United Airlines optimistic, says local business strong

Taipei Times: Who is United Airlines Taiwan and what is your company's current market position vs. other international airlines flying the Taiwan route?

Andrea Wu (吳王小珍): United Airlines is a committed US player in the Taiwan market. It has been operating services to Taipei from the US since 1986. We are now operating a daily non-stop service between Taipei and San Francisco with our state-of-the-art B747-400 aircraft. As for competition, there has never been a lack of it on US-Taiwan routes. We compete by always remaining very focused on the needs of our customers.

The majority of our clients are business travelers who put value on the airline's networks and reliable services. For example, United serves a daily non-stop flight to one of its west coast gateways, San Francisco, arriving in the morning and conveniently connecting to other destinations in the US. The same flight flies on to New York, the American financial hub. Our customers choose us over our competitors for this network and convenient connections. We have positioned ourselves as the airline of choice for business travelers, a high yield market in Taiwan.

TT: When flying internationally out of Taiwan, why would travelers want to choose United over the competition?

Wu: We offer a comprehensive network of over 200 destinations in the US with convenient connections from our gateways.

On the product and service side, we have been investing heavily in enhancing our customers' travel experience with the introduction of premier seating products. We have already announced a program to upgrade our inflight products, and the installation of a lie-flat bed in the First Class of our international fleet will be completed at the end of this summer. We are the first US carrier to offer this product to our customers. I'll tell you, once you try the lie-flat bed, its hard to go back to regular seating on long-haul flights.

The program will continue until the reconfiguration of our Business Class cabin and installation of Economy Plus in our international fleet is completed later this year. Both of these initiatives basically mean more leg room for passengers.

We have reconfigured 88 seats on 747s with extra leg room in Economy Plus class -- for the same price. These seats are for our loyal customers who are Mileage Plus members.

Our Mileage Plus frequent flyer program plays a key role in retaining customer loyalty. Mileage plus is one of the most generous mileage programs in the world, giving mileage awards for all paid tickets including full fare tickets, discounted tickets and group tickets. People do come back for Mileage Plus. We have 150,000 Mileage Plus members of which 30,000 are active members in Taiwan.

United was also a pioneer in the creation of a local online booking engine for Taiwan. In addition to being able to book travel via the site http://www.tw.ual.com, it also offers a number of travel related services and information on our products and services.

TT: Taiwan as a nation suffers from a poor air safety record. How is UA's safety record?

Wu: Safety is always on the customers' minds when they book air travel. United always puts safety as a top operational priority and has a proven safety record.

We often use stricter safety standards on our aircraft than is required by the US aviation authority. United operates a fleet of over 600 aircraft made up of Boeing, Airbus and McDonnell Douglas aircraft. A key to safety is having a strong maintenance team. Due to our top-notch maintenance record, we have been retained by the US government to lend our expertise to the US Air Force.