Continentals Management
Every company’s management has its problems, but many companies are not able to make it due to pressurized situations. Continental Airlines is a company that not only made it through its problems, but has also risen to the top of its industry. Continental Airlines has been brought from the depths of the gutter to the throne of greatness by good managerial decisions. In 1994, “Continental Airlines was despised by travelers, employees, and shareholders. It had become a lousy, unreliable airline, and people had stopped using us and for good reason,” said Chairman and CEO Gordon Bethune. He feels, “An airline has no real value at all unless it's predictable and reliable, but for a decade our management had been cutting costs so much that it not only wasn't improving but it was losing money!” Bethune realized that cleaning the planes more often, painting them, servicing the engines ten minutes faster with extra personnel would cost money. But he also realized that not doing these things was “costing us our business.” By scrimping, Continental Airlines had nothing substantial to offer its customers. The Airline was “unpredictable and unreliable.” Bethune sums it up, “We had a lousy product, and nobody particularly wanted to buy it. We had to fix it.” The employees were taught that their job wasn’t to save money anymore. That’s what had caused the airline to decline in the industry.