History
Continental was founded in 1934 and offered jet flights starting in 1959. The company continued to offer more destinations around in the U.S. as well as around the world. The deregulation of 1978 caused trouble for Continental for the next 15 years. The company had never earned a profit outside of bankruptcy between 1978 and 1994. In 1993, Continental filed its second bankruptcy only ten years after the first. The company was headed for a third if it didn't get its act together. Continental was the result of seven airlines that merged together. The company's old strategy was to reduce costs and cut out features that were important to customers. Continental had ten presidents in ten years. Employees where not driven to make the company better. Employees were ashamed to work for the company and the culture was terrible. If an employee wanted to move up in the company, they would get the person ahead of them fired. They learned not to tell supervisors when something needed to be changed and had no care for Continental. Out of the ten largest U.S. airlines, Continental ranked tenth, in 1992. Consumers knew this airline was the worst, and avoided flying if at all possible. The planes looked old, they didn't match, and the seats on the planes were different colors. When something needed to be replaced, a part was taken from an airplane that was not in use. Flights were more often late then on time, resulting in a lot of money being spent to put customers on different flights and in hotel rooms. Once Gordon Bethune, CEO and Greg Brenneman, COO, took control, things started to look up.
Key Issues
Brenneman and Bethune had many goals in mind when they first got together. They needed to "fly to places people wanted to go, when they wanted to go, in clean, attrac ...