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I would prefer to pay by the pound. That includes you and your baggage. Why should the cost of flying be socialized?
I like that! $1 per pound per person and baggage. And they can change it depending upon when you book last minute may be $2 or $3 a pound and a special may be only 75 cents a pound.
If they are worried about planes being to heavy it honestly is fair. Why should a 125 pound person pay the same as a 250 pound person.
Southwest is no longer a regional airline and their coverage is extensive. If they don't go where you need to go then you can't use them. Duh. That's true for any airline. What does that have to do with whether you use them when they do go where you need to go?
Even if they go where I want to go, they often won't sell me a ticket to get there. The two nearest Southwest airports near me are lower volume outstations and because of how they map routes and how their IT system limits connections from minimum connection time to something like 2.5 hours, searching for an exotic routing for something like Pensacola to San Francisco returns a 'you can't get there from here'.
Don't get me wrong, I really dislike United, but their IT system will gladly build me an infinite number of route options to get me to and fro. They aren't always good options (trying to find saver award inventory led me to a return that was something like Denver-Seattle-Miami-Houston-Pensacola) but they are wide and varied options indeed.
And Southwest has no intermediate fare classes between Wanna Get Away and Business Select/Anytime. For the routes I'd fly, once WGA sells out on a flight, I can pretty much get a first class ticket on a legacy carrier for about the same price as WN's higher fare buckets.
tldr; a decent airline when you can plan a trip in advance and need a simple routing but easy to run into the limitations of what they do with anything beyond that. Like a ticket from Pensacola to San Francisco. (picked because any large US airline should be able to sell me that ticket any day of the week)
I never said attendants would do random checks during flight. That's silly.
Here is what I quoted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
The gate agent could put a tag on your carryon items if you're a Basic Economy and no tagged items allowed in overhead bins. Easy to spot and if a flight attendant sees one up there they can take it out and store it up front, where you will be charged $50 to get it back...
Quote:
Originally Posted by adriver
Now you are having your flight attendants do random bag checks. "Items overhead my shift during flight". How much time and inconvenient is that going to be for flight attendants. How many times would they do it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
Or reverse it, you get one tag for overhead bins if your ticket qualifies and any untagged items found in overhead can be removed.
They already go down the aisle closing the bin doors before takeoff. At that time, they could remove any bags that shouldn't be there. But that's just one idea..
Yes it is silly, but what you said was they could just check the bins before the flight takes off and pull everything that didn't belong to the front. That's just dumb. Nobody is going to put it up there before the flight if they didn't pay for it. They will wait till first chance they get mid-flight, then take it out of the foot area and put it up top.. THEN WHAT DO YOU DO?? How do you check to see people aren't cheating it, and just putting there bags up top during the flight.. Even people who put there bags up top may want them at the start of the flight and knowing they will want the leg room pay for the bin when they are ready to use it..
Quote:
Originally Posted by oceangaia
Aredhel was talking about boarding groups for United. United always assigns seats before boarding. What are you talking about?
There is no plan to have an extra overhead bin fee. Nobody is paying a fee for overhead space and it is never guaranteed. The plan is to have a low ticket class that does not include overhead space and those people will board last.
THATS WHAT THIS THREAD IS ABOUT... Welcome to the conversation
Spirit Airlines just announced that for an extra $50 they'll let you sit inside the aircraft rather that duct-taping you to the outside of the fuselage.
Ahahahahaha. Well, as long as the duct tape color doesn't clash with my suit jacket, I'm fine with it. Besides, I look best with that windswept look.
unless they create the boarding groups based on who buys the overhead bins, they are not associated together. Any boarding group could pay to use the overhead bin, and everyone will still be allowed to bring a carry-on.
The only boarding group that will pay to bring a carry-on is the BE fare group. So you can forget all the other groups.
The gate now has the last group, who cannot bring a carry on unless its been paid for. Everyone else has boarded. Its simple to check these passengers. Anyone with a regular carry-on gets checked for a tag/ticket or whatever way they are going to mark someone as having paid for a carry-on.
Of course since this is the last group, most likely there isn't any bin space left anyways, so any regular sized carry-on will be checked. There will be fine print accepting this when you pay for your carry-on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by adriver
full size items like that are not allowed on carry-on now. And you will still be allowed to carry on a bag to put down by your feet. How nice is your jacket? Now you have to pay to not step on it with what could be dirty muddy snowy shoes/boots. Then the final problem with just closing the bins and that being the end of it, is now you would be saying that people could not go into them during the flight.
Yes you can bring regular full sized carry-ons. I am not talking about a full size luggage. I am talking about carry-ons. UA lets you have a small item and a regular full sized carry-on like a roller or duffel or briefcase etc.
I don't care about your jacket and neither does UA. You bought the ticket...you knew the rules. If you want bin space for your jacket then you should pay for it.
