Thank you United Airlines ... NOT!

[AggieDiver]

Piling on to the conspiracy theory.

More piling on. If they haven't got the people, then affording them is not the issue.

The airlines are in disarray....WE are traveling at an unanticipated rate, and they have not got the people to staff the flights they scheduled to accommodate us. This is not a ;problem with the airlines; it is true of nearly every restaurant and other service establishment I've been in in the last year.

I disagree. It is not a conspiracy theory to think that when choosing to cancel flights because they can't staff them all, the airlines are going to cancel the ones that they are running the lowest margin on or losing money to operate. That is simple economics and a big factor in how they are choosing which flights to cancel. And I completely disagree that it is "not a problem with the airlines". They booked a schedule and sold tickets that required them to run thousands of flights every month that they knew they did not have the crews to fly. Who was going to fly those flights? They did it thinking they could hire and train enough crews to staff the flights. They didn't. How does it become the fault of the person buying the ticket when an airline fails to properly schedule the number of flights they have the staff to operate?

Part of the reason more people are flying than ever before right now is that the airlines 6-12 months ago were scheduling a ton of new flights and having fare sales to entice people to start flying again post-Covid. Now that the time has come to actually fly all of those new flights, the airlines haven't hired the staff to run the flights and can't run them all. That is 100% on the airlines for offering a service that they KNEW they could not provide with their existing staffing and then failing to ramp up their staffing. It for damn sure isn't the fault of the guy buying the ticket when the airline announced a sale.

 

[tursiops]

I completely disagree that it is "not a problem with the airlines".

I apologize. I left out the word "just" as in "just the airlines"; I've edited my post.

They booked a schedule and sold tickets that required them to run thousands of flights every month that they knew they did not have the crews to fly. Who was going to fly those flights? They did it thinking they could hire and train enough crews to staff the flights. They didn't.

They didn't, or they couldn't? I see "help wanted" signs everywhere I go.

Part of the reason more people are flying than ever before right now is that the airlines 6-12 months ago were scheduling a ton of new flights and having fare sales to entice people to start flying again post-Covid.

I don't remember any big sales. Every flight I've looked at is considerably more expensive than pre-covid.

That is 100% on the airlines for offering a service that they KNEW they could not provide with their existing staffing and then failing to ramp up their staffing.

Yes they failed. But the industry newsletters say they have been trying, but the people are not there.

You really want to argue that there is 100% responsibility on the airlines, and 0% on the person who sought out the very cheapest flights.....which are exactly the flights that were going to be the most troublesome.

 

[greeniguana]

You really want to argue that there is 100% responsibility on the airlines, and 0% on the person who sought out the very cheapest flights.....which are exactly the flights that were going to be the most troublesome.

Sure... I will.

I never pick flights based on price. Most of them are for work so price is of no concern to me. Lots of my "expensive" flights have been canceled and delayed in the past year. Some cool reasons: no pilot, no copilot, late pilot, not enough fuel (wtf), "waiting on a new route" (wtf).

Asking people to expect higher cancellation rates for cheaper flights is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Having a cheaper ticket price is not flying standby (yet, but get ready). I pay, I get where I'm going.... Some people on the same flight pay higher prices than others. LOS is already at/near zero on ALL flights.

Airline flight logistic algorithms are the problem. They are trying to squeeze out every last drop of profit by running their systems at the cutting edge of collapse. It's not sustainable.

 

[Drip Dry]

Did they?

To my knowledge Op still hasn't indicated the details of the flight that caused the issue. Unless I'm missing something, I am seeing flights every Saturday in Dec going between EWR and BON.

I did not provide details of the flight that caused the issue in my original post as they were unknown to me at the time, United Airlines did not provide such detail, but it was certainly the return flights which were the issue. The substitute itinerary United Airlines tried to get me swallow had exactly the same flights as were on my original itinerary for the trip from Boston to Bonaire via Newark, it was the return flights that were changed on the substitute itinerary. Based on the investigation I and others have subsequently done it certainly appears to have been the Newark to Boston segment of the return trip which caused the issue.

 

[wgw04024]

How are these not some sort of 'breach of contract' type situations? If it were on rare occasions, I could see it.

 

[boat sju]

How are these not some sort of 'breach of contract' type situations? If it were on rare occasions, I could see it.

Because of the fine print that none of us read.

 

[ThatDogDontHunt]

I disagree. It is not a conspiracy theory to think that when choosing to cancel flights because they can't staff them all, the airlines are going to cancel the ones that they are running the lowest margin on or losing money to operate. That is simple economics and a big factor in how they are choosing which flights to cancel. And I completely disagree that it is "not a problem with the airlines". They booked a schedule and sold tickets that required them to run thousands of flights every month that they knew they did not have the crews to fly. Who was going to fly those flights? They did it thinking they could hire and train enough crews to staff the flights. They didn't. How does it become the fault of the person buying the ticket when an airline fails to properly schedule the number of flights they have the staff to operate?

Part of the reason more people are flying than ever before right now is that the airlines 6-12 months ago were scheduling a ton of new flights and having fare sales to entice people to start flying again post-Covid. Now that the time has come to actually fly all of those new flights, the airlines haven't hired the staff to run the flights and can't run them all. That is 100% on the airlines for offering a service that they KNEW they could not provide with their existing staffing and then failing to ramp up their staffing. It for damn sure isn't the fault of the guy buying the ticket when the airline announced a sale.

The airline is just part of the problem. Another large part is the airports. A shortage of security staff and baggage handlers have made some airports unable to deliver booked services to the airlines. Airport issues are passed on to the airlines.

Several months ago Air Canada publicly announced that is was cancelling lots of routes - complete routes, not just sporadic individual flights. As an example: Montreal airport has not been able to ramp service back up to meet demand, which resulted in a large number of Montreal routes being removed from the Air Canada schedule.

This airport problem is not just in North America. On a recent trip our return flight from Iceland was cancelled which resulted in the tour operator being forced to change a Greenland to Iceland charter into a Greenland to Newark charter and then locate replacement commercial flights from Newark to replace the cancelled flights.

If you choose to fly, be prepared to be flexible.

 

[Joneill]

Don’t like how things are with the airlines, then don’t fly. Simple solution. I flew ORD to Cancun recently. I’d not flown domestically since 2015 and my last international flight was in 1998 to Canada. The whole experience was utterly miserable. I will not be repeating it any time soon.

I just returned from 2 weeks in Fiji and had a great travel experience the whole way (home is NJ).

Everything went off pretty much as scheduled (United, Fiji Airways, Fiji Link). The airport experiences at EWR, LAX, Nadi and Matei were good - no issues with check-in, baggage, TSA/security, customs, etc.,. (Having CLEAR and Global Entry helped as well).

Definitely a long trip, but well worth it.