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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

#571

Post by raddan »

jacobgkau wrote: post #476
raddan wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe the one where biological sex is imaginary. Or the one where Biden's health is good enough for another four years. You pick (or keep looking the other way and losing, to the detriment of far more important issues).

FWIW, like "conservatives" the stereotypes are not universal. They may not even be typical.

Biological sex clearly is not a fiction; we have lots of evidence that it's not something you choose. It's also not necessarily binary, even in humans, although it is mostly binary.

I also did not believe that Biden was ready for four more years, but then again, what choice did I have? I would not have voted for Trump under any circumstances, and sitting it out would be giving my vote away.

You're painting with a rather broad brush. You must have at least a few liberals in your life with whom you can compare notes.

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

#572

Post by maest »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #545
baby wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a year I made more money from flying than I spent, because I kept flying ryanair or easyjet and I kept getting massive delays (one was a 20h delay, in which I spent the night at the airport squatting some of the couches in a cafe in the terminal, because small delays kept being slowly pushed on us, and we also spent 2h waiting in the final plane for it to take off, no A/C and they refused to give us water t…

Ryanair is the most punctual airline tho

Ryanair has the very sleazy habit if saying things like "we have just landed at X, note how we are 5 minutes ahead of schedule!" over the PA.

However, they don't make a peep when the flight lands with a delay.

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

#573

Post by asdff »

abawany wrote: post #495
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why boarding early is considered a premium worth paying for (for normal flights with assigned seating). Planes are never as comfortable as whatever I have access to in the airport, whether that's hanging out in the lounge or sipping a drink at a restaurant, or just stretching my legs walking around the airport.

When I used to have carry-ons, boarding early ensured that I got room in the overhead bins to place the bag. I now use under-seater bags only and pack light so I no longer care when I get to my seat.

Then they gate check it which is a perk for me honestly. Now I don't have to schlep a bag anymore.

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

#575

Post by WorldMaker »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #425
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen everything from gate-checks on the carousel to a special pickup counter to leaving the bag on the tarmac covered in ice, with standard commercial airframes. It depends on airline policy and available airport infrastructure.

Yeah, it gets worse than that, too, because some airlines have multiple types of gate checks. Delta, which I've flown the most on recently, lets you gate check at the gate desk up until like 10 minutes before boarding and those get tagged like normal checked baggage, sent to a baggage car for the normal forklift-ability, and will show up at baggage claim at your final destination, but Delta also lets you gate check at the last minute by dropping it at the end of the jet bridge and those get a slightly different tag, are basically thrown into cargo by hand, and also need to be pulled out of cargo by hand and so are thrown right back onto the jet bridge on the deplaning side of the next destination, not the final one. In the case of "overhead bins full" every bag after that full point gets into that second category of jet bridge bags. (And yeah, I've seen that particular case cause some traffic jams in deplaning.)

(Delta also has a third type of "gate check" if you count the regular checkin desk silliness to try to skip bag fees by checking in with 0 bags, getting asked if you want to gate check, and then checking it at the checkin desk like checked baggage is supposed to work. That also goes to your final destination, but it's a silly process of "no I don't want to check bags" to say that "yes, I have one bag I would like to check but it's not worth your silly fees to check if you want to charge me".)

I also have met people that like the "jet bridge checked baggage" and think it a feature, not a bug. I understand there is a flexibility it offers if a connection fails or is too delayed or what have you, but the slow, artisanally hand tossed baggage part of that seems so inefficient and slow down to the rest of us, it is hard for me to not see that as a bit selfish and something that should have fees to pay for the extra labor and time involved. Also, if anything it seems a reminder that Baggage Claim got put on the wrong side of Security checkpoints in the US out of a mistake from historic airport layouts, and if you were to design the system from scratch you'd put it before leaving Security and allow people the option to choose which destinations it needs to be picked up (but still defaulting to the final one), and maybe a "recheck" desk right next to it.

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

#576

Post by xoxxala »

lunias wrote: post #184

Flying has become such a terrible experience that I avoid it all costs. I'd love to take more trips, but the service is so poor that I can't justify supporting it more than absolutely necessary. I doubt anything will change though, the majority of other people seem to not really care.

I'm with you. If I can't drive there, I don't go. Between the TSA, cramped seats, fees, unhelpful staff, angry passengers, angry staff, turbulence, the lousy food and dealing with carry-ons/luggage -- it's not worth it (for me, personally). My last flight was 2019 and I don't miss it at all.

We take fewer, but longer, vacations, and use the extra time to drive to our destination. We try to avoid freeways as much as possible so we can see smaller places. We make vague plans and stop when we get tired or hungry.

I know it won't work for everybody, but it works for us and I love it.

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

#577

Post by thrance »

jmull wrote: post #391

Making flying even crappier doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Regulations that put a floor on how crappy airlines can be should be pretty neutral on competition since all the airlines would have the same rules. That's not to say all rules are a good idea, even rules that raise quality -- raising the floor raises prices, and if the floor is raised higher than necessary, prices are higher than necessary too, making…

> Making flying even crappier doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

It does, from a purely ecological point of view. What was the number again? 4 longhaul flights for life per person if we want to achieve sustainability?

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

#578

Post by jmull »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #543
jmull wrote: post #391

Making flying even crappier doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Regulations that put a floor on how crappy airlines can be should be pretty neutral on competition since all the airlines would have the same rules. That's not to say all rules are a good idea, even rules that raise quality -- raising the floor raises prices, and if the floor is raised higher than necessary, prices are higher than necessary too, making…

> Set the floor too low and people fly less because it's too crappy. Seems like a great opportunity for an airline to be less crappy and make a lot of money selling tickets to all those people who are "flying less" on other airlines, no? So the question then becomes why hasn't someone done that already, if the floor really is "too low"?

> no?

No. Because people don't know how crappy it will be when they book.

They're just juggling prices and scheduled times.

People who aren't flying very frequently and don't have a trustworthy source of knowledgeable recommendations -- that is, a substantial majority of people -- will never take enough flights to know which airlines are worth $X more. If they even have many options for their route and time.

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

#579

Post by johnnyanmac »

cogman10 wrote: post #570
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 answer is actual competition with some reasonable passenger protections. This is physically impossible. Airplanes require airports and airports only have so much space they can dedicate to flights. An extreme example of this is the Ronald Reagan airport. How could you possibly get more competition there when it cannot grow and it's surrounded by the urban area? That's like saying the solution to your water comp…

To be pedantic, I'm sure you "can", but the effort and political sway to do so for what may not even be profitable is humongous.

That was pretty much Google fiber in a nutshell last decade. They existing cable lines eventually pushed Google out of it.

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

#580

Post by asdff »

lunias wrote: post #184

Flying has become such a terrible experience that I avoid it all costs. I'd love to take more trips, but the service is so poor that I can't justify supporting it more than absolutely necessary. I doubt anything will change though, the majority of other people seem to not really care.

As annoying as it is to be nickel and dimed I really can't complain when thinking about what is actually on offer. If I told my ancestors I was unhappy about traveling 2000 miles in 5 hours for $250 they'd rightfully slap me over the head. What a historically unprecedented capability for our species to end up on the opposite side of the planet in about a half a day.
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