People will still be able to get into the bins. I don't think you should take the wording so literally. I think they mean you will pay to bring carry-ons and not for bin space. So when you board dead last with a BE ticket then you can still stuff your jacket in a bin. You can still get up and get stuff out of the bin or put stuff in it during a flight. This solves the flight attendants having to patrol the bins, and having to check peoples carry-ons even if they paid. You aren't buying bin space or access your buying passage for your carry-on.
In the end, they will figure out a way to implement this fairly or unfairly. I don't see why your so dead certain that this is impossible to accomplish.
The only boarding group that will pay to bring a carry-on is the BE fare group. So you can forget all the other groups.
The gate now has the last group, who cannot bring a carry on unless its been paid for. Everyone else has boarded. Its simple to check these passengers. Anyone with a regular carry-on gets checked for a tag/ticket or whatever way they are going to mark someone as having paid for a carry-on.
Of course since this is the last group, most likely there isn't any bin space left anyways, so any regular sized carry-on will be checked. There will be fine print accepting this when you pay for your carry-on.
Yes you can bring regular full sized carry-ons. I am not talking about a full size luggage. I am talking about carry-ons. UA lets you have a small item and a regular full sized carry-on like a roller or duffel or briefcase etc.
I don't care about your jacket and neither does UA. You bought the ticket...you knew the rules. If you want bin space for your jacket then you should pay for it.
People will still be able to get into the bins. I don't think you should take the wording so literally. I think they mean you will pay to bring carry-ons and not for bin space. So when you board dead last with a BE ticket then you can still stuff your jacket in a bin. You can still get up and get stuff out of the bin or put stuff in it during a flight. This solves the flight attendants having to patrol the bins, and having to check peoples carry-ons even if they paid. You aren't buying bin space or access your buying passage for your carry-on.
In the end, they will figure out a way to implement this fairly or unfairly. I don't see why your so dead certain that this is impossible to accomplish.
Its the Basic Economy ticket. No, that's exactly what it does. Its there cheapest ticket where you are not allowed to use the overhead bin. I am trying to get an idea of how they will have any clue or be able to enforce this midflight.. That's all...
I would prefer to pay by the pound. That includes you and your baggage. Why should the cost of flying be socialized?
Weight (in comparison to the entire plane and all the weight it carries), is a very small variable when you are trying to figure out for one person.
Quote:
Originally Posted by livingsinglenyc
I like that! $1 per pound per person and baggage. And they can change it depending upon when you book last minute may be $2 or $3 a pound and a special may be only 75 cents a pound.
If they are worried about planes being to heavy it honestly is fair. Why should a 125 pound person pay the same as a 250 pound person.
There are fixed costs that are associated with it. Its like trying to get a taxi from New York to Los Angeles and wanting to pay only what the fuel costs. You also have to pay for the "ability to have a seat" (the long term fixed costs that need to be factored in with being able to have that plane make that flight even if its empty).
Trying to charge a fair number for weight once you factor it in to the overall weight, would just be asinine. An empty 747 weighs 600,000 lbs, and you want to figure out the difference between 125 pounds for two different sized people??? When you compare the weight per person then add it to the fixed costs of "the plane flying"..... without doing the math, that looks like the REAL difference would be so minimal, and certainly not worth the effort. Even if you wanted to figure out how much it was per person, then you would have to compare that to the overall weight of all the passengers, and bags, + total weight, then adjust it based on each and every single different flight. Yes they could create a database and have it all handy, but that would just be way too much of a hassle. (if they wanted to go an accurate cost per person).
Yes the airlines charge for heavier bags; the way I understand it, is it has nothing to do with how much weight is on the plane, (how can 10 pounds really matter when the plane loaded is close to 1,000,000 pounds). When it does matter is when the baggage handlers are repeatedly lifting and carrying those heavier bags. Its a way to recoup what it costs to pay the baggage handlers, along with the insurance, and workers comp that they pay for when they get injured.
I like that! $1 per pound per person and baggage. And they can change it depending upon when you book last minute may be $2 or $3 a pound and a special may be only 75 cents a pound.
If they are worried about planes being to heavy it honestly is fair. Why should a 125 pound person pay the same as a 250 pound person.
That's a great idea. My wife packs heavy and weighs 100 pounds. I pack light and weigh 145. She always fills her bag to overflowing, then stuffs her junk into my half empty suitcase as well. Happy wife, happy life as they say, so I let her abuse my bag in this manner every time without complaint.
unless they create the boarding groups based on who buys the overhead bins, they are not associated together. Any boarding group could pay to use the overhead bin, and everyone will still be allowed to bring a carry-on.
That's exactly what they are going to do. Basic Economy will board last.
And as far as the other boarding groups go, only Priority Boarding is actually paying to use the bins (by virtue of boarding first). I don't see that changing any time soon. (What I do see changing is the cost of a standard Economy Class ticket. It will of course go up.)
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