4 ms·

Not like united employees going on vacation or to a meeting. But a flight crew going to where they need to be. It's part and parcel of an airline service. If th

Not like united employees going on vacation or to a meeting. But a flight crew going to where they need to be. It's part and parcel of an airline service. If they can't get to where they need to be a flight will have to be delayed or canceled.

djsumdog 10y ago
It comes down to the balance I guess. We can kick four people off and offer them each shitty compensation (usually a first class ticket for the next flight and worthless $200 vouchers for the same shitty airline that expire in less than 6 months) or cancel the flight this crew is for and lose an entire plane load worth of income. I understand the economics, but it's still bullshit. Those customers want to get home and they're boarded. I think everyone should do what this guy did in this situation. He paid for a flight. He didn't read through the 10 pages of bullshit EULA (no one does) and then they assaulted him to remove him from a flight. The whole plane looked angry. Now United has a PR nightmare .. that will last 3 days before everyone forgets. People keep flying United and nothing really happens.
- problems 10y ago
  You have to understand why they overbook - jetfuel is extremely expensive and produces a massive amount of carbon pollution - most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. Cargo is cheaper to fly than passengers and many of them are converting more and more towards cargo for that reason. You don't want to be flying around in jets which aren't at capacity, it's an enormous waste of money and fuel - your tickets would cost significantly more and they'd have to run more flights resulting in more pollution. Their estimates are pretty good even - your odds of being overbooked - even on United, one of the worst offenders here - are about 1/1000. From what I've heard, you can sort of bargain with them from what I've heard, free food and drink, hotel accommodations, a partial refund even are commonly obtainable if you get delayed - though that kind of thing may depend on the airline. According to https://lifehacker.com/if-your-flight-is-overbooked-dont-volunteer-to-get-bum-1722036179 https://lifehacker.com/if-your-flight-is-overbooked-dont-vol... you can actually get 2-4x the ticket price if you deny getting bumped. I'd take that kind of cash in many situations. This was severely mishandled - the big mistake here was boarding the passengers before knowing the final count with the employees. It caused them not be able to bargain with individual customers to find someone who was willing to give up their seat for some perks or cash.
  - mthoms 10y ago
    > most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. You're spreading very outdated information. Airlines are currently making record profits: "2017 is expected to be the eighth year in a row of aggregate airline profitability" "These three years are the best performance in the industry’s history" From: http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-12-08-01.aspx http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-12-08-01.aspx
    - problems 10y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that more because air traffic is up rather than their margins having gone up? Maybe oil prices of the day play a role too... but I wouldn't count on that to be true for long. Even in this report though, you'll note that the fares are down 63% since 1995 - the competition is pretty fierce here. The absolute profit is only around measured 5% even today. I wouldn't exactly call that a great margin.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        The absolute profit is only around measured 5% even today. I wouldn't exactly call that a great margin. You would if you were a grocer. Deregulated airlines have low margins; that's a fact of life. They pay fuel bills, they pay interest, the executives steal what they can, and the unions take everything else. When they miscalculate and pay the unions so much they can't cover their bonds, they reorganize through bankruptcy. None of this is new, and none of this justifies racist violence.
        problems 10y ago
        I did not suggest this justifies anything - in fact I said this was severely mishandled. I merely tried to explain the slight against overbooking some people seem to have - which is mostly unrelated entirely, but that's why I didn't respond to the top post, but to a post complaining about the practice of overbooking. Though I don't see anything that makes me think this was a racist act, where'd you get that idea?
lightbyte 10y ago
If it was flight crew, how on earth did they not know how many employees would be needed ahead of time?
- rhino369 10y ago
  They probably screwed up something. Or a different flight was canceled.
Johnny555 10y ago
And if you have to force people off the plan with the police, the flight will have to be delayed or canceled. This flight took nearly 4 hours to get to there because of the delay, and it only takes 5 hours to drive, the should have just put their employees in a car.
dingaling 10y ago
> But a flight crew going to where they need to be. It's part and parcel of an airline service. Some airlines have an alternative means of crew transport, used for such contingencies. For example Jet2 in the UK has a Piper Navajo to move misplaced crew around and TNT in Europe ( now ASL Airlines ) have a Learjet 45. Even Ryanair, king of the bottom-line, occasionally uses its engineering Learjets to position crews. Much cheaper to send one small corporate jet than have a 189-passenger 737 stuck crewless and causing a cascading schedule disaster.

