US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
travelandtourworld.com
travelandtourworld.com
I'm not for heavily regulating non-safety details of how most industries do business, but I do think it's fair to demand the true price up front and compensation when the airline doesn't provide the service it sold for reasons within its control.
I was positively surprised at their proactive communication. The money was on my account within the week!
[1] https://www.firstonline.info/en/trenitalia-rimborsi-automati...
However, they don't make a peep when the flight lands with a delay.
Passengers only options were to either deal with the dehydration or declare an actual emergency and get official medical transport off of the plane to an ER and deal with whatever bills/consequences that might generate.
That doesn't excuse the flight crew for not handing out water however. That's just a cheap airline being stingier than necessary.
- after 1hr delay, they must provide access to water/A/C/heat/lavatories. Also to medical assistance (if needed). - and after 5hrs on tarmac, passengers must be given the chance to leave the aircraft. - Exceptions: These rules do not apply if the delay is due to safety, security, or ATC reasons.
Making you wait outside on the tarmac before boarding is bad but skirts the regulations. They key clock time to watch is how long were you waiting after boarding the plane?
Probably also useful to reference your specific EU rights if they object.
If after 1+1hrs wait, passengers were going to faint unless they got water, that seems to be pushing "would need medical assistance".
Too many times I’ve seen flights, closer to empty than full, mysteriously cancelled due to “mechanical issues”.
Yes things happen on their own. But others are motivated by profit.
Why the exception for this then? There are many situations where regulations could protect consumers and I don't understand why you have the general view against non-safety regulations.
The most important is that airlines have the ability and motivation to force passengers to accept unfavorable terms, and passengers have no ability to negotiate more favorable terms. Many routes are only served by one airline, so there isn't even competitive pressure in those cases. There's also a financial incentive for airlines to mistreat customers, e.g. by overbooking flights, canceling underbooked flights, and delaying non-mandatory maintenance until the cheapest or most convenient time.
I believe in regulation for the market to protect consumers for all products and services.
Regulations that put a floor on how crappy airlines can be should be pretty neutral on competition since all the airlines would have the same rules.
That's not to say all rules are a good idea, even rules that raise quality -- raising the floor raises prices, and if the floor is raised higher than necessary, prices are higher than necessary too, making flying less affordable. Set the floor too low and people fly less because it's too crappy. Set the floor too high and people fly less because it's too expensive. You're looking for the balance point.
IMO, the floor is too low right now. I think it's a mistake to try to lower it.
Deregulation and disassembly of consumer protections is what Americans voted for.
Ah, but do you own an airline?
Seems like a great opportunity for an airline to be less crappy and make a lot of money selling tickets to all those people who are "flying less" on other airlines, no?
So the question then becomes why hasn't someone done that already, if the floor really is "too low"?
Most people want cheaper tickets and don't shop on quality. In the rare cases that they do airlines readily adjust. But the airlines trying to offer quality as the default would go out of business
Basic economy doesn’t exist because of Google Flights. It exists because it sells. Well enough that it sustained entire discount airline fleets until the majors copied their model.
It was only a 30 minute delay but the heat made it miserable.
I paid for a name brand airline, paid to choose a decent seat, could have paid for more upgrades, but no amount of money short could prevent me from waiting out a delay in a hot cabin because the airline failed to maintain their equipment. The folks in first class faced the same miserable heat.
It's a market for lemons. Paying more doesn't assure quality, it just means you spent more money to get screwed. So people aren't willing to pay.
flyontime.app helps you with this (I know, massive plug, but hugely relevant to this discussion and 100% free with no strings attached).
It seems you have to charge a big, big premium to deliver a less crappy experience.
And even then, the experience is only better in some dimensions - your checked luggage receives the same handling no matter what ticket you buy.
The cost is around $1k/10k per flight hour.
No. Because people don't know how crappy it will be when they book.
They're just juggling prices and scheduled times.
People who aren't flying very frequently and don't have a trustworthy source of knowledgeable recommendations -- that is, a substantial majority of people -- will never take enough flights to know which airlines are worth $X more. If they even have many options for their route and time.
1. https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellat...
It does, from a purely ecological point of view. What was the number again? 4 longhaul flights for life per person if we want to achieve sustainability?
The answer is actual competition with some reasonable passenger protections.
Let foreign carriers compete here (9th freedom rights). No bailouts for failed operations or even unusual circumstances like covid.
The PPP program turned out to be a widely abused transfer of wealth from taxpayers to capitalists, yes. But I actually think in general that bailouts, especially for smaller industry players, are an important tool for preventing industry consolidation, which causes generational-scale harm that is difficult to reverse or even remediate.
I think what need to happen is that it should be much easier to pierce the corporate veil in cases of obvious negligence in planning that leads to being unprepared for a predictable event. And of course putting an end to PE-style "corporate raiding" behavior that really just amounts to embezzlement. Imagine an economy in which the owners, directors, and chief executives of corporation are, as individuals, required to uphold some level of fiduciary duty to their customers. The economy might look very different in that case.
It's hard to see how that can happen when politicians take money from the rent-seekers who benefit from the status quo. "Competition is for losers", says Peter Thiel, so buy yourself a state-sanctioned monopoly (like Palantir).
This is physically impossible. Airplanes require airports and airports only have so much space they can dedicate to flights.
An extreme example of this is the Ronald Reagan airport. How could you possibly get more competition there when it cannot grow and it's surrounded by the urban area?
That's like saying the solution to your water company monopoly is more competition. You can't bury more water lines for different companies. Someone has to own the existing lines.
That was pretty much Google fiber in a nutshell last decade. They existing cable lines eventually pushed Google out of it.
I think the biggest issue with airlines is they act as only an airline. The first company to realize they are a transportation company and can get you door to door will be great.
E.g. an airline that can seamlessly get you to/from the airport via a local premium/private transit line that can get you to your home or destination.
Water lines can't be put in that way because PVC pipe isn't flexable. Ditto for gas.
That's the reason you might see more ISP competition and lines placed but you aren't seeing competition with your sewage or water provider.
If you've ever seen a company do water line work, you know they had to dig up and repave every single driveway the line was buried under. It also takes a lot longer time.
Hence the reason I talked about water providers and not fiber providers. You have similar problems putting in new waterlines as you would expanding an airport (only much smaller and easier to overcome).
Well American Airlines is already doing this, you book a ticket and on some routes they transport you via a bus instead of a plane....still sucks.
How are you defining "everything" and "upfront"? Upfront as in the first page shown after searching?
Because many, many airlines/car rental sites have a complex muti-step process of different fares, extras etc until you get to the final stage
Sure you will have upsells but if a price for a service is presented, that should be a final price. You can't tack on "resort fees", the price presented must be inclusive of all the required charges. For example as much as I dislike Booking.com, the price they show for a room includes everything — tax, mandatory cleaning fee and city tax if applicable.
You can go to the last page and book rental. Only at the airport counter you will learn, there are extra fees you need to pay.
Due today: $0.00
Due at car rental counter: $0.24
Car rental: $0.20 Scg - lpf $0.01Scg - iva $0.03"
I think this supports precisely my point — in EU all the fees are presented such that you can get the service without any hidden costs
Also, so much is unbundled these days, you have to be really careful what that initial price really includes. For example, with Sixt, they often don't include the basic CDW + Theft coverage which for a long time was always included in the base price. I assumed it was law in most of Europe. Luckily Avis, Hertz, Europcar don't stoop that low
You're right - you can book a car, and if you don't inadvertently agree to extras either verbally or on the ipads at the rental desk, and don't incur any extra charges/fees during the rental, the price you pay should be what you initially reserved :-)
And you're right about booking.com - they seem to do a fairly good at at incorporating tourist taxes etc into the final price.
> Automatic Refunds for Cancellations
> Transparency of Fees
How does a lawmaker justify this being in the publics interest ? I'm not even joking, I know "well lobbyist going to lobby", but this is a legitimate question. How does a regulatory body say "Yup, that's okay with us to remove" ?
The problem here of course would be the definition of "reasonably similar". Arriving a few hours later can be entirely fine or completely ruin a trip, depending on the circumstances.
But price transparency ?
> A4A opposes the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) rules requiring airlines to disclose ancillary fees upfront, arguing that these rules exceed the DOT’s authority and don’t provide any clear benefits to consumers.
> don’t provide any clear benefits to consumers
As a customer I like to know where my money is going and how much.
Cancelling a flight without refunding it, just means profiting at the expense of the customer.
Businesses are able to insure their limited cost of cancellations, and price their tickets to absord these insurance costs (which are ultimately born by the ticket-payer).
Deregulating this point just puts all the risk and burden with millions of individual customers, some of whom cannot easily carry the cost of unexpected events, and aren't professional parties that can and routinely do enter into properly-negotiated insurance products to mitigate their risk.
> 've done this myself in the past, as far as I remember; changes of a few minutes in either direction often make an entire booking refundable.)
My understanding is that refunds eligibility starts at a >3 hour change, meaning an alternative timetable of 2 hours doesn't trigger an automatic refund right now. Further, even in the case of a significant change (>3h), the refund isn't automatic, it is only paid once the customer refuses an alternative booking or compensation. For international flights it's even 6 hours instead of 3.
> Arriving a few hours later can be entirely fine or completely ruin a trip, depending on the circumstances.
I do agree on this point, context really matters. And I think in theory it makes sense to offer price-differentation based on the context. i.e. if I am slow-travelling for 4 months, I'd be happy taking a 10% cheaper ticket (no-insurance), and have no recourse if there is an 8 hour delay.
Whereas earlier this month when travelling overseas for a wedding the day prior, I'd have paid a 10% extra fee to insure my travel time, to ensure I have recourse to travel with a limited (<2h) delay no matter what or be significantly compensated.
