Originally Posted by
channa
While IDBs are indeed few and far between, the impact is real. Tell that couple who misses their honeymoon cruise but gets a $100 IDB check that it's very, very, very small minority of people who get impacted.
I'd actually tell the DoT that the carrier has violated the law. But that's just because I operate in the real world.
I'd also tell the couple on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to get to the cruise port a day early and buy trip insurance.
Originally Posted by
channa
And you're 20 times more likely to be IDBed on UA than you are on VX.
And infinitely more likely than on JetBlue. That still doesn't mean it is actually likely to happen. Just being 20x worse doesn't mean it is necessarily actually bad.
Originally Posted by
channa
The point is the UA numbers are worse than industry average, and we should hope they are working towards improving them,
Indeed. But we should also not pretend that they mean the company is a disaster where nothing ever goes right and where every rebooking takes 30+ minutes. Mostly because that isn't actually true.
Originally Posted by
ibuyyoufly
Second, everyone has 250 friends. Thats the multiplier used when you offend a customer. Those 12,000 customers have the ability to influence 250 people each and through word-of-mouth. Thats 3 Million. Now all of a sudden, that number is meaningful. In fact, more meaningful than any of the influential Media Headlines I listed yesterday in another thread.
If this was actually true then airlines would have stopped overbooking a long time ago because so one would be flying on them any more because everyone knows someone who knew a guy who was IDB'd once.