anyone else in delta platinum purgatory, can’t sniff an upgrade these days
I guess I won’t get excited about my gold status then
How are you going to spend that $3.52 in bonus money on G4? Do they even sell bottles of water that cheap?
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Indeed - they’re all bad in their own way, and often, the same ways.
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$57* is a bit too much for my liking, but the points make it a bit more palatable.
*before all of the nickel-and-diming fees and what not, of course.
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What does Allegiant get you for if you are checking a golf bag through? Do you have to assume the airplane’s lease?
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Not sure. I only know that they won’t give you a refund or allow you to cancel a checked bag (because the people who planned the bachelor party are bad communicators and didn’t relay information like "we’re not going to be playing golf on the trip" until after I booked the flight).
Newfound respect for the power / responsibility that window seaters have with appropriately managing their window. Generally, tons of a respect for the person at the window getting to do what they want. You bought that seat, it’s your right to control the window. I go back and forth between aisle and window seats for wanting to control the window (open during takeoff/landing) and not wanting to climb over people to use the bathroom.
Just had a trip with my 9 month old son. A very long, 10 hour day of traveling - 2 flights and a 3.5 hour layover. Full day of either sitting in a car seat or being held. Maybe got 40 minutes of naps in through flight one and the layover. He’s very overtired. On the second flight, cabin was dimmed and nearly every person on the plan had their window closed or nearly closed, except the person in the row directly behind us. And had a second window based on how the rows laid out. Both wide open. Shining light directly in his face. 90 minutes of him being calm and fine eventually transitions into full blown screaming kid on a plane. He’s not hungry. Refusing any attempt at food. Can’t sleep. Just tired.
I finally ask her to close it and get a half-hearted quarter shut of the window. After 5 more minutes of him losing his mind, she finally slams it shut. 5 minutes later, he’s fast asleep.
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When that guy got physically yanked off of a United flight in (I think) Indianapolis a few years ago, I always thought that Delta and American were breathing a big sigh of relief, because they probably would have done the exact same thing. Not unlike when Arthur Andersen got nuked in 2002. The Big 5 were all doing the same sleazy shit. Andersen just got caught.
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They probably did the same thing United did somewhere that same day (remove passengers so repositioning crew could fly). It was the O’Hare police/security that dragged the guy, not United employees, and that’s who sent that incident over the edge. But, zero chance United ever gets anyone to hear the nuance or do they get the benefit of the doubt.
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Dr. David Dao was the passenger/victim in that story, and here’s the context behind what happened.
It was an Express flight (subtle but somewhat meaningful difference from mainline) from ORD-SDF, and it was the last flight of the night. Unfortunately, an aircraft already in Louisville had gone on maintenance, and the original crew on that flight was borrowed for another flight, so it was necessary to deadhead a crew down to be in position to operate the next flight when that aircraft returned to service the next day. This was short notice and this last flight was booked full, so it became necessary to deny boarding to people. The gate agents went through the proper process to solicit volunteers and went up to the highest bribe they were authorized to offer for that segment. But since they didn’t get sufficient volunteers, it became necessary to involuntary deny boarding. It’s an ugly thing gate agents sometimes have to do and there is more passenger compensation involved when it happens.
Dr. Dao’s name was chosen to be invol’d, but he refused to leave the aircraft. I don’t know if he spoke English or not, but I believe the gate agents cited language confusion as a cause of escalation. After the agents tried to their legal ability to get Dr. Dao off the aircraft with no success, they called in the airport police and it was the police officer that got physical with the passenger and did the infamous dragging of him off the aircraft.
The video was ugly to watch and I certainly understand the public outrage of the matter. The two most critical issues that the airline needed to address were 1) exactly how critical was the need to deadhead the crew that night, and 2) revisit the volunteer solicitation process. I’m not sure if anything resulted from #1, but we did increase the amount of compensation agents would be allowed to offer when soliciting volunteers to take a later flight. I don’t recall if the airport police made any changes to their processes after this incident, but knowing police, I highly doubt they did. Involuntary denied boarding is heavily regulated by the DOT, so there wasn’t much change United could do on that element.
So that was the context behind that video.
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Update - our bag was delivered this morning! As far as I can tell, nothing is missing. The most expensive/important stuff is definitely in there. I really want to know what this bag’s journey was, but it’s here now. No thanks to Aer Lingus, that’s for sure!
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Not critical enough to remove a passenger. To say nothing about getting physical with one.
Ask for volunteers? Sure. After that? Tough shit airline. You don’t get to boot a passenger for your fuck ups.
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It’s a business. Better to piss off one passenger than a whole plane full who can’t leave the next morning because they couldn’t get the crew there in time. They does not defend the treatment this person received from the authorities, but in cost-benefit land, the policy makes sense.
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Absolutely not.
The PR hit for removing one passenger far outweighs telling people tomorrow’s plane was going to be late. Planes are late all the time.
And then you have to consider what do you do when the passenger refuses? And then you get the absolute shitshow that went down.
Completely stupid move. As soon as they realized they couldn’t up the ante enough to get anyone to voluntarily give up their seat the airline should have just sucked it up.
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I mean, I get the idea that this happens more often than you’d think, and the fact that we’ve only heard about this one time when the cops were huge assholes makes me think it’s not the PR hit you might think. Though presumably that one passenger probably isn’t going to fly your airline anymore. And I’ll leave to @dgolfman62281, but my guess is that if there’s an early morning flight and a crew who isn’t going to be there for a few hours, there’s a good chance the flight isn’t just late, but rather cancelled. And even if it is a few hours late, there may be a lot of passengers who going to miss connections, which becomes a big headache. Again, I’d rather just inconvenience the one person if I’m running the airline. But I would be super-duper pissed if I were the one person (unless they gave me a little something for the effort).
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Literally every business has to weigh the needs of the individual versus the needs of the populace as a whole. A manufacturing company has a customer who wants their 20 units tomorrow but the factory is already 400 units behind to 20 different customers. Airlines have the unfortunate position of being a very publicly visible business relative to others, and easy for the media to piss on when things go wrong.
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The President of United failed to make Chairman due to this.
They had to settle with David Dao.
They gave every passenger on that flight vouchers to the amount of their tickets.
They caused a huge uproar in China and Vietnam as many people thought the treatment of Dao was racially motivated.
I get this was 7 years ago, but this was a HUGE deal.
A far cry from physically assaulting one customer to take one of those units to give to someone else. Your analogy fails straight out of the gate.
Again, because of this “must fly” attitude United took, they put themselves in a position where they would have to deal with someone saying no. And that’s what caused the problem.
They deserved every drop in this case. If not more.
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