But that's still all theory, at some point differentiation on everything leads to complex and difficult decision making for customers. Fun in a Sim computer game, not so fun when booking a flight is a 20-step process with 200 pages of T&C that I have to assess against my personal situation.
You generally don't though? The airline will rebook you directly, even if the flight is on a different airline in my experience.
> Businesses are able to insure their limited cost of cancellations, and price their tickets to absord these insurance costs (which are ultimately born by the ticket-payer).
Those insurance companies have requirements for paying out, in Europe for example a low fare airline Ryanair will offer you a refund if your flight is delayed 2/3 hours. You can choose to still take the flight though which, for some is acceptable. But that refund is by way of a request, it's not automatically processed. It works, for me personally, but I've been delayed for important things where it was only an hour, I would have loved to have been able to get s refund to book on another airline but I have to say, I wouldn't "expect" that.. which is why I can soften on their first point.
Reality: Tickets all cost exactly the same (because no company is going to willingly take less money) except now you get to pay more for less benefits.
I understood that to actually be the case, even though that wasn't actually included in the platform. Which is one of reasons I didn't vote for the current administration.
That said, I imagine that among those who did so, some folks are fine with it, some folks didn't care one way or another and some folks were unaware that this would happen.
As such, I think you're painting folks with far too broad a brush. Which is, I imagine, quite satisfying. I hope you got what you wanted out of that.
> I understood that to actually be the case, even though that wasn't actually included in the platform.
It honestly takes less effort to listen to his speeches and look at his record than to read the official platform document or the one we knew was the actual plan (P2025). I'm happy to hear out anyone that pleads ignorance but they're probably still busy celebrating deportations.
> As such, I think you're painting folks with far too broad a brush. Which is, I imagine, quite satisfying. I hope you got what you wanted out of that.
What a weird thing to be offended by. Voters voted for this. There's no ambiguity here. Even the ones who don't consider deregulation a pet issue decided that it was worthwhile to get what they wanted.
Reread my comment. I expect that at least one of the three (and maybe more, I pointed out three) groups you lumped together don't consider "consumer protections" to be burdensome or costly.
Did I not make that clear? Or are you deliberately missing my point?
>What a weird thing to be offended by.
Who said I was offended? I said I thought you were painting folks with too broad a brush. And the "folks:" to whom I referred didn't include me.
As such, I'm not offended by you. Or at least not WRT the broad brush you used. I can't say for sure, but your patronizing tone appears as to assume I'm not so bright. Which might offend me, except the source is some rando on the inter tubes (that'd be you in case you were confused).
So no. You haven't offended me. In fact, you gave me a chuckle. Thanks!
I mean if they're unaware that a politician will dress up their policy with pejoratives then I'd be happy to have a conversation with them.
To be more explicit regarding your other groups, they affirmatively voted for a president and one or more legislators. They can claim ignorance about a particular policy but it is willful ignorance. As in the kind where they get to own the implications of deciding to not to do any research beyond their one issue.
demonrats. that's what they are all about. If you voted for them, you voted for baby molesting and baby eating. Those far-left lunatics hate America and want to destroy it!
Why do you eat babies? Why do you hate America? Why do you want to destroy it?
What's that? You don't do/feel/want those things? But, but, you voted for demonrats! You must be the most extreme version of whatever someone who disagrees says you are!
Does being painted with that brush make you want to reexamine your choices and/or political ideas? No? Why not?
And what for? It's stupid to try to have a dialogue with your fellow citizens about what's important and what we stand for as a nation, right? Because anyone that doesn't agree, in full, with everything you believe is irredeemably evil and must be stopped, right?
The admin is no longer counting how many people cannot afford food for crying out loud.
The public voted against their interest.
Conveniently leaving out the thought that NONE of the other airlines will do this if it goes away.
It also means that you're often still out actual money if you use award miles.
The problem with PE is that it's often not that great of a deal. Unless it's a super busy route, you can usually keep shopping for an upgrade and just go all the way to lay flat business. Side note, when going business class, understand that not all plane layouts and seats are the same. Check seat guru.
Source - I fly back and forth to the EU quite a bit.
To your other points, at the end of the day, it's an airplane. And since I'm usually flying US airlines, even business class isn't that special outside of laying flat. I do fly back and forth to the EU enough though, that being able to work for 4ish hours is pretty useful.
Yeah. For me, $5K or whatever is still a decent amount and, even if you just put it in the vacation pile, that's a decent amount for meals and other experiences vs. being a bit more comfortable over a 10 hour (or whatever) flight.
The other part of my equation is that I put a 'dollar figure x flight time' that I'm willing to pay to be more comfortable. If I see a price that hits my threshold I upgrade, otherwise not.
It sounds to me like their pricing is working as intended and getting an even bigger upcharge.
Checked bags are also extra for either seat.
Four
How is that even worth the packaging cost
Lastly, there is always the risk of a lost bag once you no longer have it with you. One fight years ago they forgot to load all of the car seats and gate checked bags that were left at the end of the ramp. We were stuck waiting 90 minutes for the next flight from that destination to arrive since we needed the car seat to drive our child home.
I'm not even talking about pay-by-weight as was famously tried between pacific islands. Nobody wants to have someone spilling over the armrest into their seat, and I'm sure plenty of people who are wider than the seat would like to fit without going first class. I'm not even so unusually sized, but cannot sit in the aisle without being hit by every person and trolley passing by.
And compliance is hard for passengers, because you have to call in to book the special case, and who wants to call in?
But theoretically, a passenger that will encroach on an adjacent seat can pay for the extra seat (I don't know if they need to also pay for seat assignment to get two seats next to each other), and then if the flight doesn't actually sell out, the extra seat fee is refundable. But when you actually board, people will see the 'empty' seat and try to sit in it, even though you paid for it. Etc.
Next up, $200 for head-room. You didn't think you could fly keeping your head upright for free, did you?
Sad state of affairs
To get some extra legroom, I paid (round trip, in CAD) $250 for a trip to Dublin this year and $320 for a trip to Hong Kong in 2023. That's a lot of money, but it was <50% of the cost to upgrade to premium economy and <20% of the cost to upgrade to business class.
This used to be much cheaper. I remember paying ~$100 for similar upgrades a decade ago, but airlines got wise to this at some point and jacked the prices way up.
So you can roll the dice and try to get a premium seat at the gate, but that's not a risk I'm usually willing to take.
The airline market is so constricted and basically well across the line of a cartel, but I guess they think they get something out of it or do they just like the getting one over on people? "ha, you thought you were going to have a good time with your family or see your grandmother's funeral for X price, but we squeezed another $200 out of you, Sucker! *board room high fives all around*"
Or maybe is it a kind of momentum of the people and organizational structure that was built up over many years, aimed at facilitating the con and fraud perpetrated on the public that still has power to manipulate the airline enterprises themselves? The people who used to do that are after all, as I assume adept and oriented towards being deceptive, manipulative, scheming.
It's all a bit odd to me and I would love if someone could spill the beans on what motivates the airlines on being so adamant about cheating, lying, abusing, scamming, conning and generally being really awful to people and society.
The second is price discrimination - think current McDonald's prices. Soaking people who can afford it and letting people who are very frugal navigate your confusing system and membership etc is worth a good amount of money
As long as it's in my anticipated budget, I want comfort, consistency, and courage. These undercutters have me scared they shaved off a wing to save on price. @#$% them. I fly with my airline, and these jerkoffs who want to bend over for fascism can die with it.
I use to live in Atlanta and I still fly in, out and through there often. That is the ultimate Delta hub. But you can still get to almost any other major city via the other airlines with layovers.
In fact, it would probably be cheaper. For instance it is cheaper for us to fly from MCO - ATL - SJO (Costa Rica) than it is for our friends to fly the same dates from ATL - SJO.
Charlotte for instance is an American hub, but you can still fly Delta from there to a hub and anywhere else you want.
Right now, while Orlando is not really a hub for any airline, Southwest has the most destinations. We still choose to fly Delta and most of the time with a layover in ATL.
Before you mention some small airport with only a few flights, yes I know, my parents live in south GA and the only comercial flights are three flights a day between there and Atlanta on Delta.
Honestly, people fly too much. I’m 6’5 with a 24” shoulder - flying economy is painful for me and the poor soul stuck next to me.
I don’t need to fly for business and am fortunate to have a lot of PTO. So, I fly first class, business class, or not at all. If the cost is too much, i drive. There’s virtually no east coast trip that is more unpleasant to me via car. I’m young enough that I can do NY to Georgia or Chicago overnight with no ill effect. There’s so much wasted time around the airport many flights don’t even save time.
I’m going on a trip to Asia in the early spring with my kid. I could save like $4000 flying in the back… but why? If that amount of money is breaking the bank, I cannot afford two weeks there anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bmGff5f-Ug
(They are available from all the usual podcast places, but it just happens that the youtube mirror is the easiest way I know to link a specific episode.)
Things like bonuses tend to be driven by short term gains. Who gives a hell about a few years from now when you can get an extra $xxxxxxx in your paycheck now.
>American Joins Delta, Southwest, United and Other US Airlines Push to Strip Away Travelers’ Rights and Add More Fees by Rolling Back Key Protections in New Deregulation Move
This one is wild. You want to sit next to somebody's crying 2 year old? Go nuts. Change their diaper while you're at it.
My spouse and I just finished our first two flights with our 11 month old this weekend which were about 3.5 and 4 hours apiece. Even with an extra seat reserved for them and an overall extremely well tempered baby, I cannot imagine how much harder the flight would have been if the gate agent hadn't been able to rearrange our seats so all three of us were sitting together. If that hadn't been guaranteed, we would have had to ask one of the neighbors to swap seats with us. They'd have been highly motivated to do so, but it wouldn't have been a sure thing. They may have their own needs. Impromptu swaps during boarding seems not great for making the process go smoothly.
