Yeah, reverse auctions like that are a bad idea when you need multiple volunteers. This may not be clear until you actually have one. You are using game theory to win the game but you are losing customer satisfaction. The entire reason reverse auctions work to reduce the payout is because people become psychologically committed tot he auction and you end up with a bunch of loser at the end of the auction who are unsatisfied with the results of the auction and a bunch of “winners” who might end up with a lot of buyer’s remorse because they stayed in the auction longer than they really wanted to.
The best way to get the lowest price IMHO is to use a dutch auction. Tell everyone that all winners will get the highest bid. This encourages people to bid earlier than they otherwise might. In the end you don’t get to keep the difference between what the lowest bidder gets paid and what the highest bidder gets paid but everyone is happy.
The traditional way of doing it leaves the early bidders a little peeved that they only got $1200 and the other people got $1500. Where with a dutch auction there is a very good chance that everyone would have gotten $1000 because that’s really all they wanted to give up their flight and bid as soon as the number was reached because they know that no one will get more than them if the bids keep climbing. The airline COULD end up paying less and everyone is happy.
Last February my brother and I were flying to Seattle for a funeral. Our seats in the staging area were right by the gate desk and there was a thirty-something male passenger in a Hurley ball cap who was insisting his military-sized duffel was okay for carry-on. The agent took him over to the size gauge and since the bag was loosely packed, after a great deal of shoving, it kind of fit. The flight was full and the airline had already offered to put baggage in the hold for free so the agent was telling him it wasn’t really fair to the other passengers who also had carry-ons. “I don’t care! I’m going on that flight and the bag is going with me and that’s that!”
My brother and I were making book on when the guy was going to discover he wasn’t going to Seattle after all when another employee with two cops in tow came up to talk to the gate agent. We couldn’t hear what was being said but nobody glanced at Mr. Hurley so it ostensibly wasn’t about the tiff in progress.* The the two cops departed and the passenger loudly demanded of the agent, “I wanna see your supervisor!”
The other employee turned towards him and said, “Sir, I am the supervisor. You will have to check you baggage to get on the flight or–” She gestured with her thumb at the cops’ backs. “–shall I call my friend, Andy, back?” He submitted.
*I suspect there might have been a bit of theater involved.
This is a pretty good summary of why this happened, though you’d have to mix in a cup of “FAA regulations that also don’t care about passengers.” The FAA is very insistent about getting flight crew to places they need to be.
The end result though is precisely what you say; an inevitable tendency to treat the economy class passengers as irritants.
Actually I used to be much the same way. For most of the 2000s I did quite a lot of business travel, which I had a fair degree or scheduling influence over, and my philosophy was simple; if I can drive there in eight or nine hours, I’m driving. Of course I was making a small profit off the mileage charges so that helped, but the truth is it was just way, way, way less irritating. To drive to Boston from my house might take eight or nine hours, but to fly there took at least five on a good day anyway - once you’ve gone to the airport, checked in, cleared security, actually taken the 70-minute flight, got off, got a car, driven from the airport to the hotel and so on and so forth, I had burned most of the time I’d have spent driving, and had to deal with being on an airplane as opposed to a nice, pleasant drive (I concede, a much more dangerous form of transportation.) And if there was weather or some other delay, who the hell knows? Driving might be FASTER.
I don’t travel so much anymore, but if I was back in the same role I’d do the same thing. Flying is just a generally unpleasant experience.
Now, of course, obligatory point here that one of the reasons it’s unpleasant is that customers value price above absolutely everything else, which drives the quality down. People talk a great game, but United will not lose business over this as long as they’re price competitive.
That the entire point of the reverse dutch auction. You tell everyone that the first person to surrender their seat will get whatever price is paid to the highest bidder.
So lets say I need 5 seats and I offer $500 and one person takes the offer. Now this person has surrendered his seat for whatever auction price we end up at.
Then I offer $800 and two more people take the offer. These two people have also surrendered their seat for whatever price the auction ends up at.
Then I offer $1000 and 3 people take the offer. I only need two more seats so these three draw lots and the two winners surrender their seat.
Each of the 5 winners that surrendered their seat gets $1000.
This induces people to bid as soon as their price point is reached rather than sitting around looking at everyone else because they don’t want to be the sucker that sells their seat too cheap.
If prices are close, there is no way I will fly United. If I can save a few hundred or thousand dollars, I’ll fly United but for me united is up there with Air China as an airline that would have to offer a REALLY competitive price to get me to fly with them.
After 9/11 I used to take the train anywhere between Boston to DC. A large part of my travel was along this route. It almost felt like half the corporate lawyers on the east coast were in Boston, NYC, Philadelphia and DC.
I used to live in Houston and flew on business a bit. Now, Houston is a great departure airport. Most places are a direct flight out of Houston and those that aren’t will usually only require one connection. Some of these trips were ones where I’d leave at 7 or 8 AM, reach my destination by 10 (or 11, including a time-zone change), be available for a meeting at 2PM, and catch a return leaving by 6PM, arriving back in Houston around 8PM. A long day, but not that different than going into the office, considering traffic and perhaps working late.
