United Airlines pledges it is on the road to revenue recovery as yields improve

United Airlines is recording positive unit revenue trends at the start of 2013 after merger integration headaches resulted in significant revenue degradation for the carrier in 2012. With the airline's management assuring that the bulk of the integration challenges have been overcome, and the work to bring legacy United up to par with Continental's service standards is well underway, expectations are high for United to begin to deliver on the promised benefits from the merger with Continental.

Signs of a turnaround for United do appear to be emerging as its passenger unit revenue increase of 6.5% to 7.5% for Feb-2013 was the highest among the traditional US network carriers. It is a significant improvement from the unit revenue weakness United suffered throughout much of 2012 relative to the US industry at large. For the full year 2012 United's passenger unit revenue growth was flat compared with 7% growth at Delta, a 5.6% rise at America and a year-over-year increase of 4.3% at US Airways.

The airline's on-time performance (OTP) is also on a marked upswing after United suffered a partial operational meltdown during the 2012 summer season when its OTP in Jul-2012 sank to 64%, a 10.2ppt drop year-over-year.