News and notes from the interweb:
- How United is Cracking Down on Mistake Fares
- Man commits suicide after losing ‘free buffet for life’ benefit at Las Vegas resort
- RyanAir warns of bring your own booze ban on notoriously rowdy flight
- Union backs out of trying to organize Delta flight attendants and can’t go back to the well for a year after acknowledging “questionable signatures” on authorization cards.
- Etihad’s response on its labor conditions: in a nutshell: they’re kinda awesome working conditions for men and women alike, and they’ve been hiring workers the US carriers have been furloughing.
Gary–Doesn’t it rub you the wrong way when airlines make claims like United did that they lost $2.9 million? Everyone knows 95%+ of folks would never have purchased the ticket if it wasn’t a mistake fare? And yes, some seats are being taken up but it is unlikely most flight will go out 100% full. So actual lost revenue is maybe $150k-$250k plus the modest cost of the miles awarded, which one could argue is a very good deal for free PR and building customer loyalty. Maybe we can convince airlines to periodically issue “mistake” fares unpurpose. 🙂
Sounds like putting a bottle of booze in each of your bags just became the new way to get a free checked bag on RyanAir.
I just…. love… this snippet:
“At the Digital Operations Center, staff will use special software from Sitscape and a 10-monitor video wall to ‘detect commercial impacts, fraudulent activity and end user manipulations.'”
Let’s see… one monitor with real-time United booking velocity data…(this one will be the most igrnored…)
Then, one monitor with Flytertalk refreshing constantly… one monitor pointed to Twitter feeds.. one monitor on The Flight Deal… … and the other 6 pointed at blogger sites!
“…fraudulent activity and end user manipulations” Really??! Do you mean people buying your product on the open market at your published price??
Way to go United. Focus on monitoring the public consumption of your errors, instead of focusing on not making errors. And characterize the people doing the buying as fraudsters and hackers?
I wonder if this action by United was provoked by people complaining to the DOT regarding tickets purchased under the Denmark currency mistake? Methinks almost certainly…