The turnaround story of Continental Airlines

: revolutionizing customer service

Abstract

In the early 1990’s Continental Airlines was financially in trouble and was known for its poor customer service. In 1994, Gordon Bethune became the CEO of the company and he introduced the ‘’ Go Forward Plan’’. A year after the plan was introduced, company regained its profitability and in two years it started to be ranked top among U.S. airlines in key customer service metrics. Through conducting literature review and analyzing the turnaround story of Continental Airlines, this thesis strives to understand how a company operating in the service industry can transform successfully to overcome years of lasting bad reputation. Paper shows the relevancy of gaps model of service quality in transforming service quality and organizational reputation while indicating the importance of transformational leadership for a successful organizational change. Paper serves as a teaching material for academic instructors. Students will be able to understand and apply gaps model of service quality framework and transformational leadership theory to real life business situations after analyzing Continental’s turnaround story as suggested.

Date of Award	30 Jan 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Gonçalo de Oliveira Vieira Dinis Saraiva (Supervisor)