231–240 of 335 posts
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Virgin America[0] has a better website, in my opinion. Southwest has always been nice to me, but when they had their big outage in May 2016 they were quite rude to everyone. https://www.virginamerica.com/
It's a shame they're being folded into Alaska in the coming years.
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Vouchers like that are egregious. Now that it's too late, United is now offering up to $10k if they can't get someone to volunteer for less.
I don't understand why there even is a limit. What happens if nobody takes the 10k? Someone gets beaten up again? If they are certain someone will leave for 10k why have the limit at all?
If they leave the plane docked until somebody agrees, then you could end up in a situation where you get to your destination slower if you stubbornly refuse. Then, you could argue that it's in their best interest to (beat them up if they don't move).
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To offer a counterpoint, Southwest also offers the worst boarding procedure, unless travelling alone or with kids. My wife and I were going on vacation and it was impossible to get seats together as we were pretty far back in the assigned line positions and by the time we got on the plane, there were no two vacant seats next to each other. After landing we discovered that checking in at the right time might get us fu…
Counter-counter point: Southwest boards faster, by far, than airlines using the standard pre-assigned method. That means less time sitting on the plane, or waiting to board the place. Also means less abuse of selling seat upgrades.
Ever since I listened to that I cannot stop thinking about it when boarding is slow and get upset about the airline making things actively inefficient. A friend made the good point though that a likely reason for the process being chosen despite actively wasting time is that it feels intuitively efficient to most passengers and keeps them happy.
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Overbooking is a technique used by legacy airlines. Pure LCCs don't use it (certainly in Europe) because their tickets are non-refundable other than from EC261 claims and they don't have inter-lining or partnerships with other carriers. I'm surprised Southwest were overbooking in the first place given they're a budget airline... Edit: An exception may be Easyjet (though I've never seen it happen and I fly them a lot)…
Economically speaking, non-refundability doesn't necessarily make overbooking unnecessary. Let's take two airlines, A and B. Both only sell non-refundable tickes. A never overbooks. B always overbooks. What happens? A will fly with some number of empty seats on average, because they still get the occasional no-show. B flies with fewer empty seats on average because they overbook. Which airline can offer more competit…
As usual, people striving to save one dollar no matter what (in this case, giving up the certainty of flying) are the problem.
The problem isn't overbooking. The problem is not auctioning the seats higher when overbooked. I've seen a number of overbooked southwest flights and people can't line up fast enough for a $300 flight credit + next available flight. I can't imagine it ever going over $1k. IMHO if any airline should continue overbooking it's SWA. No first class, no assigned seats. Most of the flights are short range with multiple flig…
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Is it possible to sell an overbook and a non-overbook class of tickets separately, and clearly delineate that to the customer as such?
If you buy a higher fare class you won't get bumped -- or extremely rarely. I fly 60,000 miles per year and I have never been bumped. But I also don't buy bulk-fare consolidator tickets from travelocity-type sellers either. Involuntary bumps are extremely rare statistically anyway.
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I don't understand why there even is a limit. What happens if nobody takes the 10k? Someone gets beaten up again? If they are certain someone will leave for 10k why have the limit at all?
For $10k, you could probably charter a private plane. So unless every single passenger on the plane is a doctor flying out for an emergency brain transplant, there'd be no rational reason to decline it. For $100k, you could probably buy a small plane. If they leave the plane docked until somebody agrees, then you could end up in a situation where you get to your destination slower if you stubbornly refuse. Then, you…
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Vouchers like that are egregious. Now that it's too late, United is now offering up to $10k if they can't get someone to volunteer for less.
Up to 10k in vouchers. I don't even know how someone with a non-travel job would use that many coupons in a year.
The problem isn't overbooking. The problem is not auctioning the seats higher when overbooked. I've seen a number of overbooked southwest flights and people can't line up fast enough for a $300 flight credit + next available flight. I can't imagine it ever going over $1k. IMHO if any airline should continue overbooking it's SWA. No first class, no assigned seats. Most of the flights are short range with multiple flig…
Another solution is even more simpler. After all seats gets booked, they should clearly mark overbooked tickets as "probable" tickets and heavily discount it + refund it if not eventually available. Keep in mind that airlines don't make huge profits per flight. Giving away $10K to 4 passengers is like giving away 80 seats or about 10 to 20% of revenue which could be almost all of their profits for that flight.
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Yea, I agree the problem is not auctioning seats high enough. But the proximate issue is that United didn't offer cash, but $800 in United Fun Bux that are worthless for most people. The vouchers they were offering were only valid at dates United decided. The vouchers expired after a year. And they are offered in coupons for which you can only use one coupon per flight, and the excess value is lost. Practically all n…
You can actually ask for cash. Most people don't realize it's an option but they will give you a cashier's check on the spot.