Airport Services Manuals

In United-Continental merger, 1000 questions 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.

PDF- Boeing 787 Airport Compatibility Brochure | Owners Manual PDF ...

Boeing 787 Airport Compatibility Brochure. This brochure provides airport compatibility data for the 787 Models. This information is intended solely for airport planning purposes. All information in this brochure is preliminary and may change during development and testing. The 787-8 is a medium-sized, twin-engine aircraft. The 787-9 is a stretched-body derivative of the 787-8. The 787-8 is the base model of a family of airplanes and is scheduled to enter into service in 2011, followed by the 787-9 in 2013. POTABLE WATER, AIR CONDITIONING, OR GROUND POWER MAY BE SUPPLIED FROM THE PASSENGER BRIDGE IF SO EQUIPPED IF THE APU IS NOT AVAILABLE, A QTY OF (3) GROUND POWER UNITS ARE RECOMMENDED DURING ENGINE START TO MINIMIZE IMPACT TO RAMP OPERATIONS.

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