Posted on 04/15/2017 8:29:54 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I haven’t flown United for years because I’ve never had a good experience with them and their flight crew is always weirdly hostile. I fly Delta because they treat me better.
As for being bumped, I think this is an industry wide problem and they’ve got to rethink how overbooking (which, to some extent, they have to do to make the flight profitable) is handled.
Capitalism works.
The airlines LOVE selling tickets to us at prices they control. They LOVE SETTING the prices we pay
But, they just are not so keen on Capitalism when it comes to buying tickets from us when they oversell tickets on a flight. If they have to bid $1,000 - $10,000 for volunteers, they will get them.
I know I will take an inconvenience flight for $10,000
It won’t help you much unless you’re the one asked to get off a flight.
I still wonder what would have happened if someone towards the front had stood up while Dr. Dao was being dragged and said he or she would get off instead.
Delta sucks compared to NWA and both are worse than airlines in the 60s/70s.
Agreed. And I want cash, not a voucher.
Delta owns Northwest.
Sunday afternoon you probably have people going home - not leaving home. They have already checked out of their hotel, returned any rental car, wasted hours with TSA, check-in, etc. It would take a larger incentive for these people (who probably have obligations at the other end the next morning) than for one leaving their Chicago area home and can just go home for the night.
Not sure if I have stating this correctly, but it would be a big PITA for one returning home after a weekend in Chicago. The computer should have restricted itself to local zip codes perhaps, for involuntary bumping.
The funny thing is, I wonder how United handled the actual offer to seated passengers. I had heard they asked for volunteers, then offered $400 and a night in a hotel, then $800 and the hotel. If they jumped to their maximum right away, no wonder no one bit right away. They played all their cards before anyone could process it.
If they knew $800 was the upper limit, they might have started at $400 and stretched out the bidding. Maybe going up $10 every minute. I would think four people would jump at $500 just to put an end to the stupid game after ten minutes of it!
It was a merger of “equals”. My acct # comes from Republic...
Nonsense.
United set up a system where this was going to occur at some point. Anyone who ever worked in customer service could have told you that if you keep pushing people at some point they will snap. It does not matter if it is a guy who just wants to go home or a worried wife asking for a blanket for her husband.
And this was not making United a profit. Even if it is a night in a flea bag motel and "company credit" when you times it by four it would have been far cheaper to have rented a limo for the employees to be driven to St Louis.
When you add in the time that the airplane sat at the gate, which cost mega bucks, this was not a profitable move for the airline.
It was that they were too stupid, too hide bound or did not give their people leeway to be creative in situations.
This might shake United up enough that they might stop making "screw the customer" their default option.
Or perhaps not.
If so I would expect there to be one less airline shortly. Because the other airlines are not as dumb as United. Almost, but not quite.
What does SWA do?
United? Delta? two sides on the same die.
Alaska and Southwest are the only decent airlines in operation. All the FReepers defending United make me ill.
All their talk about margin and regulation and yet there are airlines who manage to run their operations without using the business model of livestock haulers.
Maybe they are just waiting to see what the final cost will be. If it's the hospital bill and a bottle of aspirin then we may get by without a significant price increase. Otherwise expect a 10, 15, even 25% increase. Someone has to pay for that settlement if that's what happens and you know it won't be the airline. It will be those who fly and use that airline and anyone thinking the other airlines won't see that as an opportunity to raise their rates is dreaming.
In the not-too-distant future the name "Dao" will be spat out; not spoken. It may even become a slang term for faker or fraud. WTF are you? A DAO!! Or maybe "You've been Dao'd!" Or "watch out for the Dao men out there". Or maybe "this sounds like a lotta Dao to me".
Think about it. Words come into play in all kinds of ways.
Delta has had my business for some time.
Clean planes and excellent service.
Airlines should be making great strides to beat the competition - not their customers.
The other airlines will likely not raise their prices over this in order to take all the business away from United. Remember, there are low fare carriers exerting downward price pressure that full service airlines are having to compete with. Airlines are really resistant to price increases these days.
And, no, the only person spitting out Dao as an insult besides you will be United employees.
SWA is usually smart enough to figure out when there are more people than seats before allowing passengers to board. They also are usually smart enough to have more than one flight per day between major cities...
You don’t know that. You speculate it. You hope the other airlines won’t take that opportunity to raise their rates and defy conventional precedent but you don’t know what they will do any more than I do.
As for his name being used as an insult or cuss word; I was being sarcastic but stranger things have happened to make new words in our language. You can bet some people are already thinking that way. The CEO of UA and those security people are probably thinking “that f%3king Dao Ba$tard”! Why couldn’t he just comply like the other 40,000 people from last year alone so we can keep our planes flying and get the majority of the people to their destinations.
Maybe this will be a healthy thing for passengers going forward but I wouldn’t count on much changing. It’s a shuttle service; not some 5 star hotel for people to relax and rejuvenate and if the settlement is too high; look for ticket prices to rise. There’s simply no way they will absorb that cost. It will come from the pockets of people like you and me who need to get from point A to point B without all the drama.
Thing is, this isn’t just a random prediction. It’s based on the past conduct of the airlines. It’s not the first time a big nasty PR mine detonated on them.
One recent example would be during the recent Obaminated fuel price era. Southwest had huge fuel hedge contracts and they used them to keep their fuel costs down. If they were as you suggest they would be, they would have jacked their prices up to the same degree as other airlines. They emphatically didn’t, and stole lots of customers away from the other airlines.
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