Bad economy and high fuel costs have kept any growth from happening. Hopefully as things get better, PDX will gain more cargo and passenger service, particularly more international service. There are many many open gates that are unused for large parts of the day at PDX. That airport has the room to handle much more traffic than it currently does.

Yeah I agree. I think it is very sad to see an empty PDX. Whenever I am at the airport I do notice that there are a lot of unused gates at the airport which really disappoints me. I wish to see a more productive and heavily used airport in the future, although I'm being optimistic, I just want to see PDX more busy with more domestic and international flights. With PDX's continued success in winning multiple awards, I think PDX can handle the larger volume in traffic and still continue to provide great service.

With this cargo service, I think this airline will eventually provide passenger flights into PDX as the economy continues to recover.

Also, does Air China still provide cargo flights through PDX?

Whoohoo! I used to work at PDX back in 2001 when it was really busy. Multiple Delta MD-11 flights, Air China and CargoLux 747's, Korean Air MD-11's, World L-1011's and lots of 727-200's buzzing about. Those were fantastic days at the airport. It was truly amazing to stand under a giant freighter or heavy and see what an aviation wonder they are. The sound, smells of Jet-A, etc are all memories I cherish of working at the airport.

Yes, I too remember the old days fondly at PDX. Along with what you already pointed out, going a bit further back there were frequent United DC-8 super62's...United DC-10's,some 747's, Pan Am 747's, Northwest DC-10's and sometimes 747's...even Braniff 747's. The smallest jets were 737's and DC-9's. Nowadays there are many of those tiny 50 or 70 passenger regional jets. Hardly any big stuff. Boring.

Funny how back then the airport was smaller but handled more traffic and larger planes. Today its a beautiful airport...one of the best in the nation...but often as quiet as a mouse. Flights are too few and far between and they are little planes at that. If the city of Seattle never got developed back in the 1800's then PDX would be very busy.

I guess that PDX masterplan I saw back in 2000 is never going to happen. The plan had PDX becoming very large. Now, I kind of doubt that the present facility will ever be maxed out.

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