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United Makes Plans to Drop 'Baggage Neutrality'
theodp writes "If you need a clue as to how creative ISP execs might get in the absence of network neutrality, look no further than United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton, who is wowing Wall Street with his willingness to examine new ways to wring money out of the carrier, including making economy passengers pay a fee unless they want their luggage to come last off the plane." Now I think when i was like gold ultimate handjob elite years ago my bags had tags that usually made them come out first, but this seems just kinda crappy. I mean, remember when you got a meal on airplanes? No wonder people hate to fly.
I mean...yeah, I'm not thrilled with the 'cattle car' mentality you go through, but, hey....at least their prices are reasonable, they seem to be about the best with respect to flight times, and they don't seem to try to fsck the last $ out of their customers.
I hope, though, that they stop the policy of trying to keep good looking chicks with skimpy outfits off the planes....that was kinda stupid.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The airlines all have to be looking at the low cost European carriers, such as RyanAir or EasyJet. I haven't flown EasyJet in a while, but on RyanAir, the ticket covers carriage, everything else, baggage, excess baggage, drinks, priority seating, luggage tags, calls to customer service, etc. etc. are a premium. It's declared up front, and you take the "a la carte" items you wish.
The problem is, that taking one part of this model will not work, you have to take it all - very low cost tickets, fly only one type of plane, open seats, fast airport turn around, and so forth. The leading carriers in the US don't get this, so will nickel and dime without adding service or reducing costs/fares.
As someone who travels quite regularly for their job, I avoid the airports whenever possible because of this type of crap. These days, if it's under 500 miles each way, I'll drive it. I used to wish for the airlines to all go out of business, hoping that they'd be forced to figure out a business model that was actually profitable, but gave up on that after we (US taxpayers) were forced to bail them out after 9/11. It's a mess with no easy fix in sight, unless someone can magically make all of the airline lobbyists disappear.
I always wonder why airlines have NEVER enforced carry on limits.
Because at the point they'd notice, they've already started boarding the plane and you've already gone through security (with the baggage check counter on the outside).
Except in the most egregious abuses, if they tried to enforce carry-on rules, every plane would start having extra half-hour to an hour delays (or in some cases, quite a few hours).
As the alternative to that, they'd need to let people cancel/transfer/change their tickets at the last minute, and they do not want to let people out of that little scam...
-- Fat Tony, United Airlines Revenue Enhancement Agent
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I generally try to be the last person on each flight I take. I take a lot of flights. I generally check a bag.
Trust me, it does not make your luggage come out first. Not even an appreciable fraction of the time.
When I was doing VTC installs on the west coast I usually flew Southwest and it was great because I just wanted to get there and get home. If I got to the airport early I usually got on an earlier flight no problem, if I was late then I got on a later flight with no extra charges. I packed light personally but had a 50 pound tool kit that never was a problem. I rarly had a reason to bitch about SWA.
Now the other west coast carrier, America West was a horror story almost every time. I would wait overnight and fly SWA before I got on another AWA flight. We once arrived at the counter at 6:30am an hour before our flight, pre-9/11, only to be told that because we booked the flight over 30 days prior and failed to confirm in the last 24 hours we were bumped. Even though the seats were paid for. Of course they tell us this after our luggage went down the chute, which they told us we could retrieve if we ever got to Portland. Then promised us to get us on the next flight. Fast forward 8 hours and we are still being fed bullshit by the ticket agents, of course I forgot to mention the two little bored kids with us. AAAAAAAAAAAhhhhh never agian AWA we went done the counter and immediately got on a SWA flight, kids got to sit with the pilot during a lay over (pre-9/11 again dang I miss the old days) and arrived 12 hours after our luggage, which was dumped beside a carousel out in the open. Never again AmericaWorst!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The company that says "oh, by the way, your baggage will come last if you but this cheap ticket" will likely lose out to the one that doesn't say that upfront. The company that doesn't implicitly "include" the discount in the price will appear at first glance to be more expensive and lose out- or if they explicitly mention the discount, they'll have the same problem as the company that makes clear your baggage will come last.
Better to keep it quiet, keep the price of the "basic" ticket very low and then make money charging for the "priority" gravy. Cynical, and it sucks but that's the way modern business works. And to be fair, when prices are being driven down to the bone, that's the sort of thing companies rely on to make money.
As I said, smart customers would realise all this- but real-world customers often don't, giving priority to obvious (and short term) savings over longer term ones. Either that or they know what's happening, but want to save every last cent on the ticket and *then* get annoyed when they actually have to live with the consequences of their decision.
IMHO, the companies are both victims and exploiters of this phenomenon. Removing meals from planes is the same thing. Depends how long the flight is. I flew business class from Scotland to London (approx. 50 minutes), and while the meal (and seats) were nice, the difference in cost over a normal ticket wasn't remotely justified. I'd rather have flown economy and had my employer pay me the difference
I don't doubt that the "cost" of the business class meal was inflated way beyond the cost price, but I still bet that the cost price for the company was significant enough that it would be a serious issue for economy-class tickets. Remember that not only do you have the cost of the food, you also have to store it, serve it and clean up the mess.
And if you think I'm being picky, bear in mind that Ryanair (cheap Irish airline that is popular in the UK) kept their costs down by removing the magazine holders on the backs of seats, simply because it was one less thing to clean up before flying again.
So yeah, the meal does make a difference, and I suspect that most people on short or medium-haul flights would rather just save the money. It's easy to bitch about this stuff, but the days in which everyone got a "free" meal were the days in which flying was far more expensive.
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I used to fly around small airports in Europe quite a lot (places like Salzburg) and I habitually used a very odd-shaped bag. This seemed to work very well, and I more than once saw it travelling to or from the plane perched on top of the baggage trolley and it usually seemed to come out first on the carousel.
My theory to explain its early arrival was that its odd shape caused handlers to put it to one side each time they were stacking something and then pop it on top of the trolley at the end. Worked for me anyway.
Southwest, the only airline making money, is usually only a bit more expensive than the cheapest airline. The employees seem to be treated very well, because they are almost always happy, giddy even. They keep maintenance costs low by only flying one type of airplane (granted the 737 has a large number of subtypes). They don't punish emergency flyers by jacking up the prices in the last two weeks. If you arrive to the airport early or arrive for a connection early, they will try to get you on the earliest flight for free. Southwest understand that delays are cumulative, so getting you out of the airport and to the next stop is a priority over keeping everyone in their appointed seat on their appointed flight. Late night flights on Southwest are therefore sometimes nearly empty, so that flight undoubtedly loses money, but in the grand scheme of things, they make more money by not having to spring for hotels for lots of stuck travelers and making people happy by getting them where they wanted to be, perhaps even ahead of schedule.
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