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

travelandtourworld.com

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

#341

Post by nostrademons »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #81
doodaddy wrote: post #16

> Instead of the clear, itemized pricing system that passengers currently rely on, airlines could hide fees until later in the booking process… They call what we have now “clear”? Where when looking at a page of flights I don’t know how much the multitude of economy/economy+/economy++/premium economy/business/business++ seats will cost until I click on each flight? Where every carrier offers slightly different variat…

If each flight leg is a different price, how can the website show you the total until you select both (or all) legs?

They usually show you a minimum, then have you select each leg, with the price for that leg fully displayed.

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

#342

Post by zerkten »

hiroantag wrote: post #256
tveyben wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do kids have to fly…???

What an odd question...families travel all the time for vacations or to see grandma and grandpa for thanksgiving. You can't leave a kid at home.

You would think that this is an odd question. It's such an odd question if grant a degree of anonymity. I've seen a similar type of question, as it relates to affordances for parents in the workplace, like no on-call for a time when a newborn is on the scene. I don't know if this is just happening because people are feeling unfairly impacted when folks on teams become parents, but I'm always bracing for these comments now.

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

#343

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

lumost wrote: post #89
doodaddy wrote: post #16

> Instead of the clear, itemized pricing system that passengers currently rely on, airlines could hide fees until later in the booking process… They call what we have now “clear”? Where when looking at a page of flights I don’t know how much the multitude of economy/economy+/economy++/premium economy/business/business++ seats will cost until I click on each flight? Where every carrier offers slightly different variat…

Not to mention the lack of standards on leg room/entertainment packages/food quality for any of the above combinations on any airline!

You want regulations on in-flight entertainment packages??

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

#344

Post by nostrademons »

proggy wrote: post #297
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 pl…

I usually filter out all Basic Economy fares from my search and only look at the next tier up, where you can get seat selection at time of booking. I just figure it's a product that doesn't work for my family.

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

#345

Post by warkdarrior »

throaway5445454 wrote: post #128
jdiff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the world's already discovered an easy out: negotiate by promising to do what you've already been doing for the past decade. As long as he hasn't been fed some idea to fixate on, he's an easy mark that can be placated by literally anything.

Canada just allowed the USA to have control over their nuclear plants and waste for 20 years. South Korea had to publicly come out and say they wanted to accept Trump's deal, but it had to have some concessions or else they would go into economic collapse! And the EU just allowed something like 30% more access from USA food which was previously considered not fit for human consumption under their health laws right? P…

I found your comment insightful and informative, until I saw this:

> Please correct my figures if they're wrong.

I guess the numbers could be wrong, and the comment completely unreliable.

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

#346

Post by Spooky23 »

rimunroe wrote: post #328
Spooky23 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let it be the airlines problem. My screaming five year old is going to generate a bunch of complaints and refunds for the airline. The kid will get over it, and the misery of the rest of the people on the flight isn’t my problem. The stewardess can deal with it and nobody gets their peanuts.

I'd rather it be solely a problem of their profits rather than adding inconvenience to families as well. Also, my kid is going to be a lot happier and less likely to be upset and bother everyone else if both of us are there to entertain her and keep each other from being frazzled.

Agreed. The point of these things is that the company is betting on you doing the decent thing at your expense. I refuse to accommodate their failure.

I was in one of these situations once where we missed a scheduled flight because of an airline screwup, and they refused to accommodate us without a substantial payment - thousands of dollars. Frankly, I couldn’t afford it. This despite the fact I already paid for an assigned seat on the fubar flight.

The predictable outcome happened after they pulled away from the gate and the flight crew came to me and my response was “He’s 20 rows away, what do you expect me to do? Sounds like the options are to move us, or return to the gate.”

They figured it out and were great about it, but the whole situation was stressful to everyone and was completely unnecessary. Flight crews are busy and it’s just senseless toil.

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

#347

Post by gr1zzlybe4r »

The airline industry is a good example of an "open" market that is really anything but. It is effectively an state-supported oligopoly. Airlines have split up every major market, usually with very little competition amongst themselves, and then have a government bailout backstop if things go wrong (this include things like favorable bankruptcy laws that let them get out of wage commitments). This is without even getting into the unholy public-private airport situation.

The answer is actual competition with some reasonable passenger protections.

Let foreign carriers compete here (9th freedom rights). No bailouts for failed operations or even unusual circumstances like covid.

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

#348

Post by scarface_74 »

proggy wrote: post #297
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 pl…

Think of the inverse, someone who doesn’t care about where they sit save money.

On the other hand, I never understood this obsession with grown people acting like it’s the end of the world if they don’t sit together. My wife and I fly a lot together - over a dozen trips this year - and she flies more frequently by herself. We both prefer window seats. We hardly ever sit together unless we can get 2 seats next to us by ourselves like on larger planes with a 3-2-3 combination or exit row seats in main.

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

#349

Post by panick21_ »

lxgr wrote: post #203
panick21_ wrote: post #23

Ironically in Europe we have some decent regulation for airlines, but the public train operating companies refuse to do the same for trains. We need to have some of those same protection and transparency requirements for train companies as well. But the governments of the big operating companies have vetoed this so far. Sometimes deregulation actually makes it easier to implement regulation.

> the public train operating companies refuse to do the same for trains. We need to have some of those same protection and transparency requirements for train companies as well. Huh? We do! There are very similar EU regulations for train travel: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right... On a completely unrelated note, I recently noticed that Deutsche Bahn seems to have some of their train schedu…

I didn't say there was no regulation what so ever. But there were multiple efforts of increasing it that was blocked. And what I specifically noted that the rights are weaker then for airlines.

If your airline is delayed and you miss a connection, you will get a hotel for the night. In a train, you can get that.

Airlines are forced to compete on price and have to publicly list prices and make that accessible to 3rd parties. Train companies do everything in their power to silo as much as they can to force costumers into booking threw their app.

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

#350

Post by raddan »

ReptileMan wrote: post #326
smt88 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think that would've helped. A lot of the people who won't shut up about 1984 and Ayn Rand still vote for the closest thing to monarchy they can find on their ballots.

Okay - democrats will push us in 1984 dystopia where they force you to accept that reality is what they tell you, and republicans will push us in low life high tech Cyberpunk dystopia where corporations reign supreme. Choose your poison.

Which reality is that? The real reality? Admittedly real reality is a pretty bitter pill at times.
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