Did United lose money here?

Mike,

Its difficult to say whether or not United ‘jumped the gun’ in transferring pax to American.

From experience, when an aircraft is unserviceable, the situation is generally very fluid. Say you have a departure in three hours, but the aircraft is unserviceable. The initial estimate from engineering is that the aircraft will be out of service for at least four hours. Now depending on the route and the available options for re-routing pax, you may decide to re-route the passengers.

It is not unknown to then receive a phone call an hour or so later, to be told the aircraft is serviceable. Of course by this time you have probably lost most of your pax.

Of course, after the event, with the benefit of hindsight, numerous questions are asked, by the company management, as to why the situation was handled the way it was. The phrase ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ springs to mind’.

There are of course many more variables to take into account, before actually re-routing pax, as it’s not a decision to make lightly. But in essence, situations like these do occur from time to time.

In fact I’ve most of this afternoon, working out a plan, with our ops desk, for tomorrow’s flying for the company I work for. A classic case of an unserviceable aircraft, but no estimate as to when it may become serviceable.

Originally posted by mikeconnell
(this was quite important to us as this was my emigration flight).

Congratulations! Let me know how all your paperwork and everything goes. My wife is currently in the process of naturalization.

Originally posted by mikeconnell
IMHO the immediate rebooking was a very customer-friendly move by United. As you say, hotel accommodation would have cost less if it was needed. In the event I guess they must have wished they had not rerouted everyone, but that’s how the dice rolled.

Rather unrelated, but the first time I flew out of LHR with UA in ’01, I was booked on the last ORD flight of the day, although this was not final destination (I had 2 segments after ORD). Apparantly our flight was overbooked and they were asking for volunteers to bump. I attempted to get bumped and possibly get a voucher and whatnot, but because ORD was not my final destination, they probably factored that in, and figured they would have to pay for a hotel for me. Turns out they didn’t let me give up my seat. Oh well, I tried to be nice. 😎

I know both the American flights that evening were pretty full, and that they were not able to cofirm seats for us on the later one, nor to guarantee seats together on the earlier one (this was quite important to us as this was my emigration flight). I guess it’s possible that the other pax couldn’t get onto the American flight, or maybe that they checked in before cancellation was a likelihood.

It would have been a bit ironic had we flown American as this would have been my second transatlantic flight with them. The previous one was due to a Virgin cancellation.

IMHO the immediate rebooking was a very customer-friendly move by United. As you say, hotel accommodation would have cost less if it was needed. In the event I guess they must have wished they had not rerouted everyone, but that’s how the dice rolled.

Mike

My question is: Did the other 38 people on the flight ‘roll the dice’ not unlike yourself, or were there only a certain amount of seats on the AA flight (which is understandable)? United could have easily rolled the dice as well. They could have not transferred anybody onto the AA flight and potentially spent less money putting people up in hotels had their own fllight eventually get canceled. At that stage, I’m sure they would have spent slightly less on hotel accomodation rather than paying AA, but had a few more ****ed off pax, who wanted to get the hell out of Dodge, as a result.

OK, so the next question is do we think United jumped the gun a little in transferring their pax to American?

The customer friendly side of me thinks they did the right thing in making sure pax were not delayed in Heathrow overnight, but that aircraft did leave on time and nearly empty. A conservative ‘back of a fag packet’ estimate says (say) 250 pax at an average fare of (say) $500 one way suggests that United lost at least $125,000 revenue by doing the customer friendly thing.

Any thoughts?

Mike

But UA would have been even more out of pocket had the flight been cancelled, and the aircraft out of position for it’s next leg.

Similarish thing happened to my Mum last week, her BACX flight from MAN to ZRH was cancelled, and all the pax were rebooked on to LX (some to ZRH, some to BSL and then put on a train).

Mike,

For the pax that were transferred to, and travelled on, the American flight, the revenue from those tickets would be transferred from United to American.

Say a pax had paid $300 for their United ticket, this $300 would be transferred to American. American cannot charge United more than the price printed on the passenger’s ticket.

Its a standard agreement throughout the industry.

In the situation you mention, if United had already transferred pax to the American flight, and still operated their own flight, then they probably would have lost money. Basically United would only have the revenue from the tickets of those 40 pax to cover the costs of that flight.

Darren

I have wondered the same thing myself, Mike. A similar situation happened to me, albeit on a much shorter flight. Last Novemeber I was flying from Eugene, OR (EUG) to Phoenix, AZ (PHX) on UA (of course) via SFO. The flight out of Eugene was late which caused us to miss our connection in SFO. The next UA flight out of SFO to PHX was some 4 hours later, and being with the wife, I didn’t want to wait around that long. Had I been by myself, I wouldn’t care as SFO has great in-terminal viewing and outstanding facilities. At any rate, I was pretty upset when I found no-one at the UA customer service counter airside so I had to go landside. I told the agent my situation and knowing that America’s Worst, errr, America West flew the same routing, I asked the agent if he could put me on an earlier flight on HP. He called over to HP and asked if they had 2 seats available so he put us on that flight, which left 2 hours earlier than the next UA flight. Since the flight was only an hour and a half, I really didn’t care. Besides, I still got my UA mileage credit for that leg, even though it was on a different carrier. So yeah, back to original question, I don’t know what happens in that situation. If they have each others backs, even though they are competitors, that would be cool, in my opinion. As Mike mentioned, these scenarios happen to every airline.