One more reason to take the train

[fairviewroad]

I’ve heard some say they could have put the deadhead crew on Greyhound. But no matter how much one may like Greyhound, they don’t operate between CHI & LVL. Megabus does, but then you’re dealing with the Spirit/Allegiant Air of the bus world, along with the customer service record of United. Another commentary on the state of our interior transportation system.

Taking a bus might not have been possible depending on the timing of things...there may not have been a scheduled departure that would have gotten the crew there in time. If they were to travel by land, it would have likely been more practical to hire a car/van service and have someone drive them down there. The question would be whether they got to Louisville in time to have their required rest period before the morning flight. (I don't know what counts as a rest period...but I doubt riding in a van would count.)

 

[jis]

Then there is the issue of Union contract too.

 

[caravanman]

Everyone else seems to be at fault, why not attack the trade unions too?

Ed.

 

[MikefromCrete]

They should have just chartered a private plane. In the long run, it would have been a lot cheaper. This lawsuit will cost United millions -- and the city of Chicago will have to ante up some cash too.

 

[jis]

Everyone else seems to be at fault, why not attack the trade unions too?

The issue is that Union contracts apparently prevent using road based solutions effectively

 

[A Voice]

It's so incredibly hard to imagine why people would think that flying would be a better choice to get from Chicago to Louisville. :huh:

There just aren't many ways to get from Chicago to Louisville, other than via commercial airline, currently. I’ve heard some say they could have put the deadhead crew on Greyhound. But no matter how much one may like Greyhound, they don’t operate between CHI & LVL. Megabus does, but then you’re dealing with the Spirit/Allegiant Air of the bus world, along with the customer service record of United. Another commentary on the state of our interior transportation system.

There is still a lot more about this incident that we don't know compared to what has been reported. To get a crew to Louisville it is difficult to determine just what all the options were; We do know there were roads. It would have been possible for a van driver (or similar) to just drive the crew members down to Louisville (though its likely there was no provision or preparation for that). That might have affected rest periods, but it wouldn't be the first time those of us on this forum would have heard of a certain transportation company dispatching a train late for lack of available rested operating crew.

Or perhaps the crew could have been ferried to an alternate airport and then transfer on to Louisville (Nashville, Atlanta, etc.). And, of course, more generous compensation could have been offered until you had some takers. Point is, United wasn't looking for alternatives; It didn't think it needed to. Why spend extra money and go to any trouble when you can just inconvenience four passengers, which solves your problem, get your shift over and go home?

 

[caravanman]

Everyone else seems to be at fault, why not attack the trade unions too?

The issue is that Union contracts apparently prevent using road based solutions effectively

Mostly wealthy business employers don't give much away free to employees, and unions have often had to fight hard for even safe working practices, let alone fair remuneration. Nowadays there are many "zero hours" "work only when we want you" and similar practices which undermine the hard fought for union deals. I am on high alert to defend unions. Maybe private jets could be hired instead from within the CEO's muli million $ pay package...?

Ed.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Im with Ed on defending the Unions.The fault is totally with United's Suits,United ground,employees and thuggish Chicago cops!

Bet Uniteds Execs don't take a pay cut or loose their bonuses even though this fiasco will cost then multiple millions.

A total disgrace! Tell United to fly the unfriendly skies without you!

 

[XHRTSP]

The issue is that Union contracts apparently prevent using road based solutions effectively

Where did you hear this? I deadhead in vans all the damn time. Spending four hours on the autobahn going from RMS to BRU or AMS is pretty common. If you have a passage from the relevant contract, I'd be interested to see it. They are all available online.
But these van rides (called 'limos' in industry jargon) take time to set up, same with charter flights. It is most likely the case the deadheading crew would not have had the legally required rest time to operate their assignment out of SDF. There's no getting around fact that these deadheads are an inconvenient but necessary part of keeping the planes moving. United cannot afford to cancel a 70 passenger flight (really two flights totalling 140 passengers since cancelling one in many cases means cancelling the next too) over 4 people.

