Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 335 posts

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#241

Post by thanksgiving »

JamesSwift wrote: post #176
HarryHirsch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could they have averted disaster with money? It's astounding that there were no volunteers when they offered USD 800 for a seat, 800 dollars is a nice sum. Every single passenger on that airplane thought there was a catch involved, they were getting again 800 dollars in airline vouchers, which everyone knows have big gotchas attached. The airline has a trust problem, which won't improve anytime soon.

Regardless of how heinous it might be to someone that a whole flight turned down $800, I can guarantee there was a number for every single person on that flight that would have averted the disaster. Now some of those numbers were probably much, much higher than others but I guarantee everyone had a number they would have agreed to (barring extenuating family circumstances or the like).

I think there would be takers even for $800 if it was cash but other commenters have pointed out that united never offered money but rather travel vouchers in small denominations that you cannot use more that one of in a single transaction.

I can offer $100k in thanksgiving fun bucks as well every time I screw up majorly. It will be in denominations of $50 and you can use them towards future consulting with me. My consulting starts at $100 per hour with minimum of one hour. You cannot use more that one voucher per transaction.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#242

Post by [deleted] »

closeparen wrote: post #240
maherbeg wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's if you're getting involuntarily bumped. Far as I know, if you volunteer, you can only get vouchers.

[deleted]

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#243

Post by kalleboo »

mikeash wrote: post #149
zeroer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, the voucher thing is nonsense. I've been on overbooked flights before where I could have easily taken the next flight instead. I never volunteer, because the vouchers are worthless to me. Offer me cash and I'll often be first in line.

The only time I've volunteered to be bumped was when BA offered $700 in cash (technically I got a prepaid VISA card) and a free hotel+meals. That may be due to the EU though (there are passenger rights regulations about compensation for delays caused by the airline)

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#245

Post by ouid »

stephenr wrote: post #227
tomerico wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overbooking makes air travel more effective than, with less empty seats and less pollution per passenger. The way it eas handled can definitely be improved, but you can't argue that it is inherently bad.

> Overbooking makes air travel more effective than, with less empty seats and less pollution per passenger > but you can't argue that it is inherently bad. You're simplifying things a bit too much. You can't go from: - We want to make air travel more cost effective, and less damaging to the environment. And arrive at: - The only way to achieve this, is to sell more tickets than we have physical seats for, to ensure t…

it uses less fuel per passenger to ensure that every flight is jam packed. It's more efficient and everybody wins. There are almost no examples of situations that overbooking + auctions doesn't solve.

I think you don't understand the law as it currently exists, because what happened on that united flight was in clear violation of that law.

They didn't deny the man boarding, they deplaned him. This isn't something the airline is allowed to do for economic reasons, ever.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#246

Post by wila »

mikeash wrote: post #150
neurotech1 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possibility is that the regional flights are only marginally profitable for United, and very slim margin for the regional carrier (Republic Airline/United Express) so they limit voucher amounts for bumped passengers. For an Embraer 170 aircraft (70 seats) the operating cost of the flight is about $2500-$3000 for the Chicago to Louisville flight. A supplementary flight with the 4 crew and any re-booked passengers…

They could have just used a rental car or a taxi. Airline crews don't have to travel by air. The amount of inflexibility displayed by United is breathtaking.

Apparently this is part of negotiated contracts for the crew.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#247

Post by rlpb »

pif wrote: post #234
rlpb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If that isn't clear, here's an example. Say the planes have a capacity of 100, and on average 2 people fail to show. A sells 100 tickets for $100.00 each. B sells 101 tickets for $99.02 each. As usual, people striving to save one dollar no matter what (in this case, giving up the certainty of flying) are the problem.

It could be much more than one dollar. Those were my made up numbers to demonstrate the principle, not any kind of indication of the magnitude of the real numbers.

> As usual, people striving to save one dollar no matter what (in this case, giving up the certainty of flying) are the problem.

It's not necessarily a problem. Flyers can choose between certainty of flying and other nice things that cost money. Most appear to choose having other nice things instead. Southwest is banking on flyers choosing the other way. There may well be space for both approaches in the market.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#248

Post by desdiv »

lutorm wrote: post #139
lisper wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem isn't overbooking. The problem is not auctioning the seats higher when overbooked. This. Oh so very much this. United could have avoided this whole debacle simply by not imposing price controls on the market for seats when it became a buyer rather than a seller.

Well in this case the market is distorted by the fact that regulations allow the airline to not let people board for a much smaller cost. If the airline didn't have that legal out, they would be forced to negotiate terms with each passenger whose contract they wanted to break.

Without regulations the airlines will just put a "we reserve the right to uniterally terminate this contract with a full refund" clause in their contracts.

Status quo: offer increasingly higher flight vouchers until you hit the federally mandated rate of 400% ticket price cash rebate, capped to $1350.

Without regulations: offer increasingly higher flight vouchers until you hit 100% ticket price refund cap.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#249

Post by kd5bjo »

Veratyr wrote: post #56
chmaynard wrote: post #16

Southwest Airlines has the best website, best checked luggage policy, best change policy, and now no overbooking. The big four domestic airlines all treat coach passengers like cattle, but Southwest is the least predatory. Edit: Also, consider that Southwest is very profitable despite the fact that they don't have first class or business class sections on their aircraft. Yes, passengers pay different fares. But as fa…

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…

Southwest's procedures made more sense when they only did at-gate checkin. You boarded the plane in the same order as arriving at the gate, and your boarding pass was just a reusable plastic card with a number on it.

They had to abandon this when the TSA started requiring a boarding pass to get through security, which made gate-side check in impossible.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#250

Post by desdiv »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #198
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they could have offered the passenger free United flights for life and it still would have cost less than this embarrassing and protracted PR catastrophe ever will.

As someone on pprune.org said: Announcer on local TV said it would be less damaging if United actually crashed the plane !

Black Mirror episode:

PR disaster happens at 40,000 feet and gets recorded by smartphones. Since they're still in the air the footage hasn't been uploaded to the internet yet.

The on-board AI supercomputer makes the determination that the negativity of a plane crash would be less than if the footage leaks out so it decides to crash itself in order to maximize profits.

Post reply on HN