More woe as airline name is removed
United Airlines is serving one final indignity to Houston: It’s removing the word “Continental” from the name of its parent company.
United Continental Holdings held a vestige of the beloved Houston airline that was absorbed and relocated to Chicago. The new corporate name: United Airlines Holdings.
It’s a subtle move unlikely to offend most travelers. But Houstonians are not most travelers. This city was fiercely proud of Continental Airlines. And its residents booed, literally, after its 2010 merger with United.
Drake Hiller, who spent 20 years working in sales and marketing at Texas International Airlines and later Continental, was on a flight from Houston to Honolulu when a flight attendant accidentally welcomed them aboard
Continental — and then had to rewelcome them aboard United. Hiller didn’t join in the choir of boos, but he has bemoaned the airline’s departure.
“It just seems like this is the final chapter of Houston losing a hometown airline,” said Hiller, who is now president of the travel agency Ace Travel House.
United said the name change, effective Thursday, is a chance to move forward and “show the world we’re truly a united United.”
“In the past several years, we’ve worked hard to place our customers at the heart of all we do and to unite behind our shared purpose of connecting people and uniting the world,” United said in a statement. “The change marks another step on our journey of showing, not just investors but the world, that we’re one team and are singularly focused.”
It’s a reasonable motivation, said Bruce Hicks, who was a vice president of corporate communications at Continental and its predecessors between 1978 and 1988. But it will not be well received by Houstonians or former Continental employees.
“Wiping Continental from the name is sort of like discarding the significant roots of the company,” said Hicks, who now owns the Alliant Group/Houston, a public relations consulting firm. “I’m not sure how much they’ve gained from it versus the pain they’re going to cause several audiences.”
Name that crew
Continental moved to Houston from Los Angeles in 1983. It wasn’t always a beloved airline, its earlier years fraught with bankruptcy and employee strife, but Continental overcame such challenges and became respected for its operational performance and friendly employees.
It was thrust back into turbulence with the United merger, which was beset by customer complaints and protracted labor negotiations. Loyal Houstonians would get onto planes and, based on flight attendants’ attitudes and attentiveness, determine if the crew had come from Continental or United. Let’s just say the friendlier crews were versed in Southern hospitality.
Such issues lingered for at least five years. Oscar Munoz, shortly after becoming CEO in 2015, even took out newspaper advertisements to apologize for the merger’s execution. He’s since finalized labor contracts, added new routes and bolstered employee morale.
And United continues making big-dollar investments in Houston, its second-largest hub. It partnered with the Houston Airport System to build the $277 million, 265,000square-foot Terminal C North that opened at Bush Intercontinental Airport in 2017. And in February of this year, it began construction on a $326 million baggage handling system.
Its older structures have long been scrubbed of Continental references, said Geoff Scripture, senior manager of Continental’s global real estate department from 1996 to 2011.
Lost to time
And while he’s personally sorry to see the name go, Scripture recognized that it was inevitable. The industry has been shaped by an intricate dance of mergers and acquisitions, with names of airlines lost to time, save for museum exhibits such as the 1940 Air Terminal Museum at Hobby Airport where he volunteers.
“The name Continental Airlines has virtually disappeared from public view, and it has been gone for several years now,” he said. “Now, it’s just gone from the title of the company, too.”