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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

#351

Post by mothballed »

unglaublich wrote: post #340
euleriancon wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. For parents it is not a choice, you absolutely must have a parent sitting by a young child. The effect of not automatically putting parent and children next to each other would just be making tickets more expensive for parents.

Don't want to play the devils advocate... but if you _must_ sit next to a person in need... you have to reserve the seats. Doesn't matter if it's a child, a dependent parent or a colleague that you need to run through an upcoming presentation with. Currently, it's just the case that parents get a discount on the seat reservation fee.

Easy solution, just charge more for a child than for an adult, no fees needed.

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

#353

Post by nostrademons »

rtkwe wrote: post #324
bthrn wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most profitable way to fill a plane would be to knock everybody out and just pile them up in the fuselage.

Knocking someone out safely isn't cheap. There's a reason anesthesiologists are so highly paid. Just ask the hostages from Dubrovka Theater [0] how improvising an anesthetic gas can go (spoiler: you'll need a medium/ouija board). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis

So then just pile them up without knocking them out.

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

#354

Post by realusername »

Lio wrote: post #318

> Airlines want to remove the requirement to provide automatic refunds when flights are cancelled or significantly altered. This is wild. Are they really asking to be able to take money for a flight, then cacel it and keep the money? That's crazy.

I mean, why even bother to run flights at all in this scenario?

They could cancel 80% of flights and keep the rest to pretend they are still an airline.

Cancelations would be more profitable than the flights themselves.

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

#355

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

euleriancon wrote: post #279
mcaravey wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that part of the problem is a want versus a need. I don't particularly care if me and my wife don't sit together. We see each other all the time. But I don't want to have my four-year-old sitting in between two strangers, six rows in front of me where I can't see him. That's not fair to the two strangers, but also I don't trust strangers. I get the idea of paying for the privilege, but at the same time, it's…

This exactly. For parents it is not a choice, you absolutely must have a parent sitting by a young child. The effect of not automatically putting parent and children next to each other would just be making tickets more expensive for parents.

And? They are your kids. Why should someone who has paid to reserve their seat have to move because you were to cheap to pay to choose your seat.

Also see, I’m not going to work extra hours because a parent can’t work late. Just because I have grown children doesn’t mean that I don’t have a life outside of work.

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

#356

Post by mothballed »

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.

There's a lot of kids that aren't like that once they reach, say, toddler age. They know they can terrorize mom/dad as much as they like and they'll still be there, so they ruthlessly exploit that. They can be ruthlessly terrorizing next to their parents, but put them next to a stranger they'll be polite and relatively quiet because they intuitively know they are capable of anything.

i.e. when my child was young, a waiter could hand them a lemonade and they'd be ecstatic. If I handed them the same lemonade, they would start screaming at me the color of cup was wrong.

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

#357

Post by recursive »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #233
mr_toad wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, "Make us your slaves, but feed us."

We're at a point where people would be glad to starve if they think it pissed someone else off.

I think most of them would say that right up until they could actually feel the hunger. People spend hundreds of dollars on drugs that just make them less hungry so they eat less. So I don't think so.

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

#358

Post by MangoToupe »

pfdietz wrote: post #20
MangoToupe wrote: post #12

Interesting. The deregulation of airlines is already a case study of how deregulation tends to reduce competition and hurt consumers. I suppose we’ve just given up on the concept of trying to do anything but nakedly extract profit at any cost. You’d think shareholders would be pro-competition in the end, though—I certainly would prefer that. Edit: I mean short-term profits. As a shareholder I would prefer long-term p…

> The deregulation of airlines is already a case study of how deregulation tends to reduce competition and hurt consumers. What the actual F? Deregulation of airlines was massively beneficial to consumers. "Base ticket prices have declined steadily since deregulation.[15] The inflation-adjusted 1982 constant dollar yield for airlines has fallen from 12.3 cents in 1978 to 7.9 cents in 1997,[16] and the inflation-adjus…

Base ticket prices doesn’t seem like a great metric, not that I have a better trivial to measure metric off the top of my head (maybe leg room?), but competition has certainly gone down since deregulation.

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

#359

Post by herval »

scrps wrote: post #257
Mistletoe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen the movie Brazil and I wish more people had so they would have voted better.

Don't forget the inverse can happen, like when tech-bros read sci-fi and end up thinking Bad Thing is a good idea... :|

I love/hate how many people in tech watched Black Mirror and went "that's a great idea! I'll build that"

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

#360

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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.

Then pay the extra money to choose your seat like most adults do. Delta said in an earnings call for instance that less than 5% choose basic economy where you can’t choose your seat.
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