They should make sure they have the seats for their personnel and not sell them to customers. In every other business if you sell the same thing to two people I would call it fraud.
Not at all am I defending what happened on this flight. Just want to point out that last second adds of flight crew members is a VERY common occurrence and without it the number of cancels would skyrocket astronomically.
Gee, I wonder if they could, I don't know, hire more people so that these situations don't happen as often? Heaven forbid they lose a little bit of profit a year...
You simply delay the other flight. You don't force someone off of a flight they've already boarded.
Those extra people still would have to be sitting on call somewhere. Once they receive the call they're sent to where they're needed which still results in this situation. It's simply unreasonable to think they would have spare flight crews in every single possible destination. Unless you want about 1,000% increase in ticket prices of course.
I'm sure the other flight was delayed. Not getting a crew there on this last flight out for the night though would have likely meant cancelling the flight in Louisville or delaying it at least 24 hours. Stranding a plane in a city like Louisville would cause major ripple effects down the line resulting in probably another 10-15 flights being delayed. If they cancelled rather than delay now you have a plane full of passengers that need to be re-routed on multiple other planes that are likely already full.
Re-location of flight crews is simply a necessary option for the airlines at this point of time. Maybe down the road we can remotely pilot airliners and then situations like this won't arise.
Sure, there may be issues that can't be planned for, and you can't hire for every case and solve every issue. But that is still not this customer's fault, and he was punished for it, arbitrarily. Frankly I don't care how difficult it is for United to prevent this from happening again-it is their responsibility, it should not be the responsibility of their customers.
> Re-location of flight crews is simply a necessary option for the airlines at this point of time. Maybe down the road we can remotely pilot airliners and then situations like this won't arise.
Then reserve 4 seats on every flight for possible situations that arise. It's not my problem that United loses money this way. It's theirs.
By your logic they better go ahead and just block of 20 seats. You know, just in case they need to re-position a B747 crew. Wonder what tickets will cost when they can only sell 30 seats on those 50 seaters.
I would think that a better argument could be made than a straw-man, but in this case, I don't think there is, so I don't blame you for it.
What's unreasonable is to think that a moderate action shouldn't be taken due to an unlikely extreme result that would never happen.
The company needs to eat the cost. Whether that means blocking out a few seats or offering more to get someone to volunteer. And sure, you can argue, that this could make tickets go up for all-but the rates at which these events happen is very low, it's hard to argue that would happen. And due to competition, many airliners would find a better way-they still have to compete on price.
I guarantee you United wishes they did.