United comes out of its bankruptcy with new opportunities as well as battle scars that include some disgruntled employees.
“We have achieved a great deal in our restructuring,” said United chief executive Glenn Tilton in a statement. “We can be better. … We take nothing for granted.”
Since declaring bankruptcy on Dec. 9, 2002, United has reduced its annual costs by $7 billion, including layoffs, sizable pay cuts and the elimination of its employee pension plan.
United now employs 56,500, a dramatic reduction from about 83,000 before it entered bankruptcy.
The Chicago-based airline emerges with $3 billion in financing to fund its ongoing operations.
United’s executive vice president of marketing John Tague heralded the exit from bankruptcy.
“It’s really a beginning, as opposed to an end,” he said.
Tague was in Denver on Wednesday as part of a group of managers meeting with United employees around the country.
He said United still faces threateningly high fuel costs, which he called “an equal-opportunity destroyer” in the airline industry. But he said United is now more prepared to deal with the problem.
Tague said he thinks “success is what will build morale” among employees.
But some employees remain bitter, living with careers very different from the ones that they had before United went into bankruptcy.
“United has fundamentally remade itself,” said Mark Bathurst, head of the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association. He noted “pilots have lost homes, been forced to commute to distant domiciles and have less time with their families than ever before.”
The exit allows new United shares to begin trading today on the Nasdaq under the symbol UAUA.
More than 20 percent of shares will go to employees. Eight percent of the shares will go to United management.