Having to get an extra seat to fit a car seat for an infant isn't required, but flying with the infant in a car seat is strongly recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Having somewhere to put the baby or their various toys/bottles temporarily helps a whole lot over a four hour flight. This already added $500 onto the price of our trip.
The cost of raising children is already very high in the US, so it will really suck if flying becomes yet more expensive and stressful. In my opinion, this (and many others) are a cost which we should spread out if we actually want people to have kids.
Air travel is a solved problem and there's no innovation really to be done; the planes are packed like cans of sardines most of the time, the food is awful, and the travel itself is expensive, cumbersome, and a miserable experience overall but they are STILL trying to find ways to juice revenue, up to and including separating children from parents and charging them to be put back together.
You don’t _want_ a sleep deprived new parent on-call. A sleep deprived person is not who you want responding to an emergency, so of course others should pick up the slack temporarily. That’s what being a TEAM is all about. Kind of like playing a sport?
Now if the team is tiny the on-call impact will be a much bigger deal, and i sympathize, but in that case i’d blame management for having poor redundancy / contingency plans, NOT my colleague.
And for some reason there’s always some snarky person who chimes in with a comment like “but they chose to become parents!” A tale as old as time… so did our own parents! They chose. But i’m a human being that has empathy and i’m grateful to those who helped pick up the slack during their stressful newborn phase.
It's an additional expense which isn't a luxury for parents. You can't sit far from an infant for 6+ hours because they need close attention. Also, sometimes there aren't adjacent seats for you to choose. Nevertheless, gate agents are usually able to somehow make things work. I'm not sure how they do this on a packed flight though. I didn't notice anyone being called over the PA after a gate agent moved all three of our seats to a different row on our last packed flight.
But I paid for my seat and if I did pay to sit next to my wife (which isn’t really a big deal for either of us), I would be really pissed if my seat was changed because a parent was too cheap to pay to have an assigned seat.
My wife and I have chosen a different flight because the seats we wanted wasn’t available.
Of course all of these opinions of mine go out of the window if it truly is an emergency. But even then, at least with Delta, they only allocate a certain number of seats as “basic economy” and once those are sold out - like they might be on a last minute flight - you have to pay a fare where you choose your seat.
You appear to have since edited your comment, but the version I replied to referred to being able to choose a seat as the luxury, not flying itself. As I've said elsewhere, flying is either a straight up necessity in some cases and a practical one in others. As I've also said in other places, people without kids can fly without need of choosing their seats.
> But I paid for my seat and if I did pay to sit next to my wife (which isn’t really a big deal for either of us), I would be really pissed if my seat was changed because a parent was too cheap to pay to have an assigned seat.
You can debate on whether or not flying is a necessity, but if we're flying then it's a luxury for you to sit next to your wife but it's a necessity for me to sit next to my infant.
You have to pay for all sorts of “necessities” because you have kids - just add that to the list.
That difference matters quite a bit if you're specifically arguing about how people who are going to fly get to experience said flight.
[Edit] If you don't believe that parents have as much reason to fly as anyone else I don't think there's much point to further discussion. However if you do believe it then whether or not assigned seating specifically counts as a luxury matters quite a bit.
> You have to pay for all sorts of “necessities” because you have kids - just add that to the list.
Why should we accept increasing the relative cost of having kids? That's a very good way to make having kids prohibitively expensive and part of how we've gotten to the point we're at. I'm in my late 30s and most of my friends chose not to have kids. For quite a few of those friends, they decided not to have them specifically because of how expensive it's become. You might think that's acceptable or even good, but birthrates are declining and people don't seem interested in allowing immigrants to come in and fill the void so I'm not sure what the endgame here is.
> Why should we accept increasing the relative cost of having kids?
So i now live 10 miles away from DisneyWorld, should my ticket prices also be more so your kids can get in free when we only have to pay for two adults? We were also able to downsize to a 1200 foot condo from a 3100 square foot house, we can spend our money on vacations instead of travel hockey like my friend.
What next? Should airlines have “kids fly free”?
> You might think that's acceptable or even good, but birthrates are declining and people don't seem interested in allowing immigrants to come in and fill the void so I'm not sure what the endgame here is.
I’m all for both low skill and high skill immigrants coming in where there is actually a shortage.
But play me the smallest fiddle because you don’t think you should have to pay for a ticket to reserve your seat requiring other people to move. See also, if you are too big to fit in one seat without encroaching on my space, you should also have to buy two seats - a policy many of the airlines have.
Society has to treat parents differently because children are necessary for society to continue. If you make being a parent sufficiently burdensome, people will choose not to have them.
We traveled so my only remaining grandparent could meet her great granddaughter before she dies, which could be any day now. Do you think we should make doing that harder just for slightly higher profits?
I didn't do these things for economic reasons growing up, and I'm perfectly fine today
The kid will get over it, and the misery of the rest of the people on the flight isn’t my problem. The stewardess can deal with it and nobody gets their peanuts.
I was in one of these situations once where we missed a scheduled flight because of an airline screwup, and they refused to accommodate us without a substantial payment - thousands of dollars. Frankly, I couldn’t afford it. This despite the fact I already paid for an assigned seat on the fubar flight.
The predictable outcome happened after they pulled away from the gate and the flight crew came to me and my response was “He’s 20 rows away, what do you expect me to do? Sounds like the options are to move us, or return to the gate.”
They figured it out and were great about it, but the whole situation was stressful to everyone and was completely unnecessary. Flight crews are busy and it’s just senseless toil.
i.e. when my child was young, a waiter could hand them a lemonade and they'd be ecstatic. If I handed them the same lemonade, they would start screaming at me the color of cup was wrong.
Then, people with that flexibility could offer that flexibility to the airline in exchange for a cheaper ticket that meets their needs and people who don’t have the same level of flexibility could buy tickets that reflect their needs.
I say this as a parent who pays for assigned seats because we choose to buy tickets that reflect our actual level of flexibility.
> I say this as a parent who pays for assigned seats because we choose to buy tickets that reflect our actual level of flexibility.
For what it's worth, I'm saying all this as a parent who flies on airlines where assigned seats are the only option afaik
Their flexibility is lubricating the entire system and making it work better. Why should we charge them the same amount as people who aren’t as flexible?
What I see is people who aren’t offering that flexibility arguing that they should still get the price as if they were willing to provide it, when they are consuming rather than providing it.
Let me know if this is an unfair summarization, but the way I see it: my comments discussed how charging parents additional fees to sit near their infants is bad. Your comment proposed charging people who wanted assigned seating for that feature and allowing people who don't need that flexibility a discount. How does that address my point rather than simply re-describe the thing I've already described as the problem?
> Why should we charge them the same amount as people who aren’t as flexible?
Because that flexibility is needed more by parents and we generally want to encourage parenting and reduce the burden on them by using the power of the state to spread such costs out. IMO we don't do nearly enough of this, like with family leave, daycare, or healthcare costs.
If the standard is everyone can choose whom they sit next to (assuming seats are available), then parents are at no disadvantage. This is how air travel was for a very long time, when tickets were much more expensive and much more all-inclusive.
Now, people are seeking cheaper tickets, so the airlines propose to offer discounts for passengers to forgo some of that all-inclusive nature and if those forgone items are a good match for your needs, feel free to take advantage of them. If they're not, feel free to buy a ticket that meets your needs.
No one would think that when the USPS offers Next Day Express, Priority, and Parcel Post that a parent should get Next Day Express for the price of Priority or Parcel Post just because they're mailing something for their kid, right? When a rental car company charges a family of 6 more for a large car than a childless couple is charged for an economy car, are they violating some kind of social contract? "Use discount code BUTIHAVEFOURKIDS to rent a Suburban for the price of a Civic." A landlord charging more for a 2 BR than a 1 BR also hurts parents, but I assume most people think that's logical and proper.
> we generally want to encourage parenting and reduce the burden on them by using the power of the state to spread such costs out
Some people want that. Not all people want that and probably no one wants it in unlimited amounts. I have kids and I'm largely indifferent on the topic beyond supporting strong K-12 public education. I do observe that some people take the notion of "we should spread out the costs of kids" way, way too far for what I think is rational.
Selfishly, I'd be perfectly fine if Basic airline tickets were made illegal for everyone. It just makes my looking at airfares online more annoying because I'll never buy a Basic fare. But, people who do find Basic fares to meet their needs ought to be allowed to have access to them, so I don't actually want them banned.
I get the idea of paying for the privilege, but at the same time, it's not like they roll out the red carpet for someone who flies with their kids. Pretty much every time that I can remember them ever rearranging seats to get us together, we always wind up sitting in the rows at the very back of the plane close to the bathroom, which is fine with me. If I wanted red carpet treatment, I'd pay for first class for everyone. But I'm not about to do that.
All I do know is that if they were to stop rearranging seats, it would make the frequency of our flying go down quite a bit. At a minimum, if they went that route, I would want there to be a guaranteed payment to be able to get everyone to sit together. That way I can at least plan for the extra cost. Knowing airlines they would probably use a sliding scale based on age or something.
Currently, it's just the case that parents get a discount on the seat reservation fee.
I basically only fly with a kid because everyone else is willing to subsidize the massive externality I impose on them.
With the current implementation exposed to the end customer, yes, that's required. Reserving specific seats isn't fundamental to the constraint that some people want to sit together.
Plus, the current reservation system is predatory in its own right. When booking you're dumped into a page strongly suggesting you must choose a seat, and all available options cost more than the base ticket.
