Comment by neurotech1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neurotech1 | Hacker News Reader

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One possibility is that the regional flights are only marginally profitable for United, and very slim margin for the regional carrier (Republic Airline/United Express) so they limit voucher amounts for bumped passengers.

For an Embraer 170 aircraft (70 seats) the operating cost of the flight is about $2500-$3000 for the Chicago to Louisville flight. A supplementary flight with the 4 crew and any re-booked passengers would have cost the airline about $5,000 if they flew out-and-back as a non-scheduled flight.

SWA 737s cost around $4,000/Hr to fly, but a non-scheduled (Out and back) flight on a shorter route would still cost less than $12,000 in operating expenses.

The $1000+ flight credits for bumped passengers add up fast, but supplementary flights are relatively rare for airlines, other than for cancellations due to maintenance issues. CEOs like Oscar Munoz need to make supplementary flights easier to authorize, and the negative PR would be significantly reduced.

They could have just used a rental car or a taxi. Airline crews don't have to travel by air. The amount of inflexibility displayed by United is breathtaking.

Needs to be a fast mode of transport to keep crew duty hours down, so ground vehicles are out. I was once on a plane at Dublin airport that had to wait for a few minutes behind a small jet that turned out to be the RyanAir (UK and Ireland low cost carrier) company LearJet which they use for positioning flight crews in an emergency or time sensitive situation. Surely United should have chartered a small jet to get crew there, should be doable pretty quickly?

Ryanair is an entirely Irish company, and is one of the largest airlines in Europe.

They are also fanatical about not being late or cancelling flights. I used to work for them, and there are posters everywhere about the 18 minute turnaround times (they recently expanded this to 28 mins, when they introduced pre-booked seats as standard).

As far as I know, the Ryanair Learjet is mostly used for spare parts. It's cheaper bringing a spare part via private jet than cancelling a flight with 180 passengers. For crew transportation, the 80 stations that Ryanair has in Europe should ensure that there's a spare crew only a few driving hours away

All depends on the money. Based on what they offered the passengers, they weren't going to rent a private jet.

That's what I'm wondering about. Putting the 4 crew in an Uber or rental car would've probably cost $1k-1.5k. It's standard in Europe that crew gets long distance taxi rides throughout the country, why isn't that the case in the US?

Do you understand how expensive it is to take a taxi that far? Or the fact that taxi/rental car companies usually don't like you going over state lines?

Right, that's the ballpark of the 'natural ceiling' for how much they should be willing to pay (at maximum) for a solution involving deferring passengers; also in /real money/.

Rental car companies don't like you going over state lines? What? That's ridiculously untrue. I've never ever ever heard of anything like that and I never didn't take a rental car over state lines. I always read the fine print and I've used several companies.

I'm sure it would cost several thousand dollars. Do you think it wouldn't be worth the cost?

It may not have been practical for the flight crew because of hour on duty restrictions. But they could have transported 4 passengers for $1-2 k on a limo.

With Uber or a private cab company probably around $1,500. That's $375 per crew member, less than offered for IDB (if it had been offered in cash).

Care to elaborate? I've never had any trouble going over country lines, let alone state lines, in a rental car.

I've occasionally had rental companies limit me to nearby states, but they usually don't care. When they do care, I'm certain they can be made to stop caring if you apply enough money to it.

Rental cars (booked in Germany or Switzerland) often included restrictions for me. Most of the time they excluded a number of eastern/balkan states, quoting (if they offered reasons at all) insurance prices would be higher. The more expensive the car, the more likely were these limitations: Booking a Golf was 'go anywhere', booking a BMW 5-something .. not so much.

Completely irrelevant. We aren't talking about Germany or driving to other countries, that's totally different. We are talking about travel within one's own country. I would expect rental car companies to limit travel to foreign countries.

Nice use of 'we' there. I implore you to read the post I specifically replied to once more. That post explicitly talks about crossing country lines.

We = this article and the commenters on this article. We are commenting on travel between two US states, nothing to do with crossing country lines. The grandparent topic was, specifically, about ground transportion for four Americans from one part of the US to another part of the US.

Well, this whole subthread is about an American airline operating in the US. (And yes, you can potentially drive a car across an international border from the US!)

Five hour limo rides are nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe a thousand dollars or two.

Apparently this is part of negotiated contracts for the crew.

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