How Much Would You Put Up with to Avoid United Airlines?
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The viral doctor beating video did not even factor in -- growing up I was personally fucked around by United too many times to ever consider intentionally flying with them as an adult.
I've been told to run literally a mile through an Airport by a United employee, when I actually needed to go 2 gates down the hall. They are past not caring - they actually have a strong desire to avoid helping customera. It's endemic - United employees are an abused and bitter people.
Once my flight was delayed so they transferred me to United and I was pretty ticked off. This gave United the opportunity to lose my bag, an opportunity they did NOT squander.
...if they were at all able, as an organization, to provide awesome services, then they wouldn't be in the mess that they're in.
I'd bet on bankruptcy before that.
About 300K people fly United every day [1] and for the most part have 0 problems (that other airlines don't have) whatsoever. This one bad incident makes the news (the definition of news) and everyone thinks United is horrible and they will never fly them again. Also remember it was the police who dragged the guy off the plane not United. Once the police got on the plane it was out of United's control. All United did was make a phone call to the them (to boot passengers off for their own employees which was wrong), so I feel people should be directing more of their anger at the police instead of United (although some anger can be directed at United too).
[1] extrapolated out of my ass from 2015 data but should be close https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts018_16
So when we heard the news, we didn't just say "How could an airline do that?" Instead we said "An airline knocked out a passenger and dragged him off a plane so a stewardess could have his seat? Let me guess... was this on United?"
(Spirit would have an equally good guess, but at least they don't pretend to be on par with the other carriers.)
That's just anecdotal evidence, which I also have. I have flown United dozens of times, along with other carriers, and don't really have any complaints with any of them since all the issues I have run into were out of their control (the weather).
I am sure I can find a dozen other people who also had miserable flying experiences on Delta for example and then claim "many of us".
The flaw in your argument: it's not just this one bad incident. United has been in the news repeatedly for poor customer service, and many many people have their own horror stories of dealing with them—just read around in this thread. This isn't "one bad incident", this is more like "the straw that broke the camel's back".
So yes, it’s kinda not 100% their fault, but it’s at least partly their fault, and they didn’t have the good sense to fess up to it until it was too late.
I haven't had any particularly bad experiences with United myself, beyond the general badness of flying coach domestically. Do you know who has screwed up my life multiple times? Northworst (now merged with Delta) and even more so USeless Air (now part of American). So I don't delude myself that the exact same thing couldn't happen on the other members of the big three. The real bad actors here were Republic who subcontracts to all three, and the Chicago boyz who serve literally everyone going through that airport. It could have been the same cops responding to the same operator, even if the planes and tickets showed Delta or American.
It just happened to be United, who also happens to have the cheapest flights at the most convenient times for the route I travel the most. I might expect something better from JetBlue or Southwest, certainly from Virgin, but I definitely would have to make a sacrifice of cost and/or convenience to make either of those switches. I might still do that, but "fly American because United sucks" (and ditto for Delta) is just absurd. If you're going to switch, really switch to something that has some real hope of being different.
One of the only times I could say that I was thankful for flying American.
Don't get me wrong: there are purchasing options on SWA also, but they are less pushy about it and last time I checked their prices were lower.
The only reason I have United miles is because they're the best direct choice for business class travel to South America and at that fare class most items are bundled but still no free wifi. And just like their vouchers their miles are essentially unusable.
I recently priced Houston to London with an eye to using miles to upgrade to business. It required $2000 in fees for two people plus the miles on top of the higher airfare required to get an upgradable seat. British Airways could ask me to sing Hail, Brittania every hour and I'd still take them over UA because they're so much cheaper.
But if someone gave us perennial sunshine and all we had to do was become a United hub instead of Alaska? Pretty sure I wouldn't be the only one begging to bring the rain back instead.
[1] http://www.startribune.com/soggy-seattle-lives-up-to-name-br...
Focus on the phrase "analyzing just that risk" in the second one.
Think about what I might have meant.
Think about whether what I meant really should have prompted your snide remark.
In another way, the mounds of negative publicity the last few weeks have already caused change I'm guessing.
Involved in what kind of incident? United getting the police to throw me off the plane? Yeah, that's probably around 0 right now. But an incident involving poor customer service? That's definitely a lot higher than 0.
My wife and son went for Lunar New Year a few months ago and paid $780/ticket on UA, which was not only far cheaper than the competition, it was the cheapest I had seen it at any time for decades (I have heard that the new international routes enabled by the 787, including direct flights from Logan to Japan and Dubai, as well as new carriers flying to Logan have changed the pricing dynamics).
Yes, UA service blows. It's really quite bad. But we are willing to put up with it based on the savings for our family, and can sometimes wrangle the trans-Pacific leg on a codeshare with ANA.
Another thing I have to say about UA: It's much easier to redeem points for goods than other American carriers. This helps us, as my kids and wife get a bunch of miles for the transpacific flights but don't fly frequently enough to exchange them for free tickets. I've been able to cash their Mileage Plus points for tools, luggage, and gifts, including a really nice Citizen Eco-Drive watch. Yes, I know the exchange rate for the miles isn't great, but they cost money to transfer or extend and would likely be abandoned if we didn't use them for purchases.
Well before this issue, they were already flagging IMO and one of the biggest changes was the changes to their seats. They are thin and uncomfortable, have limited recline and their back pocket size is not large enough for a thin laptop anymore.
Their customer support and mileage program were also relatively bad up until recently - now everyone's FF plan is about as bad.
Also DeltaOne from JFK to SFO is amazing - no domestic carrier can beat it.
I also know that if I don't follow the directions/orders of anyone with a bit of authority I will not allowed to fly the specific day in the best case, not be allowed to fly again, or even worst in the worst case.
I don't think that changing airline will affect my whole flying experience too much.
It would, if you switch to a good airline. Just pick anyone in the top-10 and you'll be good:
This is all because of lack of competition, and one would think that a place like the US wouldn't put up barriers to competition, but that's what they apparently do.
So you're mortified, but not enough to jog you out of irrational spending habits.
There are second order effects that come from the pricing pressure and the way the business operates which have a negative utility spread across the rest of your life.
My contention is that the price delta now (what you save) is worth less than the negative value (eg, from societal harm), so the total value difference, when you account for the more subtle effects, is negative. (That is, you'd be better off paying more now and not influencing things that way.)
That's computationally hard to account for and doesn't give the emotional high of "fuck yeah, good deal!", so people tend to do the irrational thing that costs them more in the long run but feels good now and they don't have to think too hard about.
Because there are costs beyond merely the ticket price.