Also see, I’m not going to work extra hours because a parent can’t work late. Just because I have grown children doesn’t mean that I don’t have a life outside of work.
Or when it comes time to tax the shit out of the grown kid made possible by the massive time and money investment made by the parents, the lion's share of the total. "No no no, that was society's investment -- now they owe us those taxes as part the social contract!"
When it comes time to do the gangster shit it's all on the parent, but when it comes time to reap the benefits suddenly "we're a society."
"I don't mind paying more money in taxes" they always say, knowing full well that the majority of the incidence is on the next generation.
And if you expect me to defend the police or Karyns about anything, let’s just say I grew up on NWA and “F%%% the police” and my mom constantly told me that don’t think because my White friends could get away with minor criminal mischief that I could.
Well actually she said “don’t let your little white friends get you in trouble”. But close enough.
If you're talking about a private company choosing who to subsidize once government regulations are removed, then I don't see how you have room to complain. It's not like taxes. You can charter a flight or rent a cessna to pilot if you don't agree to the private terms of carriage of anyone offering tickets.
Taxes are way worse because a guy with a gun can show up and put anyone who disagrees with the majority's idea of charity or subsidy into a tiny cage; if you disagree you can't even escape it by leaving the country because the USA has worldwide taxation. I would classify private flight subsidization as a much more ethical, moral, and wildly less violent regime than taxing people for the healthcare of others.
From the little I do fly other airlines, only the cheapest fares don’t at least give you credits for cancelled flights.
Every airline has a credit card that gives you free luggage where the annual fee is cheaper than the baggage fee for a couple flying round trip.
My wife and I also have status with Delta (Platinum Medallion), lounge access, TSA PreCheck, Clear etc so we can do our best to not deal with families and once a year vacationers. We live in Orlando now.
But if I did have small kids. I would definitely pay for reserve seatings.
You know this is going to happen too: there are going to be some subset of parents that are not going to pay extra and will just choose to let the airline make their kids some complete stranger's problem. Hope the general public enjoys it.
I don't understand this. When you book a flight, do you not chose your seats so you sit together? Why should it be up to the airline to ensure you get a seat with your baby, that is part of planning a trip.
When I rent "the cheapest car on offer", if it is a 2 seater, and I have 3 passengers, that's on me for not planning for my passengers.
People who chose to not pick their seats (to save the $25 or whatever) shouldn't then punish people like me who paid to sit in a specific seat with specific neighbors.
Well, no, it’s on all of you in the sense that all of your passengers pay the price for your mistake. But as the guy behind you in line at the rental place, makes no difference to me.
If a parent isn’t sat with a child everyone sat anywhere near the kid pays a price.
Again, I (who paid for a selected seat assignment) should not even be asked by anyone (staff or passengers) to get up because they didn't pay for a seat with their baby.
I just disagree that a child's seat should be allowed to be picked at random by the airline, forcing people to move who DID pick their seat. If an adult is booking a flight with a child, they should be required to book the child+parent seat even if that costs extra.
I believe all seats SHOULD be picked by passengers at the time of purchase, full stop. That was the way it had been as long as I had been flying, until they realized they could make more money by charging "seat selection" fees, now you have people who are the last to board because they got the cheapest seats who complain they aren't sitting with their travel partner. Which shouldn't be the problem of the airline or the passengers that picked their seat.
Sometimes we're so focused on the concept of "fair" that we lose sight of the bigger picture.
What they're gonna get is same thing that happened when luggage fees became standard: enshittification because people find ways to pay less. In the case of luggage fees, suddenly everyone's like "yeah, okay, I guess I can fit things into a carry on" and turns out there's not enough overhead space for the entire plane so the plebs in Group 4+ have mandatory gate checks. Is the labor of always gate checking bags really any cheaper than having it flow through the airport luggage infrastructure? Apparently it is slightly, but it's definitely a shittier experience.
What's gonna happen here is parent is gonna book two separate cheap middle seats and ask you when you sit down if you could trade your premium aisle/window seat for a middle seat so mom and child can be together. Because otherwise you're separating momma from baby and therefore a terrible human.
And then we all get upset at each other for trying to cost-hack instead of seeing the real enemy in the room: the pathological MBA's picking up pennies in front of the enshittification steamroller.
And charging parents paying extra so families can sit together is just an easy target.
Selling tickets to a small child and their caregiver and then seating them far apart is plainly not fit for purpose. They can't actually fly like that, so you've sold them something they can't use, and that you know they can't use.
If they want to charge extra to sit together, fine, but that needs to be bundled into the basic price when one of the tickets is for a small child, not presented as an optional add-on at an additional cost.
If you and your partner board the plane, sit separately, and one of you sits next to me that's not a negative for me. You'll sit, you'll watch a movie, read a book, whatever. You're self-contained.
If you and your five year old child board the plane, sit separately, and your child sits next to me that's a clear negative for me. Your child needs attention and assistance. It's bad for you, it's bad for the child, it's bad for me. Probably also bad for whoever sits next to the parent because they’ll be standing up and sitting down constantly to go and attend to their child.
I get that it isn't "fair" in a very straightforward examination of the scenario but take a step back and it's just making every passenger's experience more miserable in an attempt to gain more airline profits. If it happens just watch, the airlines will introduce a "guarantee not sat next to a solo child" add-on fee for you to pay.
Oh great so now I have to sit next to someone’s unattended child in the name of fairness? Am I gonna get the option to subsidise the family’s seat grouping instead of being saddled with that noise? Talk about creating problems for no good reason.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
“When an airplane crashes, the safety belt…may become a deadly hazard.”
- Scientific American Dec 1951 “The Dangerous Safety Belt”
"Aviation requirements for basic safety features, including passenger safety belts, were codified in 1972"
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-airlin...
On the other hand, I never understood this obsession with grown people acting like it’s the end of the world if they don’t sit together. My wife and I fly a lot together - over a dozen trips this year - and she flies more frequently by herself. We both prefer window seats. We hardly ever sit together unless we can get 2 seats next to us by ourselves like on larger planes with a 3-2-3 combination or exit row seats in main.
What I'm saying is, if you do it this way, you're now leaving the decision up to the parents. And some parents will choose not to pay. When that happens – because it will happen – I don't want to hear people complaining about having to sit next to other people's kids. Everyone was treated equally, a choice was given, a choice was made.
The other option is, we say as a society that here is a situation nobody wants, we all see that, so we're all going to collectively agree to set things up in the parents' favor a little bit, thus doing something nice, creating an outcome that is better for everyone, but at the cost that some parent seating gets subsidised by others on the plane.
Just laying out the options. Classic individualist thinking will say, I don't want the government to decide for me that I should subsidize. And thus some people will end up sitting next to somebody's crying 2 year old.
It's just a big pain for everyone.
Does this mean when the passenger cancels or when the airline cancels? If it’s when the passenger chooses to cancel, this seems fine and fair: he paid for a flight; he chose not to take it. If it’s the latter, then it seems very unfair.
> Transparency of Fees
This seems patently unfair. Folks should know what they’re going to be paying ahead of time.
> Family Seating Guarantees
On the one hand, this seems fair. If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege. It doesn’t make sense to tax every other passenger for it. OTOH, families are a net benefit to society, so maybe it’s right for everyone else to pitch in a bit. Also, nothing is worse than the folks who didn’t pay up ahead of time who bug one, ‘may we switch seats so we can sit together?’ So perhaps free family seating makes life easier for everyone.
> [Elimination of] Accessibility Protections for Disabled Passengers
I wonder what that actually means. It could be fair (for example, folks too large for one seat purchasing two) or unfair.
Airline cancellations. Seeing as they're talking about making a change, I assume it's airline cancellations, since no airline will currently refund you for a passenger cancellation.
I understand airlines are very feast or famine and often operate on very thin margins, but at this point I’m willing to pay a little more for the experience to not be so categorically and consistently miserable
Otherwise I find everything ok. The flights are fine -- packed but it is what it is there's high demand. I could do with/without the food if it reduced the price, I can pack my own. But otherwise I find them fine.
What makes air travel miserable for you?
They’re eliminating it because the new CEO is trying to speed-run them out of business.
This CEO is a freaking idiot. Is this an excel jockey/MBA a-hole like the kind that ran Boeing and Intel into the ground?
What’s wrong with the board that voted this idiot in?
Management Has Historically Ruled Out Industry-Standard Commercial Initiatives [like assigned seating, different seat classes, and checked bag fees]
[0] https://beatofhawaii.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Stronger...
They could have added something like $30-50 to each ticket, blamed inflation, and been done. They used to be the premium choice vs airlines like united, which charge way more for intentionally separate coach seats with no legroom or luggage allowances.
Before, you could cancel within 24 hours of boarding and get your full amount as at least a credit without any extra fee for any ticket class. That credit had no expiration. Now, there's a fee and expiration for this credit.
Similar things happened to family members multiple times where their initial flight (overseas) was delayed by 6 hours, they had many issues, and nobody provided information about their rights. I told them about what to ask for and voila, $1100 refund.
Agreed. I think they leave too much money on the table. Use of window shades and lavatories could be behind a subscription service as well, with Sky Comfort+ affording you the privilege of multiple lavatory visits for those who have chosen the luxury IBS lifestyle. I'll let you know if I think of anything else those pesky airline passengers take for granted.
I’d offer $300 roundtrip to Lahaina for 5-10 days, airlines? Any takers?
They tried to straight up remove the window shades, but that’s currently required by Ireland so no dice. A toilet charge has been floated but is apparently difficult both legally and technically. However given Ryanair’s usual treatment of passengers with disabilities I have no doubt a passenger with IBS would have an experience.
Separately there should be a fee for opening/closing the AC vent and using the overhead lights.
