Agree! While the post 3/3 problems are/were unpleasant...it is what the "new" UA "normal" has become that drove us away last December!

I thought it was previously established that unless the 1K/GSes are affected things like customers service don't matter.

So since this only ever is likely to affect non-elites anyways why does anyone care??

For the reasonably frequently flying non-elite (call it 4x return trips annually) it would take a roughly 15x increase in the rates before the odds tip that it might hit them over 40 years. I have a hard time seeing how the numbers really matter at these rates, even if UA is "twice as bad" as everyone else.

I think that many are affected. CO's paltry VDB compensation levels may be causing these industry-leading IDB rates, so everyone may be affected.

It is fewer than 2 out of every 10,000 enplanements. How is that really "many" who are affected??

sbm12, it's over 3,000 in Q1 alone. While the percentages appear low, the impact to those 3,000 is real. Extrapolate that out, and it's more than 12,000 people a year.

You're approximately 5 times more likely to die in the prime of your life (25-44yrs) than you are to be IDBd on a United flight. That's where extrapolating gets you

Yes, out of the 96.4 million passengers carried by UA. Real impact to a very, very, very small portion of the passengers served.

Yup. The impact is completely real when it happens. No one is disputing that. I'm disputing the assertion that "many are affected" which you claimed. Out of roughly 100 million passengers annually 12,000 affected is actually a very small number.

^

It is a consistent theme in posts from channa. Telling him that a number is small invariably - and bizarrely - results in an accusation that you're underestimating the severity of the impact to those people that are affected. The two are inextricably linked, it would appear.

We've seen this play out in a dozen or more threads.

You guys really miss the big picture here. There's an easy and proven way to keep the IDB rates significantly lower than the current industry-leading level - fair & easily executed VDBs. Yet the shortsighted leadership doesn't appear to be putting this into practice.

But hey, it's only 12,000 pax a year, no big deal.

Where did you get the idea that I'm missing this point? Of course that's the solution, I've never disagreed with that and have actively contributed to numerous discussions about that. I'm adding a well-needed dose of perspective to the assessment of where things currently stand, nothing more.

Actually that's not the proven way to do it. The proven way to do it is to simply not overbook. That's what B6 does and their numbers are actually the best. Everyone else is inconveniencing passengers.

If the issue is that ANYONE is getting IDB'd then simply don't put yourself in a position for that to happen. If the issue is the rate then I'll repeat the previous assertion: It really isn't that many people and the chances of it actually affecting you are so small as to not really be a concern.

Fine. Regardless, we'll agree to disagree about the acceptable level of IDBs.

What's not reflected here also seems to be many reports of paid C/F or GS/1K types being IDB'd in the past 3 months - that's definitely a COdbaUA phenomenon, and in essence figuratively "counts" more due to likely negative ramifications.

The "inconvenience" may end up being a benefit when you get a nice credit, a paid room, and food money. It's silly not to overbook business-wise.

As the GS (IIRC) posting here who was IDB'd on LAX-EWR if he/she actively put himself/herself in that position.

Indeed. And anyone looking to improve anything in this world looks at both likelihood and severity of impact.

I think what we've seen with the company is that CO's mentality towards error tolerance is much higher than what we saw at UA pre-3/3. Whether it be the reliability issues we've seen with the systems (ticketing, upgrades, partner flights dropping, etc.), or IDBs, or IRROPS, it seems the company is tolerant of a higher failure rate with higher customer impact that PMUA customers are accustomed to.

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. Remember this is not PMUA where they're popping you on an AA flight 30 minutes later to get get you moving. This is SHARES UA where it takes close to 30 minutes just to process you (assuming there's nobody ahead of you), so your rebook has to be a minimum of an hour or more in the future.


And you're 20 times more likely to be IDBed on UA than you are on VX.

We can play with the numbers all day if you want. The point is the UA numbers are worse than industry average, and we should hope they are working towards improving them, along with all of their other systems and operational issues, even if that's not the trend we've seen in the past few months.

Yeppers! First, a company/business should never want to be at, or toward the bottom, of any bad customer measure. It's just not a sound business principle. Ergo the possible reason for the Employee/Customer Award/Recognition Program.

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.

The bottom line is, airlines are in a Service industry. It doesn't take long for customers, existing and prospective, to determine how well or bad, real or perceived, the company meets their expectations.

As we all know, reputations are important. It takes honesty, integrity, morals and principles to get and keep one, versus only a few and repeated failures to lose it.