United Airlines is… likely to regret charging people to use its overhead bins.
https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/806509887043866624
The new ‘pricing tiers’ won’t happen this year, but God help the first flight that combines this policy and any delay whatsoever in takeoff or landing. You’re gonna see people riot who don’t normally riot. They probably won’t set fire to the plane itself, but they’re gonna riot. And maybe not even God would intervene if the AC cuts out while it happens…
I’m an intermittent business traveler, not a true “road warrior”, so .. maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how United stays in business.
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Their employees run the gamut from unhelpful to surly to downright hostile, their on time record is sub-par, their aircraft – the ones I’ve been on recently, anyway – look like leftovers from 2004, and they nickel-and-dime people on everything..
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And yet, they’re still operating. Just who are all those people flying United?
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Mew
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p.s. Musical interlude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
I’ve never fully understood why so many businesses that provide services to customers, turn against the customers they depend upon.
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I think part of it is resentment from employees metastasizing, combined with poor management allowing that to happen, but that can’t be the full story. Especially given how quickly some of the collapses happen.
The entire modern air travel experience seems to be designed around making it as uncomfortable, invasive, and annoying as possible.
It wasn’t *always* so ..
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The progression from “playground of the rich” to “magic carpet of the business magnates” to “Tony and Tina take their kids to Disneyland” to “bus terminal at 2:00am” is .. fairly well documented.
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It appears to correlate to typical business-drone insanity of not anticipating changes, and not understanding how to *sell* customer service.
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Mew