> On the one hand, this seems fair. If you want to sit together [with your family], pay for that privilege
This seems shortsighted. Airlines could get much more money if they added a fee to guarantee not to be seated beside a kid!
I'd rather pay a monetary tax on my ticket to keep families organized together instead of the discomfort tax of sharing a row with parent+child that has been unexpectedly split up from their partner and is now trying to manage the child's behavior for the duration of the flight without the benefit of teamwork.
This presumably would mean you’d be feeding a random kid a bottle on long flights. God knows how they’d accommodate breastfeeding.
With an infant, having two caregivers within reach is huge. When flying with infant in arms there's nowhere to put the kid down, you don't have a free hand. An extra set of hands to wipe up spit-up, help adjust clothing for breastfeeding, collect the diaper bag, etc is a huge help.
The idea that parents need to pay more to help their children is cruel. I would expect people seated next to a child to end up swapping, to help the parent and to escape the noisy child. But that slows down boarding as people shuffle seats and adds anxiety that we're perfectly able to resolve.
Some of us parents ask that question for your benefit, not ours. Do you want to sit next to my three-year-old?
I solved the problem by preferring southwest, but their new CEO is an a*hole, and instead of raising ticket prices $50 a seat is adding assigned seating, removing legroom, charging for bags, adding ticket change fees, etc, etc.
Citation needed. These things happen, and the airline has some responsibility. But there's plenty of "playing dumb". Cabin crew: "You have a basic economy seat, which means you didn't get seat selection". "I didn't know!" "There's a big blue warning that pops up when you do this with a child passenger, making you acknowledge it..." "..."
Also, screw airlines that create a financial incentive to make everyone else on the plane miserable.
The last time I flew Alaska, their seating algorithm needlessly separated parties, then jammed everyone into crowded, no legroom aisles, while leaving the comfortable seats empty.
I know it was intentionally splitting parties because I was flying solo and ended up with a center seat. The person next to me was separated from someone that the airline put in a center seat. A naive greedy algorithm would have swapped me and their companion.
They wanted something like $80 for non-malicious seating assignments.
They even made the flight attendant lie and claim was a safety issue, and the plane would fall out of the sky if people switched rows or were evenly distributed throughout the plane. Presumably, management did this so they could charge you with ignoring safety instructions, which is a crime.
Tough luck then buddy. Have fun with the kids.
There has to be some kind of middle ground here, imo. Nobody wants to sit next to kids. Families don't want to be penalized financially anymore than they already are for providing a benefit to society. We don't need to further disincentivize families and further our declining birth rates. At the same time it's wildly unfair to ask people to switch seats when they've paid for them (or even if they haven't).
You made choices, if you were informed about the costs that's kind of on you.
I don't understand the objection to a middle ground approach here, but if that's what we want then screw it.
Wait, why is nobody having kids?
The world has more than enough people, so we shouldn't be subsidizing having children. Imbalanced demographics can be solved in other ways.
Not particularly, no. What I want is for you to purchase the seats your family needs ahead of time, not ask me for them for free.
I know that travelling with kids is really tough. I sincerely sympathize! But it’s not a surprise that a kid needs a seat next to his parents. They know when they bought the ticket that he’ll be coming along, because they’re buying the ticket. They should select the necessary seats then.
Sure, if the airline had to move flights around then 1) they should attempt to preserve group cohesion 2) in extremis folks should negotiate. But for awhile I was getting requests from late-boarders every single time I flew. That’s not an accident: they are flying on cheap tickets and trying to get extra value. I sympathize with that too! But I pay for the value I get, and I don’t appreciate social pressure to give it away.
Your gripe here is with the airline.
In all seriousness I understand your point but I think it's worth considering that you're also applying social pressure.
What happened to "if you want it, then you have to pay for the privilege?" If you want to be sure you aren't next to a kid, just pay for a first class ticket, instead of making other people pay extra for your comfort. You knew your preferences when you bought the ticket, after all. Select the seat you find necessary. /s
The point being that the status quo rolls dice that make everyone unhappy, and there are options for everyone to avoid it by paying extra. Those options are priced by the people creating the situation in order to make a maximally profitable 'pay to avoid this' scenario. I always pay for my family to get together, but blame the airline for making you uncomfortable, not the family.
No, ok never mind, enjoy your flight.
Many airlines have punitive seating algorithms (looking at you, Alaska), or pull crap like moving your seats around and separating you after you select them unless you have status (United used to, at least, since they had a practice of selling non-existing flights, then bin packing planes the day before) so without this you can end up having a breast feeding infant sitting across the plane from its family.
In essentially all cases, the kid can be put next to the parent without splitting up another parrty.
Nevertheless, a parent may choose to book a seat for their infant to give themselves extra space. If the airline puts that seat in a different row, it defeats the purpose.
Moderate turbulence is likely to lead to injuries.
This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.
I refuse to fly with United. I understand that there may not be 10 adjacent seats when flying with a big group, but spreading out a family on purpose just so you are more likely to buy an upgrade is evil.
I understand paying for checked luggage because luggage handling costs money. But purposely making the experience worse just so you can charge money for upgrades is evil.
They also free up the cargo hold so they can transport mail. Speaking of which, did you know the TSA screening area is a farce?
If it were, they probably wouldn't be doing their 8-group boarding process that takes 20 minutes just to let people start boarding, because gate-time is expensive for them.
it's a single pipeline. every single one bottleneck has to be removed.
let's start with TSA.
Newer planes/retrofitted ones with larger overhead bins with space for everybody are the solution.
My man, the TSA is a jobs program disguised as security theater. It's also a funnel for money into contractors' pockets (see: Leidos).
> This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another.
Bin-packing is tough (look at Kubernetes!). Economically, giving folks willing to sit in a random seat an extra $10 and charging folks who want to sit together $10 is a wash.
Evil is, you know, torture and genocide, not efficient allocation of limited space.
Most people don't give a shit where they sit, so most seats are not reserved. Traditionally, airlines tried to just put people close together when they booked together. When we check in, we just get random seats that are close together. That's okay. I'm fine with taking whatever seats no-one else wants.
If I understand United marketing correctly, they will actively sit you apart from others in your group unless you buy an upgrade. That is, instead of assigning you some of the free spots close together, you get put as far apart as possible, and they hope that you will buy an upgrade to sit close together.
Other airlines don't do that.
I am very tall and I always pay for a seat with extra legroom in economy. Whenever I’m picking my seat early, almost every seat in economy is available. People could pay to reserve a window or aisle seat, but anecdotally it seems like almost no one does this. Everyone I know just tries to check in as early as possible so they can grab a good seat before they’re all taken.
I don’t think airlines are actually losing any money by seating families together. It’s not like all those window and aisle seats would have been paid for otherwise.
The idea is that an airplane needs a certain revenue to run. Suppose it's 10k, and there are 100 passengers. Each passenger thereby pays $100.
However, some passengers (A) wish to sit in a big seat and are willing to pay for it, and others (B) don't care about seat size and are willing to give-up space for a cheaper ticket.
As such, 1 Passenger A may want to pay $250 instead to get a 30% bigger seat, while 3 passengers B give up 10% of their seat size and pay a $50 ticket. The airplane still collects $400 from 4 passengers as before, but the passengers are happier now. They have traded their individual desires, for something less valuable. A desired a bigger seat and thought $150 extra was less valuable than this bigger seat. B desired a $50 cheaper ticket and thought the smaller seat was less valuable. They traded and became happier.
You may say but nah, airlines will simply charge for bigger seats and keep the smaller seats the same price. But they don't, because they must compete with other airlines that don't. If they could do this they would've already.
For seat picking it's the same thing. A prefers to pay to sit close to a friend or partner. B doesn't care and prefers a cheaper ticket. Thus A pays a bit more, B pays a bit less.
I've always had to pay for seating as long as I can remember, I never cared enough (except long international flights), so I enjoy slightly cheaper prices than a world where there was no choice. It's not as evil as it may seem at first glance.
What you seem to be missing is that some airlines have started to split up groups on purpose. When they assign seats, even if 75% of the seats are still unassigned, they put people who booked together far apart from another to make them pay for seats.
That's where it turns to evil in my opinion. Fortunately "normal" airlines don't do that yet so I know that I can avoid crappy airlines like Ryan or United.
It effectively sorts people in group A who cares about seats (and thus pays to prevent random seating) and group B who doesn't care (and effectively gets a subsidised ticket price from A, by giving up their seating preference).
Then there's a group A of wimpy rich kids (who pay to prevent getting punched in the face) and a group B who don't mind getting punched in the face (and effectively get a subsidised ticket from group A).
In my example, seats must be assigned. You can't seat people safely in an airplane without seat assignment.
You can assign it as an airline, or you can let the customer assign.
Not all customers care about assignment equally. Thus there is a market. And in a market you allow people to trade their value.
Pay more for preferred seating, or pay less and accept random seating. Both groups win, total welfare increases. Group A values seat-assignment more than money and gets the more valuable of the two. Group A values money more than seat-assignment, and gets the more valuable of the two. It's a classic trade scenario where both win.
The airline merely functions as the marketplace to allow people to trade, and to get to a more optimal scenario (pareto improving) where the total utility/welfare goes up.
Random seating ensures that everyone makes this trade, and thus ensures you get the closest to max pareto efficiency.
Without random seating you'd get the free-rider problem: those who don't care (or care only a little) about seat-assignment, don't get a discount that they value more. These people are not paying for a feature they don't value, and subsidise those people who do value it and are willing to pay for it independently! While those that care a lot about seating, aren't guaranteed the seat they want, despite wanting to pay for it. This decreases total welfare, it's a destruction of value.
Your punching example is different because it's introducing a harm for everyone. Everyone cares about not getting punched, it's below the baseline service. The baseline service is a ticket to safely go from A to B. Seat assignment is an extra feature above the baseline that some want to pay for, and others don't. Not getting punched in the face is a deterioration below the baseline, it's a nonsense idea to introduce it. That's why it's different. I
Of course the market mechanisms will work just the same, that's certainly true. But the morality or logic behind the airline introducing this is completely different.
It’s fair only if he does it at the last minute OR the seat goes unsold.
As someone who pays for an assigned seat so I can sit where I want, this annoys the crap out of me as now they expect people like me to move.
When I point this out, their response is "why should I pay for that?"
I agree with the airlines here but if it makes life overall less stressful for all to put families together due to the bad behavior of those parents, I'm fine with it.
I remember as I was annoyed that this whole thing was holding up my flight. Family asked someone to move, they declined, family kept insisting. Boarding line was getting held up due to this. FA arrives, starts imploring the man to move his seat, obviously just trying to get boarding complete so we can all move on with our lives. Eventually the man got up & changed.
(to be clear, I don't do this personally and pay extra to sit together but I do hope people start parking their kids all over the plane since that's what we all seem to want! It's tempting.)
Let's ignore special cases where you didn't have a chance to buy assigned seats, and focus on the vastly more common scenario where parents can easily pay to ensure seats of their choice.
Yes, it's nickel and diming by the airlines to make all seat assignments paid. And hating airlines is completely justified.
But I find the entitlement of parents, that other passengers should accommodate their parsimonious preferences, just amazing.
You can't have it both ways that you don't want a child next to you and just expect parents to spend extra money to accommodate you.
Easily pay? I assure you it isn't easy for a lot of us. The irony of your use of entitlement.
If you can't afford to fly then drive.
I don't understand, are people buying random tickets and hoping to be put together once on the plane? I've literally only bought assigned seats on flights except on Southwest.
Though when we had young children, we seriously considered not paying and enjoying having somebody else looking after our four or five year old for the flight :-)
Given it is a necessity, I feel it should either be a compulsory extra cost if you have children below a certain age or it should (ideally) be free to be seated together, so that people who do pay for particular seats know that there won't be an unsupervised child allocated to the seat next to them.
We get about 2/3 of the down and there's now nothing, so I say -- with some desperation -- "If someone would be willing to switch seats so my daughter and I can sit together I'll give you $20." A guy says "I don't want the money but I'll switch."
Which sort of shows that if you're not a jerk, and you ask nicely, often people will go out of their way to help you.
Families who seem to expect other passengers to move, especially when there's assigned seating, are another story, and deserve the condemnation they get, IMHO.
I believe this is referring to when the airline cancels or meaningfully changes the flight. They already don't guarantee refunds if you cancel.
What privilege? Assigning seats next to each other costs airlines next to nothing (assuming they assign seats in the first place, which almost all of them do).
This is my absolute pet hate. Most of the airlines I fly frequently with specifically throw up a dialog box making you acknowledge "I have no seat selection options with this fare", yet every flight, I'll see people doing this stupid seat dance. No, I chose the seat I wanted for a reason.
We take fewer, but longer, vacations, and use the extra time to drive to our destination. We try to avoid freeways as much as possible so we can see smaller places. We make vague plans and stop when we get tired or hungry.
I know it won't work for everybody, but it works for us and I love it.
For a mere 40 hours of unskilled labour! Compared to months to years of labour, travelling on ships, 1-3 centuries ago
1. People like business travelers or those with even minimal levels of status/benefits (who don't pay for checked luggage) don't usually preferentially check bags because luggage gets delayed, it's harder to switch flights when there's a weather etc. problem, and they have to wait at the luggage carousel.
2. Hard and hard-ish roll-aboards are a menace. Especially in a world of generally more casual dress, soft-side luggage would make overheads a lot more manageable--understanding that some people really can't use shoulder bags or backpacks.
We hate lugging luggage around the airport for layovers and now that we don’t live in ATL any more, we almost always have layovers.
At Copenhagen Airport, I usually get off the metro, walk to the luggage tag machines at the end of the platform and scan my passport (or boarding pass). That prints a bag tag (and boarding pass if requested), so after sticking that to my luggage I drop it off at the counter — I put the bag on the scale/conveyor, it scans the barcode, prompts me to press "Confirm" that there's no explosives etc, and I'm done.
I scan my boarding pass to go through the barrier into the security screening, walk to the gate, and very often scan the boarding pass again to get onto the jetbridge.
I can easily go from the metro to the plane without interacting with anyone. I understand this is Scandinavian bliss.
(Exceptions are trips to countries where I need my documents to be checked; e.g. to go to the USA a checkin agent has to see my ESTA visa waiver. Oddly, going somewhere like China which requires a printed visa in my passport does work on the machine, as the machine prompts me to scan it.)
I found American airports less hands-off (especially security, which is considerably more hands-on than I'm used to, "Sir, I will now rub your balls"). But then I'm almost always flying internationally out of the USA, so it's not a fair comparison against domestic (Schengen) flights in Europe.
On vacation I don't have my work laptop, so it's easier to toss toiletries and an emergency change of clothes in a small under-seat carry-on bag. Besides, tourists aren't expected to smell nice and look put-together, and are more likely to have a flexible schedule that would let them go shopping if the bag doesn't turn up.
Only once has the airline lost my bag while on vacation. It was only slightly annoying and they found the bag and got it to me eventually. I've seen a coworker whose bag was lost on a business trip to India. He was stuck wearing the same clothes - a tshirt and jeans - for multiple days. This included time in the office (which had a dress code) and at least one business dinner.
Not that taking everything carryon was really an option in this case, but I had a bag misplaced after a connecting flight was canceled. This was a group hiking trip but I had at least an extra day scheduled. Still spent about $500 to minimally restock although my bag arrived at literally the last minute before one of the guides left the hotel for our one-way walk.
(Then there's the factor of how much time and space all that also wastes at security checkpoints.)
Checked baggage has the efficiencies of forklifts and trucks and conveyor belts. Just as airlines fixed most of the problems with those systems and got them to be efficient beasts they decided to disincentivize actually using them by charging extra for what is the cheaper cargo space. I wish an airline would have the courage to reverse the fees structure and charge for overhead bin space instead. (But then I also travel with IBS issues and my patience in deplaning has been severely tested enough that I know not everyone shares quite my annoyance at deplaning issues in particular.)
And for the pedantic really small planes like Sansa in Costs Rica for their 30 minute flights between San Jose and other cities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quepos_La_Managua_Airport#/m...
https://www.vacationscostarica.com/_next/image/?url=https%3A...
But that has more to do with the realities of the plane and the airport infrastructure like you said. It’s not about airline policy with regards to checked bags vs non checked bags.
On that plane, they not only weigh your bags, they weigh the passenger to make sure the plane isn’t over the weight limit.
(Delta also has a third type of "gate check" if you count the regular checkin desk silliness to try to skip bag fees by checking in with 0 bags, getting asked if you want to gate check, and then checking it at the checkin desk like checked baggage is supposed to work. That also goes to your final destination, but it's a silly process of "no I don't want to check bags" to say that "yes, I have one bag I would like to check but it's not worth your silly fees to check if you want to charge me".)
I also have met people that like the "jet bridge checked baggage" and think it a feature, not a bug. I understand there is a flexibility it offers if a connection fails or is too delayed or what have you, but the slow, artisanally hand tossed baggage part of that seems so inefficient and slow down to the rest of us, it is hard for me to not see that as a bit selfish and something that should have fees to pay for the extra labor and time involved. Also, if anything it seems a reminder that Baggage Claim got put on the wrong side of Security checkpoints in the US out of a mistake from historic airport layouts, and if you were to design the system from scratch you'd put it before leaving Security and allow people the option to choose which destinations it needs to be picked up (but still defaulting to the final one), and maybe a "recheck" desk right next to it.
i love travel but i hate dealing with airlines. their executives rank up there with health insurance as some of my least favorite personalities.
and one last thing, other than (eventually) telecom way back in the 80s, has there ever been an industry whose deregulation has been a net win for consumers? i’m genuinely curious and not asking sarcastically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines#Business_trend...
United had their highest revenue in 2024, and their profit margin was... 5.5%. Would reducing your ticket price by 5.5% make any difference?
so the profit margin on economy tickets is likely even smaller than 5.5%!
The 747 became the queen of the skies because it carried 400 tourists to Málaga, Okinawa and Ft Lauderdale.
i suppose you could reduce safety standards, but that’s undesirable in its own right.
This is wild. Are they really asking to be able to take money for a flight, then cacel it and keep the money? That's crazy.
Edit: Comment of comment value removed. Updated to increase value. Thanks indoordin0saur, I am occasionally in the wrong gear until the psychotropics kick in.
They could cancel 80% of flights and keep the rest to pretend they are still an airline.
Cancelations would be more profitable than the flights themselves.
Don't forget that a lot of flights are business flights. Fortune 500 companies will negotiate deals with the airlines, and they will ensure that getting there matters. Sure the CEO flys the company jet, but the next level down rarely does, but they talk to the CEO and will ensure that the chosen airline will get their people there by contract (wherever there is), if the airlines start failing to get people there on time these contracts will change since the large companies have enough money to matter. Those who fly a lot (again likely for business, even small businesses sometimes have someone flying several times a week) again are people the airlines need to make happy as they will go to different airline if there are problems.
Which is to say they can screw the "common man" who rarely flies, but most of the business is people who have enough power to to to airlines that treat them well and at that point it normally isn't worth screwing anyone.
I think even an arbitration court would have them reimburse you if they simply canceled a flight and kept your money.
