Check out the paint job.
From today's Wall Street Journal:
Meet Ted, United's Low-Fare Carrier
By SUSAN CAREY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
After two weeks of dropping hints through a stealth marketing campaign in Denver, United Airlines has 'fessed up: Its new low-fare division is indeed named "Ted," after the last syllable in the parent's name. And its planes will sport a radically different look for the buttoned-down blue-and-gray behemoth -- a white fuselage with "Ted" in large blue letters, and a white tail sporting a big, orange iteration of United's double-U logo.
The initial Ted rollout will comprise 19 Airbus A320 jetliners based in Denver that will begin flying in February. The service will offer passengers simpler, lower fares to the nine destinations planned, often more daily round trips than currently flown and some new routes. Seating will be assigned, customers will receive United frequent-flier miles, though perhaps under the guise of a "Ted's Club," and the audio and video programming will be fresher and more fun than what now plays on the main line.
The planes won't have first-class cabins, just 66 seats in front of economy that have slightly more leg room for folks who are elite Mileage Plus members or pay higher fares.
Like Delta Air Lines' Song, another low-fare division within a big airline, Ted is meant to battle against the low-cost carriers that are gobbling market share from the big airlines and causing their larger rivals to hemorrhage money by matching the low fares. Ted is taking aim in Denver at discounter Frontier Airlines, which is based in the Mile High City.
The cheeky look for United's new low-cost carrier
"Ted is part of United, literally and figuratively," says John Tague, the UAL Corp. unit's executive vice president, customer. "The only thing United loyalists are going to give up is first class." Unlike the carrier's previous sub-brand, the regional Shuttle by United, which flew in the Western U.S. in the late 1990s, Ted is a "segmentation strategy" designed to boost revenue by making more seats available to value-oriented travelers at a lower cost to the airline, Mr. Tague says.
Instead of charging 12 or 14 different fares, as the nation's second-largest airline does now, Ted will have just six fares, says Sean Donohue, vice president of United's low-cost operation. And the most expensive tickets, normally bought by business travelers at the last minute, will be much cheaper. Mr. Donohue says flights from, say, Denver to Tampa, Fla., will cost $499 each way, tops, for a last-minute purchase. Currently, United's top walk-up fare on that route is between $1,100 and $1,200 one way.
Customers will be able to make purchases through a new FlyTed.com Web site, and the service will have a separate, toll-free reservations line, where agents will answer the phones, "Hello, this is Ted." And when the pilots and flight attendants make their parting remarks on the public-address system, they will say, "Thanks for flying with Ted."
"We want to make it a fun, relaxed, less-formal brand," Mr. Donohue says.
United executives won't say which of the airline's four other domestic hubs might greet Ted next year, but expansion to Washington's Dulles Airport is thought to be under close consideration. Ted eventually could command a fleet of 45 jets or more and fly out of all five hubs.
United parent UAL, which has been operating under bankruptcy-court protection for the past 11 months, began planning a low-fare division early this year. In September, it announced that the service would take wing from Denver and initially serve Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.; Phoenix; New Orleans; Orlando and Tampa, Fla.; and Ontario, Calif.
Details of the new airline have been closely guarded, but a teaser marketing campaign dreamed up by United's ad agency, Fallon Worldwide has been putting the name Ted around Denver. In the low-budget campaign, street actors carried sandwich boards reading, "I'm not Ted." Coffees, pizzas and flowers were given to Denverites, courtesy of the mysterious Ted. When TED was spelled out in huge sod letters on a local farmer's land, "that was the tipping point," says Rob White, Fallon's president.
The name and paint job came from Pentagram Design.
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Ohhh, the irony.