TED - United's new low cost?

[Squawk7777]

I just heard on the radio that United is planning to launch their new low-cost airline named ted (in case you wonder it is taken from United ) in Feb 2004.

The airline will be based out of Denver and the reviews are mixed. Some people praise the less formal way how to operate an airline, critics say United should fix itself first before launching anything new.

Here's a link (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/11/18/state1834EST7141.DTL)

Ted (http://www.united.com/page/article/0,1360,50626,00.html?code=&jumpLink=%2Fairline)

7 7 7 7

[OFBSLF]

Love that name :rolleyes:

No doubt some overpaid MBA marketing drone figured that one up.

[typhoonpilot]

From The Better-Get-A-New-Ad-Agency-Department, Phase II: United is covering the Denver market with teaser ads about "Ted" - its new low-fare airline-within-an-airline. Apparently, "Ted" is derived from the last three letters of "United." Others opine that the letters "T-E-D" stand for "They're Extremely Desperate."

The Ted website is a perfect example of what happens when an ad agency is let out of its cage unsupervised. A quirky, jumbled, and confused mosaic of pictures and things like: A video store. Three guys apparently one beer over the line at a Broncos game, wearing nothing but barrels and cowboy hats. References to "denim." A salute to macaroni & cheese. A clerk at a cigarette counter, replete with an advertisement for Camels in the background. (Nice image for the kids, eh?) The whole thing looks like it's aimed at cornering the lucrative trailer park market.

More Questions About TED: Regardless of advertising, key questions remain blissfully unanswered about Ted. (Or Starfish, Blowfish, or whatever this thing is going to be called.) Question one: how can Ted get lower costs when every major factor in the expense mix is reportedly the same as mainline? Fast turns? Not likely if the traffic depends on more than just Denver O&D. More seats? That doesn't make flying the plane any cheaper, in fact, it could deter premium passengers entirely. Question two: what's the effect of inter-mingling different products to the same customers, at the same connecting hub? For example, the Premier Executive passenger from Seattle connecting at Denver on his way to Phoenix. SEA-DEN, he gets mainline, upgraded to first class. Then his connecting flight to PHX plunges him into the murky denim-Marlboro-beer-and-potato-chip world of "Ted." It doesn't seem to make sense, and it's all painfully similar to the United Shuttle fiasco. Some folks in the media are asking the same questions of United and getting no answers, either. (We covered this a couple of weeks ago. Click Here.)

American's CEO last week again made the observation that an LCC sub-fleet of 25 or 50 airplanes cannot do much to change the fortunes of a carrier operating over 700 aircraft. But then again, he could be wrong. After all, United is paying its outside advisors plenty - according to the Denver Post, one advisor is billing his time at over $1,100 per hour - so maybe there's something we're all missing. And maybe it's just United's senior management missing good sense. One has to wonder how much money and energy is being diverted from turning around United's mainline operations just to start a funky 40-airplane non-low-cost LCC.

But the whole idea behind the Ted advertising is to "create a buzz." That may be prophetic. "Buzz" was the name of KLM's LCC.

It failed miserably.

The above from the Boyd Group.

[Lump Jockey]

Why do you say they failed??

[Globaliser]

They certainly didn't fail to "create a buzz". Their main problem (as I see it) was that so much information is available on and about the Internet that people very quickly nailed the mystery "Ted" as the new UA unit. I think that UA were probably planning to announce it publicly for the first time on 18 November, but the amount of wholly accurate speculation all over the media since about 6 November meant that they had to come out and confirm it on 12 November.

Some of the discussion and research can be found on:-
http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/1252983/
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum50/HTML/023219.html
There are many links on those pages to local and (US) national media outlets showing that it wasn't just the anoraks who were discussing it.

And this was first on PPRuNe on the following day (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108147) and again (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108189).

The tragedy is that the reality of the product seems to be desperately ho-hum and pedestrian.

[WHBM]

I thought that United was still in Chater 11 (= in administration), and cannot see how that sits well with a major investment of funds for getting into a new business area, especially one (low cost offshoots) that has lost bucketloads of money in most prior attempts). Either fresh capital should have been raised to fund this, or any available funds should have been used to pay those creditors who are still unpaid.

[Tenminutes]

Unfortunately, the name is correct and not a spelling mistake TED (http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=460337) :confused: