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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

#361

Post by nostrademons »

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.

Playing devil's advocate here, as a parent this sounds great! Have your young children sit next to a couple strangers a few rows away: now you get some peace and quiet while other people have to deal with their seat-kicking, drink-spilling, whining, crying, bathroom trips, diaper changes, requests for entertainment, etc.

You know this is going to happen too: there are going to be some subset of parents that are not going to pay extra and will just choose to let the airline make their kids some complete stranger's problem. Hope the general public enjoys it.

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

#362

Post by nerdponx »

gr1zzlybe4r wrote: post #347

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 gett…

The bailouts for unusual circumstances are a really interesting case. The "unusual circumstances" tend to be perfect for industry consolidation, which is normally (and rightly) viewed with at least some skepticism, but tends to get a pass during unusual circumstances as a matter of survival. In no small part this is driven by the desire not to cause thousands of people to be laid off with no equivalent pay opportunities in sight.

The PPP program turned out to be a widely abused transfer of wealth from taxpayers to capitalists, yes. But I actually think in general that bailouts, especially for smaller industry players, are an important tool for preventing industry consolidation, which causes generational-scale harm that is difficult to reverse or even remediate.

I think what need to happen is that it should be much easier to pierce the corporate veil in cases of obvious negligence in planning that leads to being unprepared for a predictable event. And of course putting an end to PE-style "corporate raiding" behavior that really just amounts to embezzlement. Imagine an economy in which the owners, directors, and chief executives of corporation are, as individuals, required to uphold some level of fiduciary duty to their customers. The economy might look very different in that case.

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

#363

Post by onlypassingthru »

It seems like the smart play here is a three step process:

1) Deregulate claiming that competition will lower costs

2) Further consolidate carriers so that there is even less competition

3) Profit!

With the corporate buyout of government, it won't be long until we see the announcement for the new AmDelTed.

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

#364

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

wat10000 wrote: post #236
AtlanticThird wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what anyone wants. I think they just want families with young children to pay to sit together, like everyone else has to

There's a basic requirement in commerce that products sold must be fit for purpose. That is, they need to actually do what they're supposed to do in some form. I can't sell you a flight to New York and then give you a pair of plastic wings and say that the rest is on you. I have to actually get you there like any reasonable person would assume I would given what I sold you. Selling tickets to a small child and their…

Okay, in that case the airlines shouldn’t allow people to book a fare where you can’t choose your seat if you are flying with a kid - problem solved.

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

#365

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

scruple wrote: post #252
floatrock wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the airlines want is to have people pay more to sit together. What they're gonna get is same thing that happened when luggage fees became standard: enshittification because people find ways to pay less. In the case of luggage fees, suddenly everyone's like "yeah, okay, I guess I can fit things into a carry on" and turns out there's not enough overhead space for the entire plane so the plebs in Group 4+ have mand…

> What the airlines want is to have people pay more to sit together. And charging parents paying extra so families can sit together is just an easy target.

They don’t charge “parents extra”. They charge everyone extra for choosing a seat.

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

#366

Post by delfinom »

realusername wrote: post #354
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.

I imagine the class action lawsuits at that point would bankrupt them

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

#367

Post by unglaublich »

mothballed wrote: post #351
unglaublich wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Currently children <11yr get a 20-50% discount/subsidy for a seat. So just rectify it to a 100% and give the seat as a bonus instead. Everyone happy?

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

#368

Post by nemomarx »

nostrademons wrote: post #353
rtkwe wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you fit more people in horizontal than if they stood up and you had little straps to hang onto like a subway?

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

#369

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #301
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…

Plus all the additional time wasted in planing/deplaning the cabin in general as you wait for 90%+ of passengers in rows ahead of you to grab roller bags from overhead bins. Including the time wasting bottlenecks of "overhead bins full, everyone else must now gate check" guaranteed to slow the last passengers from planing and then on deplaning the crowds stuck in the jet bridge waiting for gate checked bags. (Then th…

I have never had a gate checked bag where you don’t pick up your bag at baggage claim except for regional flights on small planes where even standard carry ons won’t fit in the overhead.

And for the pedantic really small planes like Sansa in Costs Rica for their 30 minute flights between San Jose and other cities.

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

#370

Post by khuey »

trzy wrote: post #277
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.

Google Flights isn’t a third party portal! It takes you directly to the airline web site to book. It attempts to estimate the fare price but that’s becoming increasingly difficult with variably priced seats and other “gotcha” expenses that get figured in deep into the booking flow.

For domestic flights, perhaps. It routinely refers me to third party OTAs for the cheapest prices on flights to less common international destinations.
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