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US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

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Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#291

Post by tsycho »

thieving_magpie wrote: post #179
Larrikin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to engage or justify staying in your seat, just say no thank you and end the conversation

And I'll smile back knowing you're about to have a really great flight with my 3 year old :) (to be clear, I don't do this personally and pay extra to sit together but I do hope people start parking their kids all over the plane since that's what we all seem to want! It's tempting.)

So according to you: they should give up their paid seat so that you don't have to pay for assigned seats, even when you know way in advance that you are traveling with a 3 yr old?

Let's ignore special cases where you didn't have a chance to buy assigned seats, and focus on the vastly more common scenario where parents can easily pay to ensure seats of their choice.

Yes, it's nickel and diming by the airlines to make all seat assignments paid. And hating airlines is completely justified.

But I find the entitlement of parents, that other passengers should accommodate their parsimonious preferences, just amazing.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#292

Post by mushroomba »

bilekas wrote: post #245
mushroomba wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> First, realize that there is no such thing as the 'public interest'. The public is composed of different subdivisions of people, from everyone everywhere down to the individual. I don't buy that at all, that's what regulations are for. There is no public interest in still having lead in our fuel [0], or arsenic in green wall paint [1]. To say regulations are not for public interest is to say why have any oversight…

[flagged]

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#293

Post by rimunroe »

scruple wrote: post #249
tveyben wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do kids have to fly…???

No one does, so what's your point?

A small correction, but there are plenty of reasons someone might require flying. The travel might be required and also be on a tight schedule or terrain might be impractical to traverse by other methods. As an example: a friend of mine had to fly across the continental US for spinal surgery because traveling is stressful on the body and they couldn't be e.g. on a train for multiple days. People move across oceans all the time and might not have the luxury of being able to make a long trip by boat.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#294

Post by scarface_74 »

jghn wrote: post #282
JustExAWS wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well rule #1 is never to book a flight on a third party travel portal. When things go wrong, you now have to deal with the travel portal and the airline.

Many people will do things like use Google Travel to narrow down an initial set of potential flights based on times & cost, and then go to the individual airlines from there to book things. The GPs post is still a problem in this scenario.

That seems like a Google problem because of a poor interface. Unless you want each airline to standardize their offerings. Even then their would be differences based on loyalty programs, which airline you have a credit card for etc.

The legislation nor the regulations were geared toward third party aggregators.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#295

Post by ghaff »

kumarsw wrote: post #276

I was hoping that the pendulum would swing the other way with the scandal over too many passengers bringing out their bags on a recent AA evacuation caused by a burning tire. The push to eliminate checked bags has created a chaotic cabin environment that probably exacerbated the situation. There's no sign of it getting better either. The overcrowding of overhead bins creates a prisoners dilemma where flight attendant…

As someone who has traveled for a long time, I find two things to be true:

1. People like business travelers or those with even minimal levels of status/benefits (who don't pay for checked luggage) don't usually preferentially check bags because luggage gets delayed, it's harder to switch flights when there's a weather etc. problem, and they have to wait at the luggage carousel.

2. Hard and hard-ish roll-aboards are a menace. Especially in a world of generally more casual dress, soft-side luggage would make overheads a lot more manageable--understanding that some people really can't use shoulder bags or backpacks.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#296

Post by DangitBobby »

LPisGood wrote: post #108
eadmund wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege > This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. Bin-packing is tough (look at Kubernetes!). Economically, giving folks willing to sit in a random seat an extra $10 and charging folks who want to sit together $10 is a wash. Evil is, you know, torture and genocide, not efficient allocation of limited space.

Can you elaborate on the Kubernetes bit

I'm not GP, but I imagine it has to do with efficiently scheduling pods onto nodes to optimally support workloads, some of which have a resource affinity (CPU, MEM, Disk) that can only be supported by particular nodes. In this analogy the affinity would be a strong preference for isle and window seats or sitting with family. It's easier to have the pods sort themselves according to preference than to write a daemon to do it.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#297

Post by proggy »

egonschiele wrote: post #130

> Family Seating Guarantees: Under current regulations, airlines must ensure that families with young children are seated together without additional charges. This would no longer be guaranteed under the new proposal, meaning families could face extra costs just to sit next to one another. This one is wild. You want to sit next to somebody's crying 2 year old? Go nuts. Change their diaper while you're at it.

This rule only applies to a single adult + child pair, and not the entire traveling party. For instance, if you have a party of 1 child and 2 adults, the airline is well within its rights to charge seat selection fees to the second adult. It’s incredibly frustrating that I have to pay an extra $40-$50, per journey, to United to sit next to my wife and child. And that’s with the current “consumer friendly” rules in place.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#298

Post by ragazzina »

handwarmers wrote: post #40
hiphipjorge wrote: post #24

I honestly think it's pretty amazing how cheap air travel already is in the USA and Europe. It explains why we're seeing all time highs for air travel. The air industry seems like a good example of just the right level of regulation: There's tons of competition, different pricing tiers with their corresponding levels of quality, and a lot of dynamism combined with a good set of consumer base regulations (24 hour canc…

This might be the case if all your travel boils down to off season direct flights between major airports. In my experience, it has been rapidly going up in price and down in quality since the end of the pandemic. You have very few protections as a passenger, and while you may have some rights on paper, they have been made excruciatingly difficult to pursue with the way support lines work with airlines. To add insult…

> while you may have some rights on paper, they have been made excruciatingly difficult to pursue

Are you in the US? In the EU there are many websites that help you get a cancellation/delay refund, they require little more than your boarding pass, and they work very well for a small (sometimes none) fee. The fee is taken from your refund so if you don't get one, you don't have to pay anything.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#299

Post by ghaff »

matwood wrote: post #281
ghaff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm most familiar with United. Economy Plus (which is mostly about a bit more legroom) does have a modest premium absent sufficient status that gets you it for free. But Premium Economy that gives you somewhat wider seats as well as legroom gets into the hundreds of dollars. International business has lots of benefits including legroom and lie flat seating but that usually gets into the thousands.

EP is just economy with slightly more leg room. PE is closer to business than EP. The food is upgraded along with the service. The seats are more recliner like and you generally have more room. Additionally, the PE seats are often the quickest to deplane if that's important. I can also work in PE seat, whereas EP not so much. The problem with PE is that it's often not that great of a deal. Unless it's a super busy ro…

I agree with all that. The food still isn't great. And the seat still isn't great for a red-eye relative to business. I wouldn't generally work on a plane anyway. I've been in PE--don't remember the circumstances--but as I recall didn't think it was anything special for the cost.

Re: US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

#300

Post by nemomarx »

cats_4_freedom wrote: post #178
nemomarx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First principle is that customers will choose whoever has the cheapest flights in general, and airlines that try to market on having an inclusive price without surprise fees suffer anyway because the real cost is closer to fees. The second is price discrimination - think current McDonald's prices. Soaking people who can afford it and letting people who are very frugal navigate your confusing system and membership etc…

Not entirely true with the cheapest = first. I've been using a reputed and magnanimous airline for years and it doesn't matter what the other low-blow contenders are offering. As long as it's in my anticipated budget, I want comfort, consistency, and courage. These undercutters have me scared they shaved off a wing to save on price. @#$% them. I fly with my airline, and these jerkoffs who want to bend over for fascis…

Out of interest, which airline? I've never found a particularly good one in the us.
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