Wed, Nov 30, 2011
SOC Grant Concludes 18 Month Sometimes-Contentious Integration
Program
It's finally official! United Continental Holdings announced
Wednesday that it received FAA approval for a single operating
certificate, marking another significant milestone in the
integration of United and Continental Airlines.
The two carriers went through a rigorous 18-month process of
aligning operating policies and procedures to obtain a single
operating certificate from the FAA. A team of more than 500
employees from both carriers worked together to evaluate closely
each pre-integration program, process and operating specification
from both airlines to determine the best choice for the new United.
The team streamlined more than 440 operational manuals, programs
and procedures down to approximately 260 manuals for the new United
– a process that involved roughly 2,000 changes.
"I would like to thank the teams at United, Continental, the FAA,
the Department of Transportation and the many regulatory
authorities around the globe who put tremendous time and effort
into our achieving a single operating certificate," said United's
president and chief executive officer, Jeff Smisek. "While we have
much work ahead of us as we integrate these two great carriers,
this is a significant milestone."
The process was not always a smooth one. United's pilots,
represented by ALPA, fought the imposition of Continental's
training and cockpit procedures on pilots flying for United. The
union had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in which Judge
Sterlind Johnson ruled that the argument that differences in
training would endanger the public was "too speculative" to delay
the issuance of an SOC. The pilots also circulated a 101-page
report critical of Continental's use of simulators for training
around Capitol Hill in an effort to make their
case.
This regulatory milestone, while significant from an operational
policies and procedures perspective, does not change how customers
interact with the airline. Customers of United and Continental will
continue to shop for flights, obtain seat assignments and check
flight status on each carrier's respective website until the
company migrates to a single passenger service system in the first
quarter of 2012. At that point, from a customer's perspective, the
two carriers will function as one airline.
Effective Wednesday, air traffic control communications will refer
to all United and Continental flights as "United." United and
Continental announced their merger in May 2010 and closed the
transaction on Oct. 1, 2010.
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