If AA cancels my flight, I want my money back without having to ask for it. I don't want to have to submit an application to receive AA credits that expire in 6 months, and then have to initiate legal action to get my actual cash back. Or having them say that they rebooked me on a flight three days later so they are off the hook.
The current rules make it so that the customer has the power. I can still give AA the option of rebooking me or refunding me, but it is MY choice.
Airlines have full time lawyers with nothing to do but push paper around.
Why are we making it harder for the consumer to resolve an issue when the flight is clearly cancelled?
They just want to force you into weird store-credit style refunds so that you cannot go to a competitor or choose not to travel.
If there is any upside to mandatory binding final arbitration, it's that proceedings are cheaper and quicker. It might be that the arbitrators decide to universally rule in favor of the airlines amidst unambiguous evidence that the airlines took money and canceled the service, but seems unlikely.
It's also a huge risk on the part of the airlines to decide that their official policy is to stiff customers and hope it works out in arbitration.
> Why are we making it harder for the consumer to resolve an issue when the flight is clearly cancelled?
Because we elected the guy who said he would, going so far as to ensure he had a majority in both houses of Congress.
> They just want to force you into weird store-credit style refunds so that you cannot go to a competitor or choose not to travel.
Lol yes that is exactly it. I wouldn't have written that stuff above if I knew you were going to correct yourself.
I wish every flight cancellation and delay emails had FAQ style “what are my choices” section where you can see your right clearly.
Keep in mind this rule has only been in affect for a little over a year. Airlines weren't being "wild" last year before the change.
* Giving a credit instead of a refund.
* Offer a take-it-or-leave-it alternative flight.
* Only giving out credit/refund on request (so people that don't realize or do it in time loose their money).
They call what we have now “clear”? Where when looking at a page of flights I don’t know how much the multitude of economy/economy+/economy++/premium economy/business/business++ seats will cost until I click on each flight? Where every carrier offers slightly different variations of these seats such that I can’t cross-shop on Google Flights?
Is that the clear and transparent system the airlines are complaining about?
Personally - I think that the two main drivers of autism are people having kids later and too high rates of smart people intermarriage.
Of course Trump should not have said Tylenol, but paracetamol.
And there are some very mild hints in the data that they are correlated, but not enough sigmas.
And of course it could be Tylenol and something else with which ot interacts. And autism is so hard to be linked to anything because of how big the umbrella is and that we have such high delay to diagnosis that we will never know. Not taking medications when not really necessary is probably a good precaution principle
My point is merely that the lie against reality is being perpetrated by Republicans. You never really addressed that.
Anyway, it works very well for the aches and pains that come from manual labor.
(To be fair, though, this was never mainstream in the Democratic party the way these things are now among the Republicans.)
Biological sex clearly is not a fiction; we have lots of evidence that it's not something you choose. It's also not necessarily binary, even in humans, although it is mostly binary.
I also did not believe that Biden was ready for four more years, but then again, what choice did I have? I would not have voted for Trump under any circumstances, and sitting it out would be giving my vote away.
You're painting with a rather broad brush. You must have at least a few liberals in your life with whom you can compare notes.
Not sure what you mean about it being a Trump, sit out, or Biden choice when Biden wasn't an option in the final election. The choice you had was to vote for someone else in the primary, which did have plenty of other people running (albeit no major names). Of course, the better thing would've been the Democratic establishment putting a better option in front of you for the primary, so that's not directly your fault, but is the fault of "Democrats."
> You're painting with a rather broad brush.
As are you when you call the Democrats' reality "the real reality."
I literally never said that. You also have no idea what my political background is. All I said is that I would never vote for Trump.
In fact, I do believe that there is one reality, because I am a scientist. For me, politics has nothing to do with it. I’m sorry that it does for you. It shouldn’t.
The person you replied to said, "democrats will push us in 1984 dystopia where they force you to accept that reality is what they tell you..."
You replied with, "Which reality is that? The real reality?"
So, yes, you "literally" did. You "literally" argued that "the reality Democrats tell you" is "the real reality," which also strongly suggests your political background. If that was just some kind of joke that you're now unable to stand behind, maybe you should think harder before you quip next time.
But it doesn't seem like it was just a joke. It seems like you're deluded enough to continue arguing that, from a purely "scientific" and "non-political" standpoint, Democrats never make false statements (and hence "the reality they tell you" is "the real reality"), despite there clearly being examples to the contrary.
Looks interesting!
And yes, the director's cut. Absolutely the director's cut.
And baggage handling systems are much better than the 80s. It's been 5 years since an airline has lost checked luggage for me. But of course, it's been 5 years since I checked luggage, so who knows? I really miss Yamato 宅配便 from when I lived in Japan. Americans really don't know how to travel correctly.
Meh. The dollar is probably going to be devalued soon so the dream of air travel for the typical American will likely only be in the rear-view mirror. We'll all be lost in wistful nostalgia about the time when normal people could afford air travel.
So... SOME things were worse in the 80s/90s. Not all things related to traveling.
Prices of tickets were more expensive for sure, so air travel was more of a luxury.
The era of the hidden fees started during the late Bush era, and with the advents of online booking, and with the rise of the 'cheap airlines' like RyanAir, Spirit, etc...
They had hidden fees as part of their busisness model. The larger carriers started following suit with more restricitons for the cheapest base tickets (no luggage) and more fees for things that used to be included before.
This is completely different from the 90s, which you paid and things were more upfront.
It hasn't even been two weeks for me, although my luggage arrived the next day. I remember on Slashdot hearing the advice of always packing a firearm (even a starter pistol) in checked luggage when traveling domestically—not only is it legal, but the BATFE gets involved if the airline loses your luggage, so the airline is very careful not to lose your luggage.
I don’t understand how it could be made simpler, unless you want every flight to cost the same, which is stupid. Hence the complaint does not make sense.
When choosing your outbound leg(s), they show a price inclusive of the cheapest return journey on the day you selected to return using the class of service on your outbound leg. So, there's all sorts of ways for it to be incorrect - maybe you want a different class of service, maybe the cheapest return has a stop but you'd like the direct, etc. - but it's still really useful for figuring out the best options for your flights.
The legislation nor the regulations were geared toward third party aggregators.
There is a reason I took Amtrak last vacation. Too bad they doen't go do where my next vacation will be.
Whenever I search (admittedly mostly on Southwest), I get everything up front.
What they want is a return to the old pre-Obama days where all the taxes and mandatory fees (government and stuff they made up) were only displayed at check out. Kind of like resort fees on hotels.
I drive a lot more these days and if Amtrak was better I would take the train more often. I get to catch up on podcasts while driving and usually do it over the weekend so I can stop and see out-of-the-way roadside attractions. Before driving I-80 between Reno and Salt Lake, I never realized how empty some sections of the country are.
I'd be curious to hear if this is happening in Europe or Asia.
The handful of times I've flown Southwest have been slightly less than perfect, but some of that was user error not understanding how Southwest worked compared to normal carriers.
I don't want to discount yours, or the thousands upon thousands of reports about United or Southwest, but in my experience, it has been pretty solid on both counts.
I bet if I looked at where flights originated, United is doing a East to West pattern and there are just fewer opportunities for cascading delays to impact people getting on the plane in the east. Comparing with Alaska, which has other problems, but hasn't canceled too many flights on me, I bet most of the flights I take originate out of SEA going south or east, so you don't have that same pattern.
Also... Southwest... I remember when it was a good airline. Just another example of what hedge funds can do to you. FWIW, they have a train at DFW now that will take you to either downtown Ft. Worth or downtown Dallas (or even Las Colinas. Or DENTON. I took a train from DFW to "downtown" DENTON once!!! The wonders never cease.) I would love to see LUV field step up it's mass trans game.
I bet you are on to something.
1) Deregulate claiming that competition will lower costs
2) Further consolidate carriers so that there is even less competition
3) Profit!
With the corporate buyout of government, it won't be long until we see the announcement for the new AmDelTed.
On a like-for-like basis? Seat pitch, seat comfort, customer service, meals, drinks, included baggage, ticket flexibility/conditions etc?
EDIT: found some example historical fares from Flyertalk:
1. A 1972 BA flight to JFK in economy. I imagine economy in 1972 was more like Premium Economy today. It was ~£80 then (£944 in 2025), whereas a Premium Economy ticket sells for more like ~£800 today, which is cheaper (but still not 100% like-for-like if you consider BA is a very different company now). Also that's an extremely competitive route and an unusually cheap PE fare. A less competitive route, LHR-SFO, you're looking at £1,700-£3,000 for PE !
2. BA, LHR-BRU, economy, non-refundable fare, £40 in 1976, which is £268 now. I'd wager BA european business class is similar to economy back then, and that usually sells for £200-400 on that route (~£600 last minute...), so taking an average, we're not close to it being 50% cheaper
This is undesirable behavior, but how can a meat-package compete with a rare-metals, rare-earths, or even small aluminum shipment? The cost of shipping goods has risen astronomically since covid. Meat-packages now must compete. We're losing the competition.
If you buy their lowest fare - which they try their best to steer you away from and they say prominently in big bold type avive where you order your ticket that you will not be able to choose your seat - you cannot in fact choose your seat. Then parents complain and people who did pay to choose their seat are forced to move so kids can sit with their parents.
The rest of the items that the airline wants to roll back are foot guns for infrequent travelers.
https://otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/air-travel-complaints-resolution-p...
But note: > Due to a high volume of complaints, there will be a delay between when a complaint is submitted and waits in the queue and when the complaint process will start.
wat
"Two days from when we actually ship it, which might be today, but might be tomorrow, or in three days from now..."