 

[saxman]

All this talk about deadheading the crew by different means...it would never ever happen for that long of a drive and nor would United or any other airline charter a plane. The only time a crew might be taxied or limo'd somewhere would be relatively short distances. ORD-MKE, ORD-South Bend. LAX-ONT or Palm Springs. Maybe even San Diego. But even then using a limo/car service is really only a last resort. Since deadheading is a normal daily occurrence putting the crew on a 5 hour bus ride wouldn't even be considered just because one guy isn't giving up his seat. Chartering a plane would be so far outside the realm of possibility too. It'd be like Amtrak chartering someones private rail car to deadhead their staff on.

Video has surfaced of the Doctor and the police before the 30 seconds of the famed video everyone else saw. While he's not shouting at the top of his lungs, he does say that he would rather be dragged off the plane and thrown in jail.

 

[XHRTSP]

Why spend extra money and go to any trouble when you can just inconvenience four passengers, which solves your problem, get your shift over and go home?

That was the most fustrating thing about flying for United Express. United would cut corner after corner after corner over pennies here and pennies there in their race to the bottom. Corporate took no real interest in customer service, their work force, or their brand. They let go thousands of their people (good union jobs) and replaced them with lowest bidder contractors. In many places the planes are being operated by pilots being paid less than bus drivers and flight attendants who live at home and qualify for food stamps. Dispatchers and schedulers managing these flights are inexperienced and earn next to nothing. Turnover is high. Ground crews are contractors who make minimum wage, same with the baggage handlers. This isn't just small airports like Detroit or Cincy, but hubs like Denver. This is bad enough on good fair weather days when everything is running smoothly, but on you're typical summer thunderstorm day when everything goes to hell, that lack of experienced staff with actually company pride really shows.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Looks like our airline pilot members have had different deadhead expierences based on International vs. US Operations.

 

[XHRTSP]

The long ground deadheads in Europe are necessary sometimes as we fly into military or cargo centric airports. There are no commercial flights out of RMS, and limited options out of places like XCR and LEJ.

We do limo around the states sometimes, though usually again in and out of military airfields. SMF-SUU, PHL-WRI are pretty common pairings. Once I had to get from JFK to DOV, so I took LIRR to NYP, then Acela to WIL, then a limo the rest of the way. I did DTW-CVG via rental car once due to it being a last minute thing and there were no direct flights available.

I work in the mostly non scheduled cargo world, so my experiences are going to be different from saxman's.

 

[XHRTSP]

To add, I never once limo'ed while working in the pax world. Once I needed to deadhead from MCI to STL to work a rare (for me) Delta Connection flight. Even though it made since to put me on Southwest direct or Amtrak, that would have cost the company money, while using a seat on Delta was free and if I bumped a passenger or two it's not their problem. So I spent all day doing MCI-ATL-STL instead.

 

[railiner]

So airlines would never charter a plane to deadhead a crew needed urgently somewhere? That is interesting.

I can tell an ironic spin on that...

Back in the early '70's, I was dispatching for Continental Trailways bus in Denver. We had a four bus charter for the Englewood, Co. HS band, on a roundtrip to Portland, Or. Due to a monumental dispatching error, (not by me!), we had neglected to set up four relief drivers in Ogden, Ut. for the return trip. When the error was discovered (the lead driver called us), we had to scramble to find a solution. The Salt Lake City extra board was totally depleted and could not help us.

The driver's could stretch another few hours to reach Rock Springs, Wy. We chartered a business turbo prop to get four relief driver's from Denver to Rock Springs to relieve the charter, without much of a delay. The alternative would be trying to find hotels to accommodate four busloads of band members, and chaperones along with meal expenses, possible refund of the entire charter charges, and huge public relations nightmare in the local press....

 

[XHRTSP]

There was no point in chartering a flight as it would most likely have taken hours to set up. Same thing with chartering a van. Nevermind that these unscheduled deadheads occur quite often. United cannot afford to have a bunch of Lears sitting alert at their hubs for everytime these types of situations arise.

My cargo airline has a sibling charter airline and we have on rare ocassions moved crew using their jets. These moves were planned well enough in advance. That's been very very rare.

