Issues about Merger and Acquisition between United and Continental

It is well known that one of the biggest merger and acquisition in airline industry between United Airline and Continental Airline in 2010. After this merger and acquisition, the new company becomes the largest airline in the world.

However, we cannot only focus on the shiny side of the coin. There are some issues happened because of the merger and acquisition.

One of these issues is the lose of talent. Some employees quit their jobs because of the new policy of staff welfare. Due to the new policy of staff welfare, the employees in high position but with short length of service cannot use standby tickets any more. Some employees quit their jobs because of their new bosses. The paces of work in Continental is obvious slower than the paces of work in United. After the merger and acquisition, some Continental employees work for their new bosses from United. If employee A is on vacation, and the part which is he in charge of is down. Instead of waiting him come back to fix the issue after 5 days, the boss from United will ask employee B using 3 days to learn how to fix it. It makes employee B very nervous. As the paper I reference, because of the differences between two computer systems, there are some computer issues happens after the merger and acquisition.

These are small problems. I believe the new company will become increasingly better.

Reference:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/15/news/companies/united-continental-computer-delays/index.html

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-08-28/united-airlines-struggles-with-computer-problems

http://usatoday.com/story/todayinthesky/2012/11/05/united-dreamliner-inaugural/1682693/