Delta better enjoy it now, because reasonable people aren’t putting up with it.
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Everything would be fine if everyone just KNEW THEIR PLACE.
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Actually, the paid for seat was for a person not present on the flight. They could have paid for a seat for their 2 year old, but chose not to do so. Then the family apparently chose to argue the point, delaying numerous other passengers as a result of their entitled attitude.
Much like the honeymoon couple from last month, I have a feeling that these people knew that what they were doing was against the rules, but chose to double down. Unfortunately, in this age of social media outrage, they will probably come out ahead while the rest of us manage to keep to the rules.
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Reasonable people who have the economic means to vote with their wallet. Sadly.
I for one, have to pay for the cheaper ticket I can afford, be quiet and shut it up, and be to the mercy of the booking system, agents and so on . Be it United, Delta, AA… I tried to behave the best I can, not bother anyone else, arrive 3 hours early to the airport, etc.
I don’t consider overbooking the problem, because everybody knows that it happens, we just have to be observant and deal with it. Or take the road/bus/train/seas. Just choose the transportation corporation of your liking/budget.
These airlines will not disappear, at worst they will merge.
An observation though… Is this phenomena mostly on the USA side? What about Euro/Asia/Middle East/Latam airlines?
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I thought in this case, the point—the whole story—was not that overbooking sucks, or that trying to use a ticket in someone else’s name is good or bad or reasonable or whatever. The point is that some asshole who works for the airline dealt with an inconvenient or unpleasant situation by threatening to take someone’s kids away.
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The family paid for a number of seats that was equal to the number of seats that they were occupying. They had seat assignments for those seats. According to the news report, they discussed the substitution with the airline prior to the flight.
I am sure it sucks to be a gate agent. The pay is probably substandard, and they are the ones enforcing rules that they had no part in creating, and might not agree with. I am sure many of them are very nice people. But some of them, for whatever reason, have an attitude that is very adversarial towards the passengers. that leads them to invoke rules that do not exist, and make the sorts of threats seen in these videos.
There are some people who simply do not have the temperament to be in a position of authority. They end up abusing the limited power they have to make up for feelings of inadequacy or anger about some past event or just because they enjoy it.
If the airline cannot manage to succeed in business in an environment where every seat is occupied by a paid passenger and fuel prices are at record lows, they need to reevaluate their business model.
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Airlines don’t give a shit what your name is.
They’re just rules-lawyering to collect money from more people than they have seats for.
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Well, I guess we’re really living in bad times when security people don’t limit themselves to only hassling casually dressed, dark-skinned people who don’t happen to be carrying briefcases.
/S
:
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Seriously, though; Can you say power tripping?
I knew you could…
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No, inviting more people on the plane after it was already full was delaying the flight.
Maybe don’t do that.
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And a lot of these same corporate folks refuse to use any mental gymnastics to perhaps treat paying customers – people – with dignity and respect. And when the rules side with the customer, the rules are bent, twisted, cracked, and reformed to the benefit of the corporation.
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This is what happens when a civilization is built on the fallacious premise that material wealth matters more than anything else in life.
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They absolutely do. Even down to the spelling.
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(Sorry, but it’s “prescribed” because “proscribed” means pretty much the opposite of what you intended. As a fully paid up pedant I manage to kick the habit often, but not when such inadvertent errors are likely to lead to others seeing and assuming it correct. That way it goes viral and people end up very confused.)
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That has happened to me. And they never reimbursed us for our paid seat they then used for another customer.
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If they didn’t let guys named Muhammad on the plane, that would be them caring what your name was. Collecting information so they can use it against you later if it’s convenient for them is not the same thing as caring about it.
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It’s bad enough that they pulled them off the flight, but even worse that they didn’t even put them up in a hotel or schedule them on a later flight.
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But it was paid for by the family, and it seems a simple enough thing to simply exchange the names of the fliers in that seat, since they were already there and in possession of a ticket for said seat.
With the amount of non-refundable tickets being sold these days, overbooking a flight seems like a stupid practice if you’re going to get to keep the money anyway and save that much more on fuel costs for not having to carry that person and their overstuffed carry-on bag. Congratulations, you just made a boatload of cash and you don’t even have to provide the service you were contracted to perform! All you’re doing by overbooking is risking collisions that will inevitably do damage to your brand image, even if it doesn’t get plastered all over the news.
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Well, soon the FAA will be privatized and all those pesky safety rules will go by the wayside. The airlines will be able to have people standing in the aisles (and infants in the overheads), and there will be room for all!
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Insert emphatic BULLSEYE! meme here _____.
I don’t fly often, but I don’t think I’ve ever bought a ticket that wasn’t non-refundable.
This is about opportunist greed, plain and simple.
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