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United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

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Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#91

Post by rmc »

mseebach wrote: post #83
gnaffle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair isn't subsidized. It's a bad airline that doesn't need to fail because it makes money. It's one of the airlines in Europe with the worst customer service track record. The same is true for lots of other compenies with terrible customer service. On the other hand, there are many state-owned or subsidized airlines that have very good customer service. So whether or not United needs to fail, I think the problem…

Ryanair isn't a bad airline. It's a fairly good airline in terms of moving passengers around. They are completely honest, even proud, to offer literally no customer service and comfort. Look at the comments here: http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/ryan.htm Not one is about Ryanair failing to deliver the service they've sold (as the article is very much about United failing to) - they're all about people being disapp…

Agreed. People only feel "screwed" by Ryanair because the are used to flexibility, and Ryanair are not flexible. "Oh I'm 2kg over, but that's not a lot, so they'll let me away with it.... What do you mean I have to pay €40?" "Oh they'd have to let me take my handbag, so I'll bring a massive one... what do you mean only one cabin bag?"

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#92

Post by bdunbar »

narcissus wrote: post #84
mherdeg wrote: post #80

I don't think this blog post's headline is quite right. "Losing a child" is putting a child on BOS-EWR instead of BOS-CLE and not noticing the problem until the child's family in Cleveland calls the parents and the parents call Newark, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2009... . It sounds like what happened here was "causing a child to miss a connection" (and also separately "delaying the delive…

This may sound like a stupid question, but what does 'pax' mean? I presume it's something like 'traveler' or 'client' or something similar, but was really curious what it was short for / meant. As for the rest of your post, it was really interesting: I had no idea that there was so much involved in handling a UM (an acronym I learned about 5 minutes ago :) ).

what does 'pax' mean?

Passengers.

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#93

Post by mgkimsal »

rmc wrote: post #91
mseebach wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair isn't a bad airline. It's a fairly good airline in terms of moving passengers around. They are completely honest, even proud, to offer literally no customer service and comfort. Look at the comments here: http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/ryan.htm Not one is about Ryanair failing to deliver the service they've sold (as the article is very much about United failing to) - they're all about people being disapp…

Agreed. People only feel "screwed" by Ryanair because the are used to flexibility, and Ryanair are not flexible. "Oh I'm 2kg over, but that's not a lot, so they'll let me away with it.... What do you mean I have to pay €40?" "Oh they'd have to let me take my handbag, so I'll bring a massive one... what do you mean only one cabin bag?"

double agreed. however, it does bug me charging on weight for baggage when fat people pay the same price as extremely lightweight people. Someone who's 105 pounds with a 52 pound bag gets charged extra, while someone who's 290 pounds but has a 49 pound bag pays no extra charge. Dunno quite how they'd ever get around it, but it does bug me. And I say this as someone who's got a few extra pounds of his own :)

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#94

Post by jhcoaps »

chimi wrote: post #33

This is a problem bigger than United -- which has a lot of problems. This is what you get when you subsidize bad companies that need to fail. United needs to fail so someone better can take over. The moral hazards are ruining the country. I saw it recently with farmers struggling from the drought. Compare this farmer: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7417774n who has acres full of hay that don't do well in the…

Your post is endemic of something I see a lot on HN. You know nothing about agriculture, but you see a minor set of stories and you think you're a fucking expert.

You have no idea if the diversified strategy has a higher expected value, or if it's just a variance play based on heat, or if different weather conditions could've affected interplay in a different way. You have no idea what the crop insurances for different crops cost. You have no idea what the weather forecasts were.

You literally know absolutely nothing about the matter.

All you know is that you've got an ideology and that you see absolutely everything through the ideas of your ideology, selectively perceiving, remembering and interpreting events to confirm and reconfirm your ideology. And you're sufficiently arrogant that you think you can glance at a farm and know what tradeoffs they considered when they were planting their fields.

And that doesn't even get into the fact that if you travel via air around the globe, nearly all of the airlines are absolutely terrible, not just the subsidized ones in the US. Thus, it's fairly clear that while you'd like to pretend that your religion explains everything, it really doesn't.

