United Airlines stock losing $950M in value | Hacker News Reader

United Airlines stock losing $950M in value

finance.yahoo.com

27 pointsanigbrowl12 comments

I think this is a pointless figure for a number of reasons.

1. Their stock is where it was last Friday.

2. We don't know how much the stock dropping is due to the outrage or due to whatever else. 1-3% fluctuations in stock, even intra-day are common. Delta airlines today for example lost 2.2% whereas UAL lost 1%. And the whole market has been down this week.

3. When Amazon loses 1% of its stock, it loses 4 billion in "value".

4. Loss in market cap is not loss in value to United. Its a loss to shareholders collectively.

5. The short term losses don't mean anything if it rebounds.

It's wishful thinking. People love to think they have more influence over the destiny of corporations than they really do. And, of course, the media loves to pile on.

Sure, voting with your wallet, when done en masse and over a long period of time, can have a significant impact. But this takes much more than a few days.

What UAL did in this case was horrendous, but trying to associate it with loss of market cap is disingenuous. The market always corrects itself after the initial fluctuations. It will depend primarily on their earnings on Monday [1].

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/united-continental-ual-q1-earn...

>What UAL did in this case was horrendous,

Was it?

All I see is that a passenger was asked to leave by an officer. He refused and was forcibly removed.

> Was it?

Yes, it was. Unethical for sure, and likely illegal [1].

[1] https://thepointsguy.com/2017/04/your-rights-on-involuntary-...

The flight was purposely overbooked. They randomly asked a guy to leave instead of taking their loss and offering the other people a big pile of money. He's also a doctor. Have you seen the video where he was knocked out from hitting his head at the railling from a chair followed by bleeding from his mouth?

creeping authoritarianism, more and more of it every day, and you just take it like ok, like it's a good thing. what ever happened to freedom and liberty? what ever happened to dignity and respect?

"Thank you for purchasing Windows 11 Pro! We see that you visited BitTorrent recently. Unfortunately we will need to ask you to stop.

If you have any concerns, please speak with the Chicago Transit Police officers who are outside your home waiting to confiscate your machine."

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AUAL&sq=United%20Air%...

comparison of 4 airlines 5 past trading days.

Delta is actually doing much worse.

I am no expert on the economics of airlines, but my gut tells me that it would have been cheaper for the 4 United workers to miss their next shifts (and pay overtime to 4 other workers) than to rip a doctor out of his seat against his will and suffer the wrath of the consumer.

Hindsight is 20/20.

I am guessing they might have had to delay/cancel a flight if those four employees didn't get there, which could cost tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands

Pilots and (I think) cabin crew have work hour limits by law. You can't just pay them overtime to work more hours. If you don't have under-limit crew in place, you have to start canceling flights.

And then UAL gained back almost the full value by Wednesday morning and has performed similar to Delta and other airlines. Like most PR disasters unless you keep digging when you are in a hole, the long-term impact is small and consumers forget.

Uber is in the hole right now and digging. Microsoft used to be. Amazon used to be.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AUAL

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