with an idea for improving service for the first-class passengers, there was a useless form to fill out. The information was hardly ever collected, and was never used as a source of possible improvements for the company. Furthermore, there were so many rules to follow that employees could not possibly do what was the best for customers. The Department of Transportation ranked Continental tenth out of the ten largest U.S. airlines in all key customer service. Especially abysmal scores for on-time arrivals, baggage handling, customer complaints, and voluntary denied boarding. Continental had been through two bankruptcies and ten presidents over ten years. It also had not posted any profit since 1978. The "Go Forward" plan was implemented under Gordon Bethune, Continental's chairman and CEO, and Greg Brenneman, president and COO. This plan had four components: (1) "Fly To Win" as a marketing plan, (2) "Fund The Future" as a financial plan, (3) "Make Reliability A Reality" as a product plan, and (4) "Working Together" as a people plan. In "Fly To Win", the plan was designed to build up Houston, Newark and Cleveland markets by drawing more business fliers than leisure fliers. The "Fund The Future" was designed to restrict the balance sheet to gain liquidity and to sell on strategic assets. The "Make Reliability A Reality" showed business travelers that Continental is reliable and regained trust and confidence of customers. Finally, with "Working Together," the purpose was to change Continental's organizational culture to an environment in which people enjoy working together for the company. With Go Forward plan, Continental begged forgiveness from the customers they had previously treated poorly. The "forgiveness campaign" had two parts. First, they collected angry letters from customers and then divided them amongst the officers-executives through the rank of vice president. Furthermore, Continental assigned one officer to each city in the...
