Interesting that AA is doing exactly the same thing as UA wrt filling middle seats, but is not getting anywhere near the public lashing that UA is enduring. Not sure if DL is actually doing what they say sans the "small print".
Delta and AS are blocking seats, and AS has gone so far as to block all aisle seats on it's RJ (basically flying at 50% of capacity. They have correctly (IMHO) determined that what they will gain in customer loyalty as well as people feeling comfortable to fly again long term far outweigh the short term loss of a few extra seats sold. No reports I have seen of
unrelated people getting put into middles on either airline. (That you see three people in a row together does NOT mean Delta is assigning middles to unrelated people like UA and AA are)
But Delta - like AA and UA appears to have told their crews not to get into fights over masks. That does dissuade me from flying on Delta. Some dude who think it's his right not to wear a mask in confined spaces is the last person in the world I want to sit near. So for now I am booking AS > DL, and not going to book UA or AA at all. I will feel safe flying Delta when they divert a flight and have the non-mask wearer pulled off by the cops and then charged and sued for the cost of the divert.
Is UA getting hit harder than AA for some real reason no. But the photo that went viral and the story behind it - medical personal complaining UA was packing people in middle seats on EWR-SFO - involved UA, so UA is getting top billing. This is just another e.g. (doa, UA breaks guitar, sizing the assigned paid for seat from the women flying from Hawaii's kid and making her kid sit on her lap) of why in the social media age stupid actions by airlines result in outside impact.
Originally Posted by
bluedemon211
From a PR perspective, this was a must. UA is getting hammered in the press for "playing with semantics to mislead customers" (per a column in the Guardian). I guess 70% has become a magic number for some reason.
I - and everyone I know in the medical field - believe that not filling middle seats AND mandatory masks are the minimum given the level of transmission going on in the US to be willing to fly. Some disagree, some think the virus is a hoax. But about 65-70% of the public supports social distancing, and those who are most likely to travel (educated professionals, upper income people)
at this time are even more supportive of social distancing. So an airline that is an outlier and defies what the public thinks is safe is likely to get hammered - and UA has been - but it is also likely to drive away bookings.
Post 2012 UA has been basically my last choice when I had options, with my buying being VX>D>AS> foreign carrier > AA/UA. AA and UA have traded placed over that period. But while a better routing, better a/c, much better price could cause me to guy a ticket despite what I did not like about UA, what I consider safety is just not negotable. What United is doing is the equivalent in my mind to deciding that they were just going to cut the maintenance budget in half, and decide to fly with more broken systems.