RadicalDude
Social Justice Warlord
Very enlightening. Thanks for filling us in, Hal.
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NEWS The Not So Friendly Skies....
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
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RadicalDude
Social Justice Warlord
Interesting perspective from a writer at that liberal rag, the National Review:
United is why people hate capitalism
My favorite line, demonstrated tenfold in this thread: "That is one major problem with heavily regulated industries in which there is insufficient competition: The managers act as though the business were organized for their benefit rather than for the customers, and that attitude seeps down to front-line workers. The typical airline employee treats the typical traveler as though he simply is in the way."
United is why people hate capitalism
My favorite line, demonstrated tenfold in this thread: "That is one major problem with heavily regulated industries in which there is insufficient competition: The managers act as though the business were organized for their benefit rather than for the customers, and that attitude seeps down to front-line workers. The typical airline employee treats the typical traveler as though he simply is in the way."
Not all the majors are asses. I flew to Cleveland on American last weekend for the Indians home opener. Had my wallet stolen. Luckily had a Fed Gov ID in my briefcase that got me through security, but American waived the bag fee because I had no cash or credit. Big props. They just wanted to get me home. Good on them.
Once again it's what you're willing to pay for.
You want cheap tickets? Then you get full planes, less service and less legroom.
Cheap tickets mean less money to go around so few competitors too.
And most of those pesky regulations are for the benefit of the pax, not the airline.
Having said that, the libtards at the National Review are just plane wrong. The vast majority do everything they can to get the pax on their flights and to their destinations on time. They treat them well. But when things go wrong, many pax turn into rabid animals thinking we are trying to personally screw them over. Sorry but t if you don't treat others in a civilized polite manner than the same is bound to come back to you. Especially when it becomes mass hysteria and screaming when a flight is cancelled or excessively delayed. Yeah, airlines really want to do these...
The libtards also see things like less leg room, full planes and baggage fees as treating people badly. Bullshit. You want to be "treated better"? Pay for it. But a business or first class ticket.
You want cheap tickets? Then you get full planes, less service and less legroom.
Cheap tickets mean less money to go around so few competitors too.
And most of those pesky regulations are for the benefit of the pax, not the airline.
Having said that, the libtards at the National Review are just plane wrong. The vast majority do everything they can to get the pax on their flights and to their destinations on time. They treat them well. But when things go wrong, many pax turn into rabid animals thinking we are trying to personally screw them over. Sorry but t if you don't treat others in a civilized polite manner than the same is bound to come back to you. Especially when it becomes mass hysteria and screaming when a flight is cancelled or excessively delayed. Yeah, airlines really want to do these...
The libtards also see things like less leg room, full planes and baggage fees as treating people badly. Bullshit. You want to be "treated better"? Pay for it. But a business or first class ticket.
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I want to buy a ticket that guarantees me a seat - just like when I reserve a table a restaurant, buy a ticket to a football game or schedule a hotel room.
There are 2 parts to this: 1 with this most recent incident and the other with airline travel in general.
If this is correct, then United is in the wrong.
The contract allows the airline to deny boarding involuntarily in case of overbooking. But that's not what happened; the airplane wasn't oversold. And Dao wasn't denied boarding. As far as we know, he was removed from a seat he had already taken after being assigned to it. The contract's specific provisions for removing travelers or refusing to transport them don't include the airline's desire to free up seats, whether for its own employees, as in this case, or for other passengers.
Other articles have stated that United also failed to pay the maximum amount and then failed to give a written reason why. The senior citizen is going to get a huge settlement.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-13/united-broke-its-contract-with-frequent-flyers
The bigger picture is that passengers understand weather and understand mechanicals - but not purchasing a ticket and seat assignment ahead of time and then being denied the flight because the airline's computer algorithms screwed up. If I am trying to go home for a family funeral or a friend's wedding or a long planned vacation - there is no "compensation" that will remedy the airline's failure. If the airline fails to hold up its end of the bargain, man up, take responsibility and take care of the customers (like the Delta example listed earlier.) For the future, this is easily fixed - start offering cash until you have enough "volunteers" as there will be people whose schedules become flexible for the right price. I am not complaining about leg room, extra fees or lack of amenities - I am complaining about the main, basic thing - buying a ticket ahead of time, planning a vacation around it - and then the airline not honoring the sale.
As for being "treated better", that is called Emirates...
http://www.businessinsider.com/20-best-airlines-in-the-world-2016-skytrax-2016-7/#2-qatar-airways-19
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But you know what - they aren't playing by the same rules as US airlines are. They are a corporation owned by the state (Dubai) and can hemorrhage money as needed. They can make their service above and beyond anything any US airline can provide, because if they run in the red, they can get a float from the government of Dubai. They have been expanding at breakneck speed without
I know US airlines received bankruptcy protection, but that protection didn't enable to them to keep running an outdated business model - they had to change in order to survive. And change they did. it was painful, it wasn't easy, but they did it. The US government didn't simply say, "here's a few billion bucks, continue to operate as you did before."
Is there room for improvement in US air carrier customer service? Yes, there is - but comparing Emirates (or Qatar Airways or Etihad) to a US airline is not an apples to apples comparison.
Oh...oh... it was on the news and internet so it must be true....
Situations like what happened (other than the beat down) are within the rules and regulations otherwise they wouldn't happen.
This guy will get a chunk of change from the airline because of the bad press, not because of what the airline did. If he deserves anything, it's from the airport who the security guys work for.
And throwing more and more money at pax might be a short term solution but again, it is only going to eventually raise the price of tickets for everyone else. That money has to come from somewhere.
So when you take the day off for a doctor appointment and the doctor's office call and cancels it, do they reimburse you for your lost work?
