Brand Mix

Employees never bought into it: "It's the butt-end of United." "It's United without the 'U' and 'I'." Customers could hardly even tell they were even on a Ted flight. As I mentioned in an earlier post, only the napkins were distinctively different from a regular United flight.

My conclusion in that post: "Give up already. What's the point of continuing with this?" Well, now it's gone. United finally called time on this unsuccessful venture yesterday.

Given the economic climate in general and the price of fuel in particular, the end of Ted was perhaps inevitable. But its demise also shows the high level of difficulty of creating a company within a company. It's a difficult trick to pull off and typically leads to a clash of cultures that results in a bad outcome.

Surprisingly, car makers are the one group that seem to be able to consistently make this model work. Toyota has been very successful with Lexus, Honda with Acura and even GM has, so far, managed to pull it off with Saturn. Certainly way more successful in this regard than the airlines.