* 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 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.
> 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?
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?
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..."
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?
Looks interesting!
And yes, the director's cut. Absolutely the director's cut.
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.
Whenever I search (admittedly mostly on Southwest), I get everything up front.
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?
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..." "..."
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).
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 the "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.
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.
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.
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.
South Korea had to publicly come out and say they wanted to accept Trump's deal, but it had to have some concessions or else they would go into economic collapse!
And the EU just allowed something like 30% more access from USA food which was previously considered not fit for human consumption under their health laws right? Please correct my figures if they're wrong.
> Please correct my figures if they're wrong.
I guess the numbers could be wrong, and the comment completely unreliable.
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.
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.
- 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
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.
Checked bags are also extra for either seat.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Give me a link, document, reference, or something to back up the claims. Otherwise it comes across as FUD.
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.
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?
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.
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."
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.
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
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 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 ...
> 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.
I don't buy that at all, that's what regulations are for. There is no public interest in still having lead in our fuel [0], or arsenic in green wall paint [1]. To say regulations are not for public interest is to say why have any oversight of anything.
Should we say "well fuel companies can make fuel cheaper with lead so lets just remove those regulations.
[0] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/inside-20-year-c...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_green#:~:text=Because%20...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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
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."
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.
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.
I think even an arbitration court would have them reimburse you if they simply canceled a flight and kept your money.
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.
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.
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.
duxup•4h ago
>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
grafmax•3h ago
SoftTalker•1h ago