United Airlines just lost $800M in value | Hacker News Reader

United Airlines just lost $800M in value

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63 pointsmusharofchy38 comments

Not enough. Keep going down. I am praying for some extreme form of bankruptcy where heads roll. I also hope (and am eager to contribute to the legal fund) the passenger sues both United, and the airport security organization for many, many millions of dollars.

I feel like many of us American flyers have Stockholm syndrome about our the dire situation of our domestic airline industry. We constantly pay regular prices and more, for airlines that are sneakily become no-frills airlines.

It's especially stark when you fly just about ANY international carrier, especially the asian and middle eastern ones. On those, you're treated like a respected human being, fed like one, and actually feel like you got your money's worth. And you feel like the staff actually wants to be there, rather than absolutely hate their lives.

I get these are blanket statements for effect (especially in the case of staff). But it is true given the especially bad quality of customer service that these airlines are known for.

Could it be competitive pressure in the US airline market? Margins are low, and have been since deregulation back in the '70s. And if people are consistently buying the cheapest tickets available, it's not too surprising service is nose-diving.

I'm not so sure. I'd actually say the issue is not enough competition. Airlines have been consolidating a lot, and apart from the same 2-3 airlines that people generally seem to really like (Virgin & Alaska that now merged, JetBlue, and perhaps Southwest).

Spirit is trying to create a no-frills airline.

But the huge ones like United/Continental/Delta seem to be focusing all their innovative energy on how to creatively charge people more for fewer services.

I think its the US airline unions. Not all unions are good or bad, but it seems to me that when people are unionized they become more hostile towards their employer and eventually their customers. By their very existence, unions form an us vs them mentality that seems hard to break. Unions then need to reinforce their value to their members by always having a fight over something.

I've had great flight attendants on US airlines, but some talk to customers in a way that I can't imagine even McDonald's employees getting away with. Why does United put up with surly flight attendants when McDonald's doesn't put up with surly staff? I think it's probably the unions.

I also think customers don't care very much. Customers want cheap more than anything else. But I've flown many low cost carriers around the world, but no flight attendants are quite as nasty as some of the ones at US major carriers.

It seems to me that you have the causation backward.

Unions don't get established - especially in the last 20 years in the USA - unless working conditions and labor relations are already bad.

There are literally enough books and scholarship on this to fill libraries.

IMO, it's not 100% about competition. The airlines have been merging and forming partnerships to such an extent that they don't have much more direct competition than in the past. It is nearly all on what U.S. flyers want, and most of the non-frequent travelers want to save every penny they can.

I think flyers may have finally reached the point where they can't cut service any further and may roll back on this a bit, but I doubt it will even come close to the service levels 10 years ago, let alone 40 years ago.

>"The man, who had been seated on the plane, was then asked to leave because the flight had been overbooked."

According to the BBC new story yesterday the reason they needed 4 people who were seated to leave is that they needed to make room for 4 off-duty United employees, which makes this even more outrageous(if that's even possible.)[1][2]

And the United/Continental merger was somehow supposed to benefit the consumer. This video feels like a metaphor for air travel in the United States.

I don't mean to trivialize the trauma this unfortunate person must have experienced, this really make me angry. It's hard to "vote with your feet" with these awful airlines as there's not much choice any more within the US. The race to the bottom continues these carriers or maybe this video is the conclusion.

I think what shocked me(and saddened)me the most is how un-shocking this behavior is given how awful these carrier and the air travel experience has become within the US.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39554421

[2] https://twitter.com/JayseDavid/status/851223662976004096

But those 4 people were for another flight which would be cancelled if they didn't get there. Inconvenience 4 people or cancel an entire flight?

They could have kept increasing the size of the travel voucher until four people said yes. Problem solved.

They had 20 hours to get there. There were flights from other airlines as well as ability to just drive 5 hours.

Today they're trying to assault the passengers character. There may sadly be a place for that if and when they get into court but whomever is giving them this advice to do it now is plainly wrong.

It's becoming clearer today that the incident is not just the actions of an individual gate agent but the entire company's culture is toxic.

>Today they're trying to assault the passengers character.

Well that makes this even more sickening. Link?

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/10/united-ceo-passenger-disrupt...

Well that's highly disturbing.

Thanks for the link.

but now he's apologizing. What an about face. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/11/united-ceo-munoz-apologizes-i...

I think it's a reference to people pulling things from the passenger's past that seem of little relevance.

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2017/04/11/d...

So?