djsumdog 10y ago

It comes down to the balance I guess. We can kick four people off and offer them each shitty compensation (usually a first class ticket for the next flight and worthless $200 vouchers for the same shitty airline that expire in less than 6 months) or cancel the flight this crew is for and lose an entire plane load worth of income. I understand the economics, but it's still bullshit. Those customers want to get home and they're boarded. I think everyone should do what this guy did in this situation. He paid for a flight. He didn't read through the 10 pages of bullshit EULA (no one does) and then they assaulted him to remove him from a flight. The whole plane looked angry. Now United has a PR nightmare .. that will last 3 days before everyone forgets. People keep flying United and nothing really happens.

problems 10y ago
You have to understand why they overbook - jetfuel is extremely expensive and produces a massive amount of carbon pollution - most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. Cargo is cheaper to fly than passengers and many of them are converting more and more towards cargo for that reason. You don't want to be flying around in jets which aren't at capacity, it's an enormous waste of money and fuel - your tickets would cost significantly more and they'd have to run more flights resulting in more pollution. Their estimates are pretty good even - your odds of being overbooked - even on United, one of the worst offenders here - are about 1/1000. From what I've heard, you can sort of bargain with them from what I've heard, free food and drink, hotel accommodations, a partial refund even are commonly obtainable if you get delayed - though that kind of thing may depend on the airline. According to https://lifehacker.com/if-your-flight-is-overbooked-dont-volunteer-to-get-bum-1722036179 https://lifehacker.com/if-your-flight-is-overbooked-dont-vol... you can actually get 2-4x the ticket price if you deny getting bumped. I'd take that kind of cash in many situations. This was severely mishandled - the big mistake here was boarding the passengers before knowing the final count with the employees. It caused them not be able to bargain with individual customers to find someone who was willing to give up their seat for some perks or cash.
- mthoms 10y ago
  > most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. You're spreading very outdated information. Airlines are currently making record profits: "2017 is expected to be the eighth year in a row of aggregate airline profitability" "These three years are the best performance in the industry’s history" From: http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-12-08-01.aspx http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-12-08-01.aspx
  - problems 10y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that more because air traffic is up rather than their margins having gone up? Maybe oil prices of the day play a role too... but I wouldn't count on that to be true for long. Even in this report though, you'll note that the fares are down 63% since 1995 - the competition is pretty fierce here. The absolute profit is only around measured 5% even today. I wouldn't exactly call that a great margin.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      The absolute profit is only around measured 5% even today. I wouldn't exactly call that a great margin. You would if you were a grocer. Deregulated airlines have low margins; that's a fact of life. They pay fuel bills, they pay interest, the executives steal what they can, and the unions take everything else. When they miscalculate and pay the unions so much they can't cover their bonds, they reorganize through bankruptcy. None of this is new, and none of this justifies racist violence.
      - problems 10y ago
        I did not suggest this justifies anything - in fact I said this was severely mishandled. I merely tried to explain the slight against overbooking some people seem to have - which is mostly unrelated entirely, but that's why I didn't respond to the top post, but to a post complaining about the practice of overbooking. Though I don't see anything that makes me think this was a racist act, where'd you get that idea?

lightbyte 10y ago

If it was flight crew, how on earth did they not know how many employees would be needed ahead of time?

rhino369 10y ago
They probably screwed up something. Or a different flight was canceled.

Johnny555 10y ago

And if you have to force people off the plan with the police, the flight will have to be delayed or canceled. This flight took nearly 4 hours to get to there because of the delay, and it only takes 5 hours to drive, the should have just put their employees in a car.

dingaling 10y ago

> But a flight crew going to where they need to be. It's part and parcel of an airline service. Some airlines have an alternative means of crew transport, used for such contingencies. For example Jet2 in the UK has a Piper Navajo to move misplaced crew around and TNT in Europe ( now ASL Airlines ) have a Learjet 45. Even Ryanair, king of the bottom-line, occasionally uses its engineering Learjets to position crews. Much cheaper to send one small corporate jet than have a 189-passenger 737 stuck crewless and causing a cascading schedule disaster.