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United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

latimes.com

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Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#341

Post by btowngar »

davidf18 wrote: post #320
eCa wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But people that come to NYC have a much greater experience. That's quite a statement. I certainly enjoyed my NYC trip a couple of years ago, but there are many european cities that I rather (re)visit before going back to the US. This is not only because of the current administration (though that doesn't help). People have different preferences.

NYC has a 24/365 hour Apple Store which reflects the vibrancy of the city 24/365. Need I say more? Europe is very beautiful. But for the creative energy and vibrancy NYC is the place to be.

Yes, I really do think you need to say more. I'm certainly not convinced by the appeal of a 24/365 Apple Store...

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#342

Post by irrational »

anovikov wrote: post #307
e40 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will never do that, since it impacts profit.

Due to airlines' razor thin margins, this is simply impossible. That simple. Every single traditional airline will go bankrupt if it stopped overbooking. Unfortunately it is the greed and stupidity of us consumers that drove this market into the ground. We shouldn't blame airlines. Think about this next time when you pick 'order by price' in skyscanner...

I had not heard of skyscanner. Thanks!

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#343

Post by dawnerd »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #246
jghn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was me for a long time, but then I got precheck. It is such a night and day difference that I'm back to flying

Precheck is a must if you travel often. On the flip side - pre-check lines are sometimes longer then "regular", esp on Monday/Friday mornings when the frequent-flying business crowd is there.

I got global entry. Few bucks more and it covers me when I travel outside the states.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#344

Post by throwaway049 »

yardie wrote: post #89
Klathmon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But am I wrong in thinking it shouldn't be that way? Why is the "really fast bus in the sky" so much worse in just about every way? Is it like this in other countries?

The U.K. London Heathrow takes a close second. No, other countries do not put on a security theater show where you are the spectacle.

I always feel like LHR security checks do their best to keep the lines moving and have a neutral or even friendly manner. I find the process to be of about the same format and duration as other airports I've passed through in ME and East Asia.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#345

Post by x1798DE »

imgabe wrote: post #281
jhulla wrote: post #248

Comment might be buried... But, the problem is the baroque overlaid combinations of [seat class, fare class, FF status, standby, cash vs FF purchase, time of arrival at gate, etc.] intersecting with [connecting flts, equipment, weather, etc.] leads to a large range of predictable conditions with uncertain outcomes. E.g. only one seat remaining, who gets it: passenger needing to make intl connection on a FF ticket or…

The other issue is to stop overbooking every single flight and allow some slack to handle these unexpected situations that inevitably come up.

I don't understand the hate for overbooking flights. Most of the time, I don't care at all about the system where flights are overbooked, because most of the time I don't get bumped. When they do overbook a flight and I've blocked out more time than I need for travel, I can make a few hundred dollars (not bad even in vouchers since I usually tend to fly the same route with the same airlines frequently enough) for the inconvenience and it's voluntary and cleared through a bidding process, meaning that usually the person who gets bumped is the person who is least inconvenienced by it.

It's a pretty low cost to customers (I've never met anyone who was unhappy that they got bumped, because the kind of people who don't want to get bumped don't opt-in) and it actually delivers returns in the form of lower ticket prices, since if they were underutilizing the space in the planes, it would be more costly to operate.

It seems to me that the problem with this situation was not overbooking, it was that for whatever reason they did not use the generally well-received bidding system to allow the people who were going to be bumped to select themselves. On a full plane, what are the chances that you can't find 4 people willing to give up their seats for $1000 (or even less)?

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#346

Post by irrational »

e28eta wrote: post #292
barking wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent story in Europe was that travellers entering the US could be forced to reveal social network passwords. No idea if that is true or not but it was a headline.

As far as I can tell, that's something the Trump admin has suggested would be a good idea, but isn't policy yet. However, they do conduct other electronic searches. https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017

I have no social media accounts. I would love to know what their protocol says to do if someone claims to not have any social media accounts.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#347

Post by falcolas »

yeukhon wrote: post #316
anovikov wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to airlines' razor thin margins, this is simply impossible. That simple. Every single traditional airline will go bankrupt if it stopped overbooking. Unfortunately it is the greed and stupidity of us consumers that drove this market into the ground. We shouldn't blame airlines. Think about this next time when you pick 'order by price' in skyscanner...

This is a scary statement that no one is willing to test it. But is it really true? I offer an alternate theory. It won't lead to an airline bankruptcy.How about we create a cancellation fee. UA can add an incentive (not sure if one already exist) to their mileage club membership giving club member free cancellation up to 5 hours before the onboard time. * Free cancellation up to 24 hours, and thereafter no refund pl…

> But is it really true?

Well, aircraft are really, really expensive. On the order of hundreds of millions of dollars apiece just to buy. Then there's the yearly maintenance which involves tearing them apart and putting them back together. And the jet fuel, airport landing fees, highly trained personnel, regulations...

This means their operation costs eat up somewhere around 80-90% of the revenue for any single full flight. I can't imagine personally trying to manage such a system and eeking profit out of it.

One of the big reasons airlines even survive while serving so many otherwise unprofitable locations is because of the federal grants, and the regulations that ensure they do serve more than just the biggest metropolitan areas.

In other words, if unregulated and not provided with grants, airlines would only ever serve the major cities (with higher ticket prices as they do so), because it would never be profitable to serve anywhere else. They would also completely fold after the first downturn in air travel (9/11 would have effectively killed all the airlines).

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#348

Post by irrational »

davidf18 wrote: post #320
eCa wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But people that come to NYC have a much greater experience. That's quite a statement. I certainly enjoyed my NYC trip a couple of years ago, but there are many european cities that I rather (re)visit before going back to the US. This is not only because of the current administration (though that doesn't help). People have different preferences.

NYC has a 24/365 hour Apple Store which reflects the vibrancy of the city 24/365. Need I say more? Europe is very beautiful. But for the creative energy and vibrancy NYC is the place to be.

This has to be a joke. You can't seriously be toting the availability of a 24/365 store (even an Apple store!) as some sort of benefit.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#349

Post by antognini »

tech4all wrote: post #111

I don't develop games... But if I did I would create a game called "United flight agent". You would be standing in the aisle facing the rear of the plane. Each round you would have a goal number of passengers to forcibly remove. You would walk up and down the aisle and punch out selected passengers. Once you had suitably subdued a passenger you click a security badge and the "Airport Rental Security" guys come and dr…

I bet you could put a new skin over Papers, Please and it would work pretty well without having to change many of the game dynamics.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#350

Post by magic_beans »

gok wrote: post #335
magic_beans wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they just make the tickets non-refundable? They still get paid!

They already do make them non-refundable, and they overbook. They want to get paid for (say) 105 seats on a plane with 100 seats.

Ahh. Well that's just greedy.
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