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#95

Post by hobbe80 »

shrikant wrote: post #60
peteretep wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid, I used to make intercontinental flights frequently as an unaccompanied minor ... maybe 6-8 a year between the ages of 8 and 16? Airlines make this all OK by offering an Unaccompanied Minor service where where a member of aircrew is responsible for the kids, the kids need to be deposited (and signed for) at both ends of the flight, etc... In this case, the airline screwed up, but the concept is pretty straig…

Are you me? :) I used to do this exact same thing in the exact same age range. This was in the 90s though - what I still regard as the Golden Age of Flying (tm), and the Unaccompanied Minor service offered by most airlines was absolutely fantastic. You would be under constant supervision in the airports, get access to the nicer lounges.waiting areas, have priority for boarding/disembarking, and be generally treated l…

Chiming in from Sweden, I also loved flying as a young kid. These days I'm a parent myself and have sent my kids on flights (domestic only) using Unaccompanied Minor services several times, and it's always worked out well.

BTW, in Sweden the age limit for using this service is 12 - if you're 12 or older you're considered old enough to fly (again, domestic) alone, something my 11 year old daughter who turns 12 in a few months looks forward to as the last time she flew alone she felt that she was too big to've been "babysat" on the flight.

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#96

Post by slowpoke »

pcrh wrote: post #69
chimi wrote: post #33

This is a problem bigger than United -- which has a lot of problems. This is what you get when you subsidize bad companies that need to fail. United needs to fail so someone better can take over. The moral hazards are ruining the country. I saw it recently with farmers struggling from the drought. Compare this farmer: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7417774n who has acres full of hay that don't do well in the…

I don't think weather forecasting is currently good enough for a farmer to plan which crops to plant based on rainfall predictions. If every farmer planted a diversity of crops to account for all likely weather scenarios, then the average productivity would drop, as most crops would turn out to be unsuitable for the weather that occurred.

Think of it this way: it's a trade-off, like almost all reliable systems have to make. Would you rather have, for example, a server that runs with maximum efficiency but has a high risk of failure and extended downtime or one that is reliable with a 99.9% uptime, but isn't as powerful as the first one?

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#97

Post by theorique »

mgkimsal wrote: post #93
rmc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. People only feel "screwed" by Ryanair because the are used to flexibility, and Ryanair are not flexible. "Oh I'm 2kg over, but that's not a lot, so they'll let me away with it.... What do you mean I have to pay €40?" "Oh they'd have to let me take my handbag, so I'll bring a massive one... what do you mean only one cabin bag?"

double agreed. however, it does bug me charging on weight for baggage when fat people pay the same price as extremely lightweight people. Someone who's 105 pounds with a 52 pound bag gets charged extra, while someone who's 290 pounds but has a 49 pound bag pays no extra charge. Dunno quite how they'd ever get around it, but it does bug me. And I say this as someone who's got a few extra pounds of his own :)

Weigh each passenger and charge proportionally.

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#98

Post by spqr »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #36

United is clearly very wrong here and treating their customers poorly. But, and I'm sure this is going to be an unpopular opinion, who sends a 10 year old across the country on a plane alone? I wouldn't send a 10 year on a 30min bus ride alone. I understand United offers a service to make this possible but it seems like a ridiculous thing for a parent to take advantage of. Maybe it's a cultural difference and this is…

Service or no service, nobody takes care of your kids like you take care of your kids. I wouldn't trust such a service with my three kids.

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#99

Post by keithpeter »

mseebach wrote: post #83
gnaffle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair isn't subsidized. It's a bad airline that doesn't need to fail because it makes money. It's one of the airlines in Europe with the worst customer service track record. The same is true for lots of other compenies with terrible customer service. On the other hand, there are many state-owned or subsidized airlines that have very good customer service. So whether or not United needs to fail, I think the problem…

Ryanair isn't a bad airline. It's a fairly good airline in terms of moving passengers around. They are completely honest, even proud, to offer literally no customer service and comfort. Look at the comments here: http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/ryan.htm Not one is about Ryanair failing to deliver the service they've sold (as the article is very much about United failing to) - they're all about people being disapp…

Ryanair makes it possible for a work colleague of my sister to commute from Cork to Liverpool (4 day work week, digs while in Liverpool). You get what it says on the packet.

Re: United Airlines Lost My Friend's 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn't Care

#100

Post by keithpeter »

theorique wrote: post #97
mgkimsal wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

double agreed. however, it does bug me charging on weight for baggage when fat people pay the same price as extremely lightweight people. Someone who's 105 pounds with a 52 pound bag gets charged extra, while someone who's 290 pounds but has a 49 pound bag pays no extra charge. Dunno quite how they'd ever get around it, but it does bug me. And I say this as someone who's got a few extra pounds of his own :)

Weigh each passenger and charge proportionally.

And then employ very small thin people for any work that requires foreign travel?

Seriously the implications of that are boggling although I suppose modern technology makes it possible to do so.

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