
United Wants to Sell Your Seat to Someone Else for More Money - kuusisto
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-12/united-wants-to-sell-your-seat-to-someone-else-for-more-money
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reacharavindh
So the airline can auction off seats EVEN BEFORE THE FLIGHT IS FULL and force
feed you their $250 voucher? If it happens to me one time, that's the last
time I fly with that airline. In this day and age, why can't they just fly
planes with constant ticket prices? Makes it easy for consumers and less
sophisticated for the airlines. As a side-effect avoid some PR disasters..

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edraferi
Because that's a huge revenue loss. The basic problem is that the MUST have
the planes full if they're going to make any money at all. Once the plane is
full, they want to charge as much as possible for each seat. This system let's
them move low-fare passengers to empty seats on other flights to make room for
high-fare passengers on full flights.

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reacharavindh
"MUST have the planes full if they're going to make any money".

But, we're talking about bumping passengers off a planes that is already full.
The passenger already for a ticket on a plane that is full. Now, they're
getting kicked out because of pure greed to make more money by the airline.
I'd still be pissed.

It's like Jerry seinfeld said. "You know how to take a reservation, but don't
know how to hold a reservation."

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cafard
If it didn't matter when I got there, why would I be flying? The airports
strike me as less pleasant than the old Greyhound stations I remember from
forty years ago, and the seats on the planes aren't as good as the seats on
the buses.

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captainmuon
What I wrote when I had to justify taking a plane for business travel:
"Destination is on a different continent". Sometimes you have no choice

But yeah, especially when there is high-speed rail as an alternative,
airplanes aren't always the best option.

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mcv
Seems like United is increasingly positioning themselves as the airline for
people who don't care whether they make it to their destination.

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theandrewbailey
In that case, United is just like UDP.

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yellowapple
United Datagram Plane.

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draw_down
Air travel continues to really impress with its ability to get worse.

