Ted-dy

Flew Ted yesterday from Denver to Ontario (Calif.). That’s the new economy airline run by United. Overall, a fine flying experience, not much different from most flights, but, where different, modestly better.

• Orange and blue are the colors, a slight “trendy” variation from United’s red and blue. Color coordination is important for Ted.
• They actually sheathed the brushed-metal pillars in the A concourse at DIA with orange. Lots of decor. Lots of signs. Definitely going for a distinctive look.
• Very full flight, indicating the low prices they’ve gone in swinging with. Lots of kids flying. The A concourse seating areas are not quite up to those crowds. Be interesting to see if the crowds die back when the prices creep up, or if they come up with other schemes to handle it.
• The Ted workers seemed a scosh friendlier and more helpful than average. The guy at the podium, in mentioning that this was a beverage-service-only flight, actualy offered instructions on where there were places to grab some food to-go there on the concourse, and what sort of time frame folks had to do so.
• Big into providing information, benig helpful.
• The only things that were really “United” were the ticketing, the communications with ATC from the cockpit, and the Hemispheres magazine in the seat back.
• The safety video was new and snazzy, lots of Matrix-like moving and swooshing. Actually kind of fun to watch.
• Also in the seat-backs, a plastic card with info on the beverage service and the audio channels. Very convenient, much more than rooting around in the magazine for them.
• Signature seems to be lemonade. Offered prominently with the drinks, and then offered later instead of coffee.
• Friendly in voice and appearance, sometimes too much so, verging onto cutesy and twee. Fact is, we know that corporations aren’t our friends — at best, they are courteous business associates. Trying to come across as friends can start to seem insincere after a while. It’s a delicate tightrope, but Ted is walking it with a modicum of success so far.

So I’d book with Ted without hesitation in the future. Especially if the fares were good.

But, as Margie noted, fare competition seems to be where it’s at these days. There’s little brand loyalty, and not much that can be done that makes the flying experience on one airline at one general price grade that much different from another. You’re more likely to get brand disloyalty (“I’ll never fly on X again as long as I live!”). Being a friendlier but more expensive airline isn’t necessarily going to buy you much in the way of customers — maybe.

Other noteworthy item: Kitten is just tall enough that she can see out the airplane windows — and old enough that she wants too. “We’re flying now!” she shouted excitedly as we took off. Neat.