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Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

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Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#281

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

grkvlt wrote: post #206
mikeash wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Needs to be a fast mode of transport to keep crew duty hours down, so ground vehicles are out. I was once on a plane at Dublin airport that had to wait for a few minutes behind a small jet that turned out to be the RyanAir (UK and Ireland low cost carrier) company LearJet which they use for positioning flight crews in an emergency or time sensitive situation. Surely United should have chartered a small jet to get cre…

Ryanair is an entirely Irish company, and is one of the largest airlines in Europe.

They are also fanatical about not being late or cancelling flights. I used to work for them, and there are posters everywhere about the 18 minute turnaround times (they recently expanded this to 28 mins, when they introduced pre-booked seats as standard).

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#282

Post by nommm-nommm »

thunderstrike wrote: post #157
mikeash wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you understand how expensive it is to take a taxi that far? Or the fact that taxi/rental car companies usually don't like you going over state lines?

Rental car companies don't like you going over state lines? What? That's ridiculously untrue. I've never ever ever heard of anything like that and I never didn't take a rental car over state lines. I always read the fine print and I've used several companies.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#283

Post by nommm-nommm »

darklajid wrote: post #260
surement wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? I've never had any trouble going over country lines, let alone state lines, in a rental car.

Rental cars (booked in Germany or Switzerland) often included restrictions for me. Most of the time they excluded a number of eastern/balkan states, quoting (if they offered reasons at all) insurance prices would be higher. The more expensive the car, the more likely were these limitations: Booking a Golf was 'go anywhere', booking a BMW 5-something .. not so much.

Completely irrelevant. We aren't talking about Germany or driving to other countries, that's totally different. We are talking about travel within one's own country. I would expect rental car companies to limit travel to foreign countries.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#284

Post by makecheck »

aresant wrote: post #12

This response feels knee jerk. It's been demonstrated in countless other threads (1) and articles (2) how economically important it is to overbook. Overbooking is central to airline profitability and their ability to provide flexibility - like partial refunds, or SW's "open tickets" policy on business select. As a consumer I appreciate these things and find them incredibly useful. United's response of "We'll push the…

The $10,000 change at United depends a lot on the implementation.

For instance, if they continue to have rapidly-expiring vouchers, most travelers will not have any practical way to use the whole reward. Also, the airline could add conditions to vouchers such as a voucher that is completely “used up” by a ticket purchase even for tickets that cost less than the voucher amount. There are lots of ways they can try to create good press by technically giving you something that is hard to use.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#285

Post by nommm-nommm »

flukus wrote: post #215
johngalt wrote: post #57

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…

Should I be able to sell you a car, have you pay for a car, have you come to collect the car and then tell you there's no car?

There was a Seinfeld episode about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#286

Post by dx034 »

GordonS wrote: post #225
johngalt wrote: post #57

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…

I've seen this happen many a time with British Airways in the UK too - they just keep offering more money until someone volunteers to move to a later flight. Seems like a good way to manage overbooking, and I've never seen it not work.

The difference is that in the UK, you'll either have multiple flights a day or can take train/car without much delay instead. That's very different in more sparsely populated countries as the US.

But cash is likely to be the main issue here. If united had offered $800 cash, they would've probably found someone to rent a car and drive down there instead of flying.

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#287

Post by galvin »

namdnay wrote: post #258
stephenr wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What does this have to do with Americans? Overbooking is used by nearly every airline in the world.

I've never heard of any airline overbooking here in Europe. Yet they seem to manage just fine. In fact Ryanair (a budget airline) has a bunch of flights advertised for around €15 ($16~ USD)...

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#288

Post by dx034 »

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.

That's what I'm wondering about. Putting the 4 crew in an Uber or rental car would've probably cost $1k-1.5k. It's standard in Europe that crew gets long distance taxi rides throughout the country, why isn't that the case in the US?

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#289

Post by dx034 »

grkvlt wrote: post #206
mikeash wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Needs to be a fast mode of transport to keep crew duty hours down, so ground vehicles are out. I was once on a plane at Dublin airport that had to wait for a few minutes behind a small jet that turned out to be the RyanAir (UK and Ireland low cost carrier) company LearJet which they use for positioning flight crews in an emergency or time sensitive situation. Surely United should have chartered a small jet to get cre…

As far as I know, the Ryanair Learjet is mostly used for spare parts. It's cheaper bringing a spare part via private jet than cancelling a flight with 180 passengers. For crew transportation, the 80 stations that Ryanair has in Europe should ensure that there's a spare crew only a few driving hours away

Re: Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes

#290

Post by brango »

pavlov wrote: post #256
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…

In the European Union, airlines are forbidden from offering vouchers as compensation for overbooking. They must pay cash. Simple solution that fixed a consumer-hostile approach adopted by a cartel of companies. Sadly, the EU rarely gets credit for the great number of consumer protections it has established; instead people like to rant about egregious regulations that either don't exist or have been grossly misreprese…

Where "people" == right wing press
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