We're already at the point where people don't trust the listed price of flights and hotel bookings (Vegas has made hotel resort fees globally famous). It just seems the long term result is everyone will use some app to calculate the real cost of their trip, and what those apps display will be the real list price.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250627-the-big-change-a...
But the governments of the big operating companies have vetoed this so far. Sometimes deregulation actually makes it easier to implement regulation.
And for example if you take TGV from Paris to the German border, and you have to get on an ICE. If the TGV is late, you miss the connection to the ICE, and have to sleep in the border town, TGV doesn't have to pay.
And missing connection is quite common, specially because Germany is ... not very German.
In terms of safety, a train accident can kill 100s of people. They just don't happen very often.
Made it much easier to get compensation for delayed and canceled trains. ( Of which there are many ).
It's not a significant amount for minor delays, but it makes traveling on trains just that little bit less miserable.
Huh? We do!
There are very similar EU regulations for train travel: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
On a completely unrelated note, I recently noticed that Deutsche Bahn seems to have some of their train schedules staggered by 58 minutes instead of one hour – which means that the 25% refund for a delayed arrival due to a missed connection that didn't wait will usually not kick in :)
If your airline is delayed and you miss a connection, you will get a hotel for the night. In a train, you can get that.
Airlines are forced to compete on price and have to publicly list prices and make that accessible to 3rd parties. Train companies do everything in their power to silo as much as they can to force costumers into booking threw their app.
Which regulation requires airlines to do so? I was under the impression that airlines mainly make their inventory available via GDSes for historical reasons (for decades before direct online booking, airlines would sell most of their tickets through travel agents, which needed unified interfaces).
There are some low-cost airlines that don't embrace GDSes and force you to use their app as well (I've been bitten by that once when booking through a "non-cooperative OTA/reseller and not being able to access my boarding pass), and conversely, I think some train connections are selling tickets to travel agencies these days.
> If your airline is delayed and you miss a connection, you will get a hotel for the night. In a train, you can get that.
Sure? EU regulation 2021/782, article 20 would disagree: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...
My understanding is that currently, this regulation might work within one provider but not on handover. If you book in DB app, and you miss the handover to TGV it doesn't work.
But maybe its the case that the regulations say that it should and it simply doesn't.
That said, I think a fundamental problem is that sir travel is too cheap. That's the motivation behind all the nutty fees.
Surely there would be a market for an airline (or a class of seating) where you get a decent seat, with no gimmicks and up-charges? And not for triple the price like business class?
I fly a couple times a month with Alaska or Delta, economy tickets only, and this is always my experience. No weird fees, price known up front, the seat is fine, etc.
"For many years, all flights featured 2-by-2 leather seating (in aircraft usually fitted with 3-2 seating), ample legroom, complimentary gourmet meals, and warm chocolate chip cookies. This made the airline popular with business travelers. In addition, Midwest Express operated a sizable executive charter operation with a specially configured DC-9."
I'm in favor of stronger regulation, actually.
If the airlines jerk me around I’m more likely to just not buy a ticket and stay home. If they make it a great experience it’s something I’m going to look forward to.
I suppose we’ve just given up on the concept of trying to do anything but nakedly extract profit at any cost. You’d think shareholders would be pro-competition in the end, though—I certainly would prefer that.
Edit: I mean short-term profits. As a shareholder I would prefer long-term profits via competition and diversification.
The end game of capitalism is monopoly. Why would shareholders want competition that prevents them from extracting maximum profit?
Airlines profits are basically zero per ticket. Adding $10 per trip would be some sort of fantasy land windfall for the shareholders.
Deregulation badly broke this industry.
Your comments remind me of the arguments Ma Bell gave to justify their monopoly. Oh noez, quality will suffer if there's telecom competition. Well, people ended up being willing to make the tradeoff.
You did score a hit with airline profits being low. The whole purpose of regulation was to artificially inflate prices to ensure profits for airlines.
Basically. I have used a combination of miles and co-pays to upgrade to business trans-Pacific. But most of the time going from the east coast US to Europe (especially when I can do it without a red-eye to London), I end up thinking of all the nice stuff I could do with $5K at the cost of sort of a miserable flight.
It's not that I couldn't splurge but there are other things I'd generally prefer to splurge on.
This is directly correlated with airfares. Were planes as sparsely loaded now as they were then then fares would be correspondingly higher. But in a deregulated environment there's a very strong incentive for increased economic efficiency to keep the fares competitive.
> and flying is miserable
It isn't. I have flowing with budget airlines in Europe and its, basically fine. Not luxury but really its incredibly value.
On the same price as you did before, you now get luxury.
> Crashes are way up this year.
What the fuck does 'this year' have to do with it when we are talking about something that happened in around the 1980s.
Total safety is up massively, and per passenger safety is up by an absurd amount.
Any counter-argument to this is literally not credible.
> Airlines profits are basically zero per ticket.
So capitalism works? Not sure what your point is.
> Deregulation badly broke this industry.
Based on what?
And in both the US and in Europe airlines are 'heavily' regulated. That's a meaningless distinction.
Ironically, South West was the most successful budget airline in the US, and it was way better then Raynair the most successful budget airline in Europe.
What the actual F? Deregulation of airlines was massively beneficial to consumers.
"Base ticket prices have declined steadily since deregulation.[15] The inflation-adjusted 1982 constant dollar yield for airlines has fallen from 12.3 cents in 1978 to 7.9 cents in 1997,[16] and the inflation-adjusted real price of flying fell 44.9% from 1978 to 2011.[17] Along with a rising U.S. population[18] and the increasing demand of workforce mobility, these trends were some of the catalysts for dramatic expansion in passenger miles flown, increasing from 250 million passenger miles in 1978 to 750 million passenger miles in 2005.[19]"
Also, are those prices apples to apples with pre-deregulation tickets?
Like, can I just walk up to the terminal, same day, pay that price, and get the equivalent of business class on the plane, and still pay 44% less than real 1978 prices?
* Automatic Refunds for Cancellations: Airlines want to remove the requirement to provide automatic refunds when flights are cancelled or significantly altered. Passengers may instead receive only vouchers or no compensation at all, leaving them without recourse in the event of a major flight disruption.
* Transparency of Fees: The airlines also aim to strip away rules that require them to disclose all fees (like baggage, seat assignments, and service charges) upfront. Instead of the clear, itemized pricing system that passengers currently rely on, airlines could hide fees until later in the booking process, making the true cost of a ticket much higher than expected.
* Family Seating Guarantees: Under current regulations, airlines must ensure that families with young children are seated together without additional charges. This would no longer be guaranteed under the new proposal, meaning families could face extra costs just to sit next to one another.
* Accessibility Protections for Disabled Passengers: The deregulation proposal also targets protections for disabled passengers, weakening their access to support and assistance during air travel.
Nasty site full of a gazillion trackers etc.
There is not coverage beyond one adult already in the US. With an additional adult and one child, the airlines already adds in fees. It’s also non-transparent when booking that they have made sure the easy path is the charged path, especially now that airlines make you pay to guarantee being seated together prior to flight checkin 24 hours in advance of takeoff.
Basically half of flights I've ever booked have had a cancellation. Usually the airline customer service had to rebook a new itinerary for the same purpose, but once in the past year they had to issue a refund because all possible routes went through DFW and they had lightning, which they have all the time.
It's absolutely ridiculous to even suggest that you should be able to take someone's money and not render services. That's a fundamental part of commerce.
I wonder if there are any anti-retaliation provisions, or if they’ll just have a special no-fly list for people they sold non-existent flights to, and that refused to pay up.
You would seem to be a very unlucky person. My record is somewhere in the low single digits. Obviously, my percentage of flights with some delays has been somewhat higher.
Capitalist money-making idea: guarantee young children are seated as far away as possible from their parents if the fee is not paid, then offer to collect the fee from other passengers seated next to the child. Double the cost if it's a baby.
Would airlines even get away with that, given that card payments for non-provided services can usually be trivially charged back?
Presumably business travelers would not always care enough, but their company's expense management department certainly would.
I'm against rolling back all of the other ones mentioned, but this one, I don't have a problem with charging a fee to be seated together. Most airlines let you pay to pick seats anyway.
Give me a link, document, reference, or something to back up the claims. Otherwise it comes across as FUD.
- price of the ticket was as advertised - a checked bag was an option at the same price it has always been. - I was able to assign a seat next to my husband without additional fees.
Now while this flight was not cancelled, I’ve had to reschedule some flights with Delta due to illness previously and they just gave me a 100% credit for the cost of the flight that was easy to use.
The only contrast for cancellation I know is the nightmare of Air Canada. In the past I’ve had flights get cancelled and only got “vouchers” that could only be used by calling a specific number that took 1 hour+ and were not applicable for taxes (you know half the cost of a Canadian Airline Ticket), and would be lost of not fully used in one purchases
The air industry seems like a good example of just the right level of regulation: There's tons of competition, different pricing tiers with their corresponding levels of quality, and a lot of dynamism combined with a good set of consumer base regulations (24 hour cancellation period, for example).
In my experience, it has been rapidly going up in price and down in quality since the end of the pandemic. You have very few protections as a passenger, and while you may have some rights on paper, they have been made excruciatingly difficult to pursue with the way support lines work with airlines.
To add insult to the injury, look up the history of bailouts airlines have received.
Are you in the US? In the EU there are many websites that help you get a cancellation/delay refund, they require little more than your boarding pass, and they work very well for a small (sometimes none) fee. The fee is taken from your refund so if you don't get one, you don't have to pay anything.
What with orange two-chins in charge, MAGA, ICE, deregulation across the board, and the general shit-housery that seems to be going on over there, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to attempt it again in my lifetime ... it's not the actual travel that is the issue, it would be the non-stop gag-reflex on landing ...
RIP USA ...