Usually, I’d fly Continental, of course, being headquarted in Houston, but most trips were chosen on price, so if there was a competitive alternative, I’d be flying with them. I thought Continental was perhaps the best airline of the bunch. Competitive prices and unusually good service. Then Continental was bought out by United. Things changed. Even with established Continental routes, the attitude of the workers changed. It was obvious the employees did not like their new bosses and their new rules. I even mentioned to a flight attendant once that I thought the new United really made it hard to like flying. The attendant I said that to just smiled and nodded, but a senior attendant apparently overheard and later told me that I wasn’t the only one who noticed that United had taken the fun out of flying, but she didn’t care as this was her last flight.
Just to change the direction of my rant, I just want to ask why is it so goddamned important that the airlines fill every single seat on every single flight? I understand that they can make more money, but it really makes for an unpleasant experience. If the airlines would accept a 90% full flight as their objective, they’d have room for “highly valued” flyers when needed, and it shouldn’t increase the ticket more than 10%, if that much. Plus, they’d get the added benefit that everyone involved would be much happier. Of course, having happy customers, or employees for that matter, isn’t a priority for airlines, anymore.
They seem o care about as much about passenger happiness as the care about the happiness of the luggage in their cargo. As long as they get you there in one piece (face bashing and involuntary deplaning aside), WTF are you complaining about.
You answered your question: Most trips were chosen on price. Airline A fills its planes and charges $300 to get to Chicago. Airline B has 10% ullage and charges $330 The vast majority of the public are going to fly A if they can. It would take one hell of an advertising campaign by B that flying with them has less suckage to get them to shift.
Ah, yes, that was a widespread, and as it turned out justified, concern at the time – that we’d end up with Continental colors and United customer service. Continental under Gordon Bethune was a carrier one could really like to fly on, and for a while in 2002-2008 I used it quite a lot. After the full merger I’ve hardly flown them.
Part of the problem is that most airlines haven’t really distinguished themselves in any way to justify an increased cost, especially for infrequent flyers. Some of them will give me a slightly wider, but still uncomfortable, seat for an extra 20% or more of the fare, but that’s it. They’ve done a very poor job of communicating any value other than “we’re cheaper.”
That said, there are a few airlines who have slashed their services so low that there’s no way I’d take them (Spirit & Frontier, I’m looking at you) even when they are technically the best price.
When my daughter lived in Florida she would fly Spirit to come visit me. IIRC it was the only airline flying nonstop from her origin to Latrobe Airport, a tiny airport near me and Arnold Palmer. She loved the airline.
My son was on a deadline to get from SF to NYC. Got as far as O’Hare, when Spirit cancelled the second leg of his flight FOR NO REASON. That’s literally what the gate agent said.
Then they told him he could take the next flight… on Thursday. A two day wait. They said they only had three flights a week (between two of the busiest airports in the country!).
And, no, they wouldn’t make any provisions for him to take another airline, even though it was their fault for canceling a flight for… what, again? Weather? Maintenance? Pilot inebriation? No, “FOR NO REASON”. The Spirit employees were rolling their eyes and apologizing, but the airline itself didn’t care.
Son couldn’t wait two days (let alone get a hotel in Chicago), so he had to buy a ticket on another airline. With money he didn’t have…
This has nothing to do with the crew. From the crews perspective they will have been called and told they’ve been given a duty to passenger on such and such a flight and then crew flight United Whatever from Umpty Ump to Shamozzle.
They will expect that everything has been arranged and that seats are available. They would expect to arrive at the gate and for the gate staff to be expecting them. They would expect this because it is the airline’s operations staff’s job to make sure all of that stuff is done. If they arrived late at the gate it is because that is how long it took between getting the call and getting to the gate, it is not out of some kind of sense of entitlement or superiority.
Spirit is the Greyhound of the airways, with none of the ambiance, comfort or safety. And if someone working at Greyhound reads this, they will probably sue me for libel.
Spirit pioneers all the extra charging that other airlines then adopt. They do it so that they can always show up as the cheapest airline, because we, the consumers, have taught the airlines that the only thing that matters is price.
I love the idea of a cheap no-frills airline. I’d fly Spirit, RyanAir, or Bob’s Flying Box With No Windows or Seats or Complimentary Wheat Thins… IF they didn’t cancel flights capriciously with no plan to get their passengers to the destination they paid for. Combine cheap flights and minimal customer service, and I’d be a fan.
I have definitely chosen more expensive flights with airlines I was more comfortable with.
I went to Asia not too long ago and the Air China flights were over a hundred dollars cheaper and I did not go with them. Ironically, I flew United. I now put United in the same category as Air China. There are enough other carriers out there that United (or any other airline) is almost never cheaper by more than $50 on Domestic flights. That’s not enough to make me fly with them.
I don’t think I’m the only snowflake out there that feels this way.
You apparently have enough discretionary funds that making a choice to spend a not insignificant amount of money (most of a days wage for most americans) on either convenience of boycott, many people do not have that luxury.
There are also quite a number of people traveling on someone else’s dime, business travelers and the like, that have no choice but to choose the cheapest option.
While the effect of those who can choose another airline doing so might be noticeable, it’s not going to be devastating.