The regional I use to fly for, at one point used a very unorthodox approach to deadheading. Back during the big polar vortex of 2013, when everything ground to a halt, we had crew stranded all over the place and it was a collossal mess. The company pulled a plane from the hanger, and flew it all around the midwest and east coast picking up crew and repositioning them. They essentially chartered their own jet. Once again, this was rare, planned well in advance, and under a most extreme of circumstances.

 

[caravanman]

No one actually expects an airline to charted a jet to move crew around, or to cancel 2 plane flights or drive their crews hundreds of miles in a "limo", but nor do we expect to be evicted from our seat because of the airlines naked greed.

I would expect that out of a plane seating hundreds of passengers, airlines could "block out" 4 or 5 seats on all flights for crew emergency transfers.

Yes, it "costs" to do this, but it also costs to compensate passengers with bribes to vacate those seats.

No crew to move? Maybe sell those off at a last minute standby discount.

Anyway, back to train land at zero altitude...

Ed.

 

[XHRTSP]

Yes, it "costs" to do this, but it also costs to compensate passengers with bribes to vacate those seats.

The difference in cost between those two courses of action is massive. Any airline that did that (unilaterally, as opposed to federal industry mandate) would go under within a matter of months.

 

[CHamilton]

Let Richard Branson kill United Airlines

The Reason Foundation is not a friend of Amtrak, to be sure, but this is an interesting viewpoint on airline competition.

 

[jis]

And Richard Branson can barely keep his own airline out of bankruptcy in the more lucrative international market, let alone take on another airline in the crazy US market. He has a reputation bigger than reality in the minds of many. He recently could not come up with the money to save his own brand in the US market.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Richard Branson, the Donald Trump of the Transportation Industry?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Yes, it "costs" to do this, but it also costs to compensate passengers with bribes to vacate those seats.

The difference in cost between those two courses of action is massive. Any airline that did that (unilaterally, as opposed to federal industry mandate) would go under within a matter of months.

In the US it's far cheaper to casually berate or even beat your customers into submission. If things get really bad you can simply pay off the tiny handful of plaintiffs that have a viable chance to prevail in court. So long as every US airline is willing to play the same game there's not much that consumers can do about it on their own. Our government could do something about it, but anyone who thinks our fearless leader has a problem with people being beat-up for refusing to leave must be living under rock.

And Richard Branson can barely keep his own airline out of bankruptcy in the more lucrative international market, let alone take on another airline in the crazy US market. He has a reputation bigger than reality in the minds of many. He recently could not come up with the money to save his own brand in the US market.

Nearly every private airline has struggled to maintain solvency in the face of new multilaterals, exaggerated emotional fears, mind numbing security theater, fickle passengers, and general transportation market adversity. Not that many airlines (outside the US) seem to struggle with explaining why they had to beat up their own passengers on a random Sunday.

Richard Branson, the Donald Trump of the Transportation Industry?

Doesn't sound like they have much in common other than being (in)famous businessmen...

Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people...I was baffled why he had invited me to lunch solely to tell me this. For a moment, I even wondered if he was going to ask me for financial help. If he had, I would have become the sixth person on his list!

Link: https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/meeting-donald-trump

 

[B757Guy]

To add, I never once limo'ed while working in the pax world. Once I needed to deadhead from MCI to STL to work a rare (for me) Delta Connection flight. Even though it made since to put me on Southwest direct or Amtrak, that would have cost the company money, while using a seat on Delta was free and if I bumped a passenger or two it's not their problem. So I spent all day doing MCI-ATL-STL instead.

You get limos!!?? Man, I'm lucky the crew van shows up half the time!

 

[XHRTSP]

You get limos!!?? Man, I'm lucky the crew van shows up half the time!

The company that shuttles us between SUU and SMF/SFO/OAK/SJC has an actual stretch limo in their fleet, which we get every now and then. The bar is always conspicuously un stocked though. :-(

 

[B757Guy]

You get limos!!?? Man, I'm lucky the crew van shows up half the time!

The company that shuttles us between SUU and SMF/SFO/OAK/SJC has an actual stretch limo in their fleet, which we get every now and then. The bar is always conspicuously un stocked though. :-(
LOL, probably a good thing!