I'm not talking about legality. I'm talking about explaining something in an obviously high stress environment that is an extremely atypical situation.
http://www.worldairlineawards.com/awards/world_airline_rating.html This isn't surprising, American airlines (all of them, not just AA) are comically bad in the world ratings. I've said it in the Delta thread, Alaska is EASILY the best I've flown and the only 1 ahead of them is Virgin America...which Alaska just purchased. A good airline makes travel so much easier.
And it's true about being loyal to one, me and my fiancé travel almost exclusively with them unless we just can't do it.
I'm the same way. But, people like you and me are not typical. From a report done by Deloitte in 2014:
Yeah I basically only fly Alaska, which gets me to pretty much anywhere I travel domestically and is the best major airline by basically every metric.
I'm not arguing that they'll see some massive multi-billion dollar swing in market cap.. which is what that author is referring to. They won't. I'm saying the issue could've likely been solved with an extra $500, instead they get negative press and will lose sales in the short term and potentially some life long loyalty program members. Those are more valuable to them than seat sales any way. And for what? Recent article about loyalty program value. Not really relevant to this discussion but a good read nonetheless. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-31/airlines-make-more-money-selling-miles-than-seats
That article is about them selling miles to credit card companies. That means that the loyalty aspect of actually booking the flights isn't as important.
Cop: Hey fam I hate to do this but these assholes at the gate asked me to escort you off. I got a plan tho. We gone get paid. Just play along. Dr: aww yisssss
I've had people say, 'you sound like a spokesman for them.' If somebody does their job and runs the company well, I'm going to vouch for them because I like well-run companies making more money. One time we were 20 minutes behind schedule and once we could get loaded they got people through asap. Most other airlines I haven't heard shit, including several hour delays, Alaska bent over backwards apologizing. Literally every employee I encountered. They then gave the flight an extra free drink and we still landed 10 minutes early. It was refreshing just because they took accountability (it was their fault) instead of being jackwagons. That kind of service means 75% of my travel goes through them.
I'm not sure what you're arguing. The value of the miles comes from the airlines selling them to credit card companies, who in turn sell these cards with fees to high-value customers. Sure, the airlines and banks don't care if the customers book tickets once they have the card, but the customers are only getting cards in the first place for airlines they fly with. If you aren't booking United tickets, you're not applying for a United card.
The banks buy them for more than just United-branded cards. Unfortunately, this is not going to have the financial impact on them people wish that it would. Wall Street seems to be on the same page as me based on how the stock is trading.
While we are on the topic I need some star alliance points to upgrade to business on SAS. Any of you wanting to purge your hate miles from united get at me.
It's pretty easy. Before boarding they knew they were oversold. You "randomly draw" the four names after everyone rejected the offer. And if people don't show up, let those on in order to fill the empties. Then close the door. Easy
I'm on the same page as you regarding stock price as well. I'm not arguing that in the slightest. Their company is worth 100,000,000 times the cost of this guy's ticket. $100, $1,000, $1,000,000... it's all the same to them and wouldn't matter much. It was still a stupid business decision with no upside and and plenty of downside. It could've been solved for $1,500 and instead it'll be an ongoing PR nightmare and they'll lose probably a few million, which is pocket change but still change they could've kept. You'd think the company behind "United Breaks Guitars" and many others would be on the cutting edge of how to deal with this stuff.
Word on the street is that the flight that the "essential personnel" were headed to was 20 hours away. Looking really bad for United.
In hindsight, absolutely. Nobody is going to argue with you that there was a cheaper option knowing what we know now. At the time, I doubt that they anticipated that anything would happen beyond him just getting out of his seat like thousands of others have and the other two did on the same flight.
at approximately 7 AM this morning, dude's lawyer was hospitalized with an erection lasting longer than 12 hours. Not every day you get to sue an airline for a billion dollars with some expectation of winning.
This happened to my wife last month. Cost us $800, coincidentally, in free delta travel. She waited patiently, expressed disappointment at the inconvenience and was given 15,000 miles for the trouble. Delta for life.
the guy probably had a concussion, he got slammed to the ground and his head bounced off the arm rest