He and the doctor may have a solid legal case: http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-...
I hope for United's sake these are anomalies and not a pattern of behavior.
I hope for United's sake these are anomalies and not a pattern of behavior.
It's actually far worse than just a "pattern of behavior", it is how United and other airlines (mostly US, but rest of the world is catching on) have deliberately structured their enterprise and the entire customer experience.
Everything revolves around "privilege". Even 20 years ago, this used to be bad. On most European airlines' flights, you just waited at the gate until your flight was called, then got in line (with some minor prioritization) then flew.
Whenever I had the misfortune of flying United (an ever rarer occasion as I wizened up to the situation and later to "codeshare" flights), half the gate was at the counter, jockeying for perks and arguing status and privilege.
This has apparently now been codified with (last I checked) 6 separate cattle lanes for boarding. Also, when I was booked on United business (a mistake), the flight attendants apparently had to try to find certain "special" elite passengers and suck up to them, in order to get little "stars" on their cards. How utterly demeaning!
Again, the US has been on the frontier of this deplorable trend, but the rest of the world is catching up, with Heathrow being the first airport I've seen with separate security lines for first class passengers. Munich caught up a little later.
To me, it looks like the airlines in general (and it looks like United in particular) are so embedded in this completely artificial conception of segregating their passengers by privilege, that results like the ones we are seeing are not anomalies and not even outliers, but the logical and maybe even unescapable consequences.
Dear Airlines: I just want to get from A to B. I don't care the slightest bit about your weird privilege system, and your efforts of forcing me to care by making "non-privileged" travel hellish just make me consider alternatives including not flying, but certainly not flying with your airline.
Oh, and it doesn't have to be that way. Quite a few years ago I was on a multi-legged Star Alliance trip, with several legs across the US getting me from Maui to a Lufthansa flight out of JFK. The penultimate stopover was Chicago, but the United flight coming in to Chicago was late and the United flight leaving didn't wait for me. I tried the United counter, but for the longest time there was simply no-one there, and when someone showed up they told me it wasn't their problem. ??
Desperate, I searched a bit and found a Lufthansa hotline. After I told my sob-story, the operator said "Oh, you're in Chicago, why do you need to go to JFK? We have a flight leaving Chicago in 3 hours, let me just rebook you on that" Said, done. It was a normal economy ticket.
Service.
Update: Check out https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/top-perks-united-global-ser... This is a thing?!?
The same tendency towards "privileging" can be seen in the constant push for two tier health care and two tier education systems (here Alberta is a bulwark, compared to Quebec).
Anyway, great post. I'd love for this kind of analysis to reach the mainstream.
Movie theaters make money off of marked up popcorn and pop, videogames make money off of DLC and in-game purchases, etc.
When your side business starts requiring you to sabotage your main business to ensure people engage with the "side" part, is when things get interesting.
Sometimes it's better to avoid the race to the bottom altogether via regulation, ensuring that anyone who wants any improvements needs to improve things for everybody, or deal with the status quo.
That's the logic many Canadians use for vociferously opposing private schools (and I agree with it).
There is some differentiation on the service you offer, bigger seats, maybe being able to lie flat.
But that's about it, and since that's all there is the airlines just start making shit up.
"Global Services (and generally 1K) members have their food orders taken first"[1]
Really, this is a thing? Just think about how ridiculous it is. And that it obviously has to be codified somewhere in the rule book. Along with all the other silly rules that aren't public. A friend of mine is a frequent traveller, and he told me a lot of the little tricks you have to pull to get good service.
"GS members have their own phone line, [..] the agents are based in the United States and are extremely helpful."[1]
Well, my Lufthansa agent was extremely helpful to "random joe with economy class ticket".
[1] https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/top-perks-united-global-ser...
Even the cut-rate European outfits like WOW are better.
The US that used to be on the forefront of defence of personal liberty is now largely lagging behind Europe and I would say even moving in the other direction. Even from the progressive movements of feminism and racial equality we can now at times hear voices arguing FOR segregation. Pretty depressive, eh?
We've literally come full circle.
When it's about class it's called economics.
Back in the 80s & 90s, it used to be that boarding order did not matter. You could walk up to most flights 1 minute before the door closed, and still find a space for your bag. (and you'd often get an empty seat next to you). When they started charging (and starting running more efficient, full flights), overhead space became really tight, and your boarding order (zone, whatever) suddenly became critical.
I don't see this changing anytime soon, since it mostly works to the airlines benefit. Eg, it drives membership in their frequent flyer programs and branded credit cards, as those often come with perks like earlier boarding and free checked bags. The one drawback for the airlines is the time it takes for them to turn around the plane, now that everybody is slowly looking for spots for their bags. Some airlines are now starting to offer an even lower fare class which is not allowed to use overhead space in order to allow them to turn planes around faster.
I tend to just fly first/business now so that I mostly don't have to worry about it. I rationalize it by realizing that flying is so cheap now, that a 1st class ticket costs what an economy ticket did when I was a kid (in terms of inflation adjusted money), and that economy now is essentially a new dystopian sub-class.
I don't fly United all that much so when I do - I'm in "Zone 4" for boarding which means I get to observe them do pre-boarding/global services/active military/premium and then zones 1-3 - I've never seen anything like what you're describing. Zones get called up, ppl board in their respective zone, not sure what's there to argue.
There's a "premium" boarding lane so if someone in biz class shows up when they are already boarding the common folk :) they can cut the line which I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with that.
Also, the zone-based approach even from the "Zone 4" passenger perspective is less chaotic logistics-wise as opposed to having everyone line up at the same time.
Don't get me wrong - flying is not a pleasant experience these days but I don't see this zone-based approach as a problem.
I would understand this only in first come first serve airlines without assigned seats, but I think nobody is doing this in Europe anymore, in US you stil do this?