Comment by chesimov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chesimov | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Travelled in the US earlier this year on 3 regional carriers. I realise this is only an anecdote, but I was surprised by a number of things:

- tickets stated as direct included a hidden stop and change of plane.

- there was an extra charge for a checked bag.

- the checked bag was promptly lost on my first flight and returned to me after 5 days.

- on one united flight, we had to wait on the tarmac for 1hr45 min while a guy sat each wing of the plane in turn refuelling it with a gas-pump style hose through a port on the wing. This was because the central rapid-fuelling system on the plane was broken.

- interior of aircraft was shabby. In one plane they had retrofitted LED lighting in the cabin, but it was too narrow and so exposed hull insulation and other structures in the gap.

- seats felt much closer together than usual. What on earth do you do if you're above average height in the US?

- price! Unbelievably expensive to fly between cities in the US. In SE Asia or Europe I have travelled between similar sized cities and similar distances for well under half the price in the US and at shorter notice.

What ever the airlines may tell you in the US, from the perspective of an outsider, I'm pretty sure they're ripping you off!

Edit: formatting

The prices are because of the recent big airline mergers (Alaska/Virgin America 2016, US Air/American '13, United/Continental '10, Delta/Northwest '09) [1].

United does its heavy maintenance in Beijing, China [2], so some maintenance issues are inevitable. I find it amazing that their planes even fly, it must be a huge logistical hassle.

[1] http://airlines.org/dataset/u-s-airline-mergers-and-acquisit...

[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance...

(When this Vanity Fair article was written, 2015, American still did major maintenance in the US, but apparently not for much longer: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/25/american-airli... )

Regional domestic travel in the US is shit — it’s not particularly profitable, and ends up with many monopolies. Flying between major cities/hubs is generally comfortable and efficient, albeit a hair expensive, but trying to go anywhere small is problematic.

What makes the PR situation around this worse is a lot of once-a-year flyers traveling to see family for Christmas (or weddings or funerals) have this as their flying experience. This is both subject to delays (because winter, and specific circled dates on a calendar) and often is when the system is running near full capacity. Thus, air travel as most people experience it is very different from air travel as experienced on most trips — the denominator matters, but it is hard to solve.

Flying in the US usually has less service and higher prices than Europe. It's often cheaper to fly from Europe to the US than within the US. European airlines also started charging for some extras but it's nowhere near the level of the US.

Population density is likely the explanation. In Europe most people fly between major city, small cities are often connected by rail to the next airport. That keeps costs low and makes competition easier. In the US there are few direct connections with a lot of demand so that you need to provide a network, increasing barriers of entrance.

remembers me of what I once read in a frequent flyer forum:

„What is the best US carrier? - Lufthansa“

How is a hidden stop possible? Wouldn't you be able to look at total flight times and see that it's estimated to take an extra 45+ minutes on that flight than other direct flights?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com