by Krystal Paco

GUAM - Merging Continental and United Airlines may have been a bumpy ride, but United's chairman, president, and CEO Jeff Smisek says it's only up from here.

Despite local furloughs to employees in reservations and passenger services that took effect in January, Smisek says they've been able to expand 100,000 more seats a year to Guam.

"What we're talking about is trying to operate this as a business for far too long airlines have lost money they went bankrupt they laid off huge amounts of people as a result. Really it was disturbing for coworkers, disturbing for customers -- you couldn't rely on airlines to be there tomorrow. What we're trying to do this as a business and to do that we need to become more efficient. Sometimes that results in activities that we do ourselves being conducted by a third party at a rate that's lower than we can do it ourselves" Smisek explained.

United is currently training 48-thousand of its staff worldwide on customer service as well as outfitting their 700 planes with additional seating, streaming video, and onboard satellite wifi.

Catch the full interview with Jeff Smisek on KUAM's Fiesta Friday, airing tomorrow night at 6:30 p.m.