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United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

latimes.com

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Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#421

Post by davidf18 »

indemnity wrote: post #407
davidf18 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 24/365 Apple Store is a signal about how cool and new technologically vibrant NYC is ...we need it and use it 24/365. Repairs as well as purchases 24/365. Number of Apple Stores in Manhattan = 7 (incl. one 24/365) Number of Apple Stores in NYC 5 Boroughs = 10 Number of stores Paris (incl. La Defense) = 4 Number of stores London = 5 Number of stores Berlin = 1 Jazz/Blues/all kinds of music, a city open 24/7 full of…

Have you been to any Asian cities in the last two decades? NYC has its perks, but the subway systems of Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul make the MTA look pretty shabby. These cities are also 24/7, to a greater extent than any Western city, I would argue.

> "These cities are also 24/7, to a greater extent than any Western city, I would argue."

Have you really been to NYC? Jazz, Blues, much other music, etc.

No 24/365 Apple Store in Asia.

# Apple Stores Tokyo = 4

# Apple Stores Shanghai = 7

# Apple Stores Seoul = 0 (Possible 1 in future)

# Apple Stores NYC = 10 including the 24/365 store

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#422

Post by davidf18 »

S4M wrote: post #402
davidf18 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please cite a reference where Muslims who are living in the US legally were forced out of the country.

Well, not forced out of the country, but Muslims visa holders were denied entry in the US on their way back from holidays: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum... https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/bring-niki-mossafe... And HN discussion of the previous link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13509509

My understanding of BrExit is that Britain is asking people who have lived there for years to leave.

It is not all Muslim Visa holders, but from 7 countries that were determined by the Obama Administration to be a security risk to the US because they don't do adequate screening at their airports. For example, Turks can come to the US as can Muslims from Israel or anywhere else except those 7 countries.

The Visa issue is regrettable, but it is only temporary and the people will eventually be able to return. Those in the US can remain here and not asked to leave as in the case of BrExit.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#423

Post by rdl »

nradov wrote: post #376
rdl wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised turbine costs haven't fallen -- maybe we need more cruise missiles and jet-powered drones to raise the volume and lower per unit costs.

Cruise missile turbine engines have a design operating life of only a few hours, use special stabilized gel fuel, and optimize for performance over cost. I'm skeptical as to whether those will prove to be a good basis for developing cheaper VLJ engines.

Didn't Eclipse (RIP) say their engine was going to be derived from a cruise missile engine?

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#424

Post by imgabe »

dragontamer wrote: post #413
imgabe wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only the involuntary bumps. If you divide out the numbers for the voluntary denied boardings, United is #3 behind Skywest and Expressjet - far worse than other major carriers for overbooking flights. This is naturally going to create a systemic problem when there's too many overbooked flights. If you have to bump some passengers from flight 1, then they try to get on flight 2, but flight 2 is ALSO overbooked,…

Voluntary is a bit harder to compare though. For one, because its not necessarily wrong for people to give up their seat for money. If I were going on a vacation and someone offered me $400 to take a flight 2-hours later, I probably would take the $400. In any case, United is not the worst offender in either voluntary nor involuntary "bumps".

I'm just saying in order to estimate how many flights they overbook, you'd have to look at the total of voluntary and involuntary bumps. People wouldn't be volunteering to take a later flight and United wouldn't be handing out vouchers if the flights weren't oversold.

I don't think it's wrong per se, in a moral sense. I just think it creates problems. The more overbooked flights you have, the less able you are to respond to delays or to re-seat passengers who got bumped, or to find new flights for people whose plane suddenly got smaller or who missed a connection or whatever, and there are ALWAYS going to be things like that happening.

The passengers who get bumped don't usually just give up altogether. They have to get on some flight. The more overbooked flights there are, the fewer chances there are for them to get on a different flight, and the more people there are looking for different flights in the first place. The problem compounds and you get the cascading spiral like I described above.

A constrained system like the airline is going to respond nonlinearly to perturbations. When you double the number of overbooked flights, the problems they cause aren't just going to get twice as bad, they'll get four times or six times as bad or more. (made up numbers, I'm just saying it's not one-to-one).

Flying is already a stressful experience thanks to the TSA and just the general stress of making sure you get there on time with all the uncertainty in what can go wrong (traffic, long security line, long wait to check a bag, whatever). If I book a flight at a certain time, it's because I want to leave and arrive at the times I chose, not a couple hours later or the next day or two days later, or never. This is why I pretty much refuse to fly United anymore. I don't like the stress of having to wonder if I'm going to be allowed on the flight I've paid for.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#425

Post by nojvek »

formerminister wrote: post #338
tyfon wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work at (in Norway) had planed to take all 70 employees to NYC this summer to celebrate a milestone reached. We just moved the whole thing to Paris instead as we had issues with all of the above, including employees that have visited "dangerous" countries. The thing that pushed everyone over was when our former prime minster was harassed[1] at the border for having been to a meeting in Iran. It says in…

Good to see that former politicians are also being treated as badly as the rest of us. The sooner they all start realizing they aren't going to get special treatment the sooner they'll start actually representing everyone.