It's still above its YTD low of $65.28 from March, and it's 31% up (!!) from the same time last year.

It would be just as accurate to say "United Airlines gained $6.9 Billion in value since last year," but of course that wouldn't give people the satisfaction of saying "Hah! Take that, United!"

Will they do a followup article in about a week when the stock inevitably bounces back? "United regains $800 million in value".

That they badly botched a single customer service incident is not likely to affect the long term financial outlook of the company.

Still, tanking 800M in 5 days is not great. I doubt the United board is saying.."SO".

Overbooking should just be illegal.

Making things worse, airlines pick "less valuable" passengers to remove. These of course are the inexperienced fliers who are having trouble to begin with. They may have shown up 5 hours or 5 minutes in advance, they struggle to figure out how car rental works, they might have never purchased a hotel stay in their life, they are struggling to calculate time zone conversions, they are just learning about concourses/terminals/gates, they have never used a baggage claim, and they are confused about boarding.

Not that it should normally happen, but if an airline does need to remove somebody, they should be required to pay whatever compensation is required to get a volunteer. If that causes a huge loss, oh well -- try not to end up in that situation.

People will still go for the cheapest base ticket price. For all the outrage, nothing has changed.

A time as good as any to revisit the "United breaks guitars" song and videoclip :-) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

View from the outside is at every fork in the road they chose the more aggressive practice that makes them look super terrible. The question is will people stop flying united or will this just be a business as usual blip?

> will people stop flying united

Considering how few options there are for air travel in the US, probably not.

The heated rhetoric around this outrage o' the moment is disguising the fact that United isn't culpable for the brutality the person underwent.

I suspect that the imminent next outrage o' the moment will supplant this in people's minds, and some savvy folks will snap up United at a bargain price and make a tidy profit from this affair.

Sure, they weren't the ones who employed the officers who removed the passenger from the plane but things didn't have to work out that way if United had considered that the passenger did nothing wrong to expect to be bumped from a flight. In fact, United had many options at it's disposable that didn't need to involve forceful removal of passengers such as:

1) Upping the compensation considerably beyond $800. To be honest, that's just not enough considering that people routinely get $400+ for moving to a flight 2 hours later and this was moving to 3PM the following day.

2) Not accommodating United employees who they wanted to get on board this flight. That should be only when you have EXCESS seats, not so you can bump off paid passengers. Here's an idea, book them on another airline's flight. If that was not possible, then that's poor planning on your part, find a way to deal with it that doesn't involve bumping passengers involuntarily.

Overbooking flights is going to be norm, a small price we pay to get lower fares. The response when it happens is the problem that is completely in the control of the airlines.

I can't disagree with anything you said but I don't see a single word that makes United culpable for law enforcement overstepping the needs of the situation. Given how the outrage cycle regularly crucifies and then moves on completely inside of a week, United would be best served to hold tight and let the courts and the basic facts of the situation dictate the outcome, not the fickle waves of anger expressed on social media.

I am in agreement generally that people are conflating the actions of the officers (excessive force) vs. what United is responsible for (poor business practices, lack of consideration, poor judgement). It would be interesting to know under what specific statute were they allowed to use force to remove a passenger from an airplane? Is this covered under Trespassing or part of FAA regulations that you must obey everything the crew says no matter how legitimate the command is? Where do we draw the line?

I think that's open to legal interpretation. I think United is liable. They created the situation and asked officers to remove the individual. Any reasonable person knows that the police are capable of using force to take someone into custody.

Also the Seventh amendment guarantees a civil jury trial.

This was abhorrent and wrong. United should pay dearly and change its policies to prevent something like this from happening ever again.

I doubt you'll get your wish, because we don't run our legal system based on the outrage o' the moment for very good reason.

And likely elder abuse.

Barely a 2% move @ the moment from last week.

And it's up ~20% for the year.

Or about dead even for the last 30 days.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UAL?p=UAL

So what you're saying is, had they not had this problem, they'd be doing a whole lot better than they are?

This is click-bait about a blip. Look at the one-year trend. UAL rose in value sharply in Nov 2016 and has since then been flat +/- noise.

Time to buy shares I guess?

In a few month we will be back to normal.

Agreed. Good bargain at this point.

I bought some, with a tight stop in case I'm wrong. I don't think it'll even take a few months. I'd be willing to bet it's back to normal by EOW. That prediction depends greatly on how much stock you put in the saying "gaps always get filled".

Someone made a lot of money. It was down 4% at some point.

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