According to the Boyd report it looks as if Ted is dead.
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United's TED Heading For The Hangar?
It appears that effective in March, United may have stopped filing "TED" flight schedules with the OAG as distinct from from those of other United flights. Why they did this in the first place is a mystery, since TED was nothing more than mainline United flights with a different paint job.
Nevertheless, as noted earlier, it's pretty clear that the fascination at United with this concept has faded. The whole silly hype, burlesque, and tacky, totally inane promotions (who can forget the web-based "salute to macaroni & cheese" in the initial ad blizzard?) - none of which succeeded in getting the public fired up - all died out late last year.
In light of huge compensation cuts and termination of employee pensions, it's hard to understand why United spent so much money to create a concept that had no real purpose and no real definable market niche. Fares didn't change. Costs didn't go down, either. Most Ted-painted airplanes operated within the United hub system.
Millions were questionably wasted on things like re-signing airports (which costs plenty at big places like Denver, LAX, and SFO), installing dual jetways at the Denver hub for "fast turns" that weren't needed, redoing backwalls, silly plastic in-flight cards announcing "Ted Tunes" and orange gate signs with incomprehensible statements like "Ted is happy to see you." Stuff that never registered with the flying public or anybody else, except maybe with the B-schoolers who probably convinced United management that Ted was, like, really, really a totally rad idea, dude.
Best guess, it's possible that there could be an announcement later this year to the effect that "TED has been successful beyond all our expectations, and is now no longer needed as a part of the re-structuring of United..." Or a slow quiet dissolution of the concept. Anything to divert attention from the fact that as a marketing program, Ted's become the airline equivalent of New Coke.