I'm actually glad that they are treating everyone like shit.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#426

Post by nojvek »

manyxcxi wrote: post #420
scriptkiddy wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Man, I'm not sure if your home airport is not very good, you don't travel that often, or if you just have a higher base level of anxiety or what- but any drive over 4 hours and I'm on the lookout to see if I can fly there. I'm not the person you're replying to, but I do have something to say about this. Your situation is a bit different in that you need to be able to get from Portland to SF and back in a single day.…

That's a good point, I do enjoy road trips for the purpose of a road trip. I usually take two or three on my motorcycle every summer. But if I'm just trying to get somewhere (work, family for the holidays, etc.) I'd be happiest if I could just teleport. Until we all have a personal Scotty beaming us around, I guess I'll have to settle for Alaska Airlines.

I love Alaska. Its the least evil of all domestic airlines. I once had a supper shitty experience when Microsoft flew me in for interview with United. Since then I don't even go 100ft near United. Alaska all the way!

I really hope Microsoft doesn't fly their candidates with United anymore. A couple of big companies cancelling their corporate contracts might give them a reality check.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#427

Post by nojvek »

davidf18 wrote: post #421
indemnity wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been to any Asian cities in the last two decades? NYC has its perks, but the subway systems of Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul make the MTA look pretty shabby. These cities are also 24/7, to a greater extent than any Western city, I would argue.

> "These cities are also 24/7, to a greater extent than any Western city, I would argue." Have you really been to NYC? Jazz, Blues, much other music, etc. No 24/365 Apple Store in Asia. # Apple Stores Tokyo = 4 # Apple Stores Shanghai = 7 # Apple Stores Seoul = 0 (Possible 1 in future) # Apple Stores NYC = 10 including the 24/365 store

OMG! you really like your Apple stores don't you? Apple stores say nothing about the vibrancy of the city. It basically states that the city mindlessly practices American consumerism that Apple needs 24/365 stores to keep up with demand.

My experience of New York was tall buildings, narrow streets with garbage on the sidewalks, ridiculously expensive rents, homelessness on streets, lots of people walking around but very few actually willing to have a conversation. I enjoyed the street food and it was a great experience but I would chose a number of places around the world over New York for a company trip.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#428

Post by nojvek »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #266
Klathmon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I've noticed that for like 5 years now my friends and family have a pretty severe aversion to flying anywhere for anything. From needing to show up hours before the flight, to the invasive screenings, the insane restrictions on what you can and cannot bring, the sentiment that if you check any baggage it's basically as good as gone, the ever increasing cost, the delays, and even things like the worry abou…

I really don't understand this. I've flown 3-4 times a year for the past 10 years and love flying. At busy airports like JFK and NRT, I show up no more than 90 minutes before boarding time, which gives me time to check my bags and go through security, and still have time to grab a snack. At smaller airports, like MCI, I show up 30 minutes before boarding time and still have time to relax a bit. I prefer to check bags…

Sometimes its about Flying vs not flying. I definitely have reduced all flying to absolute necessary. Not being white, I get treated differently by TSA at times. Flying is currently a very annoying experience.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#429

Post by nojvek »

lsllc wrote: post #389
tici_88 wrote: post #17

Travelling in the US or with US airlines is not looking very good right now. Not just the United incident(s) but also TSA, Trump travel restrictions, flights constantly overbooked, massively late etc. I wonder if it will start impacting traveller and tourism numbers at some point. I think anyone who doesn't really need to be in the US and/or is planning travelling with kids is likely to have some second thoughts at t…

"massively late" This is a direct consequence of charging for checked bags. Now every flight takes twice as long to board and disembark because everyone is carrying as much carry on as they can and trying to stuff them into the overhead bins. Annoyingly, they usually start making announcements about gate-checking bags for free so they are not really reducing the costs and they're encouraging passengers to drag their…

I would happily go for check bag in for free, but sometimes Airlines take forever to get the bag on to the carousel. Its much faster to get in and out with your bag as a carry-on.

I agree, One free bag check should be compulsory. They should also ensure that your bags arrive faster than you at the baggage carousel. May be one day with the advent of robots.

Re: United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

#430

Post by nojvek »

magic_beans wrote: post #350
gok wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do make them non-refundable, and they overbook. They want to get paid for (say) 105 seats on a plane with 100 seats.

Ahh. Well that's just greedy.

Welcome to the business of Airlines.
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