Ted may not be the end of United, but it’s still dead
Looks like the latest victim of capacity cuts is United Airlines’ airline-within-an-airline, Ted.
The troubled carrier is reportedly tossing its 56 Airbus 320 aircraft into the recycling bin and retiring the annoying name.
There’s been little love lost between this site and Ted over the years. We’ve called them wolves in low-cost clothing and joked about the airline’s name.
We hate it when we’re right.
The other “airline-within-an-airline,” Delta Air Lines’ Song, sang its last melody two years ago.
Both start-ups were feeble attempts to misguide passengers rather than focusing on the mainlines’ core business and finding ways to improve it. I still don’t see any need to repaint the fleet and relaunch the marketing for the airline-within-the-airline when it really isn’t anything different.
Now both Delta and United have paid the price.
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5 Responses to “Ted may not be the end of United, but it’s still dead”
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I still remember my ONLY flight on Ted. The three flight attendants all tried to do their imitation of the schtick that Southwest Airlines flight attendants do. The problem was that you could tell that they were NOT having fun and that there hearts were not really into it. Then they delivered … the usual United “no service.”
They aren’t dumping the 320s at all. They’ll reconfigure some and repaint them all and integrate them in the existing 320 mainline fleet.
Besides, they’ve got to put that 600 plus pilots coming of the 37s somewhere!
You mean Ted was still flying?
Yep Ted is still flying and will be for the rest of the summer. The planes will not start changing back to mainline configurations until spring 2009 finishing in the fall.
Charlie mentioned recycle bin, not trash bin. Perhaps you misunderstood him?
On June 4th, 2008 at 3:42 pm SW said
They aren’t dumping the 320s at all. They’ll reconfigure some and repaint them all and integrate them in the existing 320 mainline fleet.