You can want all you want. 99% of the time when you buy an airline ticket, you get what you want.
But hey, you know what they say about wanting... If you want in one hand and shit in the other, you're just going to end up with a handful of shit. Sometimes that's just the way life works out. It's not a perfect world.
RadicalDude
Social Justice Warlord
You are aware the National Review is a leading conservative journal of note... you know, William F. Buckley, George Will, etc??
You said liberal so I took your word for it because that is usually a liberal battle cry (I want more for less or with someone else paying for it).
This is what I get for trusting you at your word.
Well played though.
United made a profit of $2.3 billion in 2016. United also involuntarily bumped 3,765 passengers. Even if you paid each involuntarily bumped passenger $2000, that is a $7 million charge out of a $2.3 billion profit. Your argument about it being a financial burden to the airline fails.
If my doctor cancels the appointment - not due to overbooking - then it is a one day event and I lose 1 day of sick leave. If I am bumped off a flight, that could cause me to miss said funeral, said wedding (both no amount of compensation could rectify) or destroy a planned vacation. Your false equivalency argument fails again.
Again, are you saying that an airline that intentionally sells more tickets on a flight than it has seats has no responsibility to the customers to fix the problem that it created?
http://atwonline.com/airline-financials/united-earns-23-billion-2016-net-profit
https://thepointsguy.com/2017/04/bring-humanity-back-to-aviation/
No one likes to think about the 15 years where United was on the verge of bankruptcy.
#OccupyUnited!
Airlines overbook to hedge against people who miss their flights. You ever miss a flight and get rebooked on the next flight more or less free of charge?
If you're willing to pay for a full price ticket to replace the flight you already missed, then you have a right to bitch. Until then, STFU and be happy that you overwhelmingly arrive on time, safely, and IAW the contract of carriage.
#OccupyUnited!
Airlines overbook to hedge against people who miss their flights. You ever miss a flight and get rebooked on the next flight more or less free of charge?
If you're willing to pay for a full price ticket to replace the flight you already missed, then you have a right to bitch. Until then, STFU and be happy that you overwhelmingly arrive on time, safely, and IAW the contract of carriage.
You worried about being bumped? Pay for a full fare ticket. It's been said there is a hierarchy and full fares get to stay on while reduced fares get bumped.
Life sucks, you're not going to change it.
I truly would pay more for better service. But I'm not going to pay 3x more for business class. If there was an airline that I thought would provide me with a person at the check-in counter who didn't treat every interaction as adversarial, or one where delays would be announced and passengers kept updated regularly (even if that is to say, "the plane we are expecting is still on the ground in O'hare, and that's a 2 hour flight from here."), and all other manner of civilized iterations, I would book that over the competitors. But that doesn't exist. Business of first class is simply not in the budget. Paying 5-10% more to get a Singapore airlines experience vs. a Jetstar experience is, and that has nothing to do with leg room, or even baggage fees or free movies. But for most routes, I'm choosing between American, Delta, United, maybe Southwest. And IME, they are all interchangeable. So paying more for a better airline isn't an option, because as far as I can tell, there is no better airline. This United debacle could have just as easily happened on a Delta flight. What would Delta or American or SW have done in the same situation? I suspect they too would have involuntarily bumped people to accommodate the crew. So while I think this is a PR mess, and a mess in general, I can't really say it colors my opinion of United. Or at least not enough o change my already low opinion of them--as an airline in general, not a specific airline--even lower. Tell me who is better, and I truly will go out of my way to book with them. It's just that IME, there is no better. It's a shit sandwich, and one is simply choosing white or wheat bread.
This incident may have been more about the police reaction that United's policy, but it was United's policy--which I find fairly questionable--that pushed over the first domino. It's not unreasonable for someone to feel like they should be able to rely on an airline to get them where they need to be when they need to be there, especially if we add the caveat "barring weather or maintenance". And it's also not unreasonable that if they aren't going to be able to do that, the compensation offered needs to feel fair to the people to whom it's offered. That's why a bidding system makes sense. If' I'm flying SW to Vegas to see my parents for 10 days and they offer to bump me and guarantee me a seat on the next flight in a couple hours, I'd do that for $150. (I have done exactly that, and got $275, IIRC.) If my loved one is dying and this is my only chance to see her and the next flight to her city is 10 hours later, $1500 might still not feel like it's enough. If you sell me a ticket in good faith, it's ridiculous that you can just pick an arbitrary number and decide that your dollar amount is all it's worth to me to miss that flight, with no input from me. Someone on that flight would have given up a seat. (Or 4 someones.) Everyone has a price. And asking the airlines to pay that price so that they can overbook seems perfectly fair.
This incident may have been more about the police reaction that United's policy, but it was United's policy--which I find fairly questionable--that pushed over the first domino. It's not unreasonable for someone to feel like they should be able to rely on an airline to get them where they need to be when they need to be there, especially if we add the caveat "barring weather or maintenance". And it's also not unreasonable that if they aren't going to be able to do that, the compensation offered needs to feel fair to the people to whom it's offered. That's why a bidding system makes sense. If' I'm flying SW to Vegas to see my parents for 10 days and they offer to bump me and guarantee me a seat on the next flight in a couple hours, I'd do that for $150. (I have done exactly that, and got $275, IIRC.) If my loved one is dying and this is my only chance to see her and the next flight to her city is 10 hours later, $1500 might still not feel like it's enough. If you sell me a ticket in good faith, it's ridiculous that you can just pick an arbitrary number and decide that your dollar amount is all it's worth to me to miss that flight, with no input from me. Someone on that flight would have given up a seat. (Or 4 someones.) Everyone has a price. And asking the airlines to pay that price so that they can overbook seems perfectly fair.