re: United Airlines to Charge Extra for Overhead Bins

Agreed and I think its not a bad idea. People pack way too much stuff into bags way too big for carry-on. None of the airlines want to be the ones who start to really enforce carry-on size requirements because of competitiveness. This is a way of circumventing that somewhat.

The only way the domestic carriers will ever improve is if foreign carrriers were allowed to compete on domestic routes. But that won't happen.

Enforcement and implementing of this should be a real arse whip.

I flew Continental for years and was up to Platinum level. Then they merged with United, lasted one more year then I bailed out. Worse service around. Flew Frontier non-stop to New Orleans for a year or so when I was working out of Denver. Cheap tickets and no frills, but I only carried a backpack and put it under the seat. In September of last year I flew home four times. Tickets were $49, $69, $119, and $174, round trip. Heck I'll sit on a bucket for those prices, no bitching from me.

Work out of New Mexico now so Frontier not an option, flying American. It is only a step above United but at least they are "usually" fairly nice. After my next flight I will be Platinum level and they sent me a message last week asking me if I wanted to be Platinum early then it would "only cost $899." Really. Think I will wait until the 28th......

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Good. Poor people shouldn't fly, they should take a bus or a train and stay the frick out of my way.

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united/american are a joke

they are the ATT of the flight industry. do anything and everything to screw their passengers

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So oooooo investors who own stocks/mutual funds through these brokerage houses

Got it

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yep, that was pretty meaningless

I do the same. I like Southwest customer service, but I'd rather fly United simply so I can fly out of BR and so I can pick my seat. It is rarely more expensive once you factor in the drive/time to MSY and the parking fees.

It is shitty of United to do this, but then again, I notice people are starting to get away with bringing on enough bags for a multi week vacation. Between the rolling suitcase that technically qualifies as a carry on and a huge backpack that qualifies as a personal item, people can go abroad without checking a bag. United does a free concierge service for bags that won't fit in the overhead bin, so basically everyone gets free checked bags without the hassle of baggage claim. They probably got sick of it.

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I don't get why it became accepted practice you could basically carry on bags that should be checked.

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Exactly. The carry-on limit is way too generous. Carry-on should literally be just that.. something you're carrying. A purse, backpack, laptop, etc. Not a rolling suitcase + a backpack that sits an entire foot out from your back.

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Well I don't know about you, but since I have a mutual fund through Vanguard....I'm now telling people I'm a majority owner of two major domestic airlines

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Many natural competitors are jointly held by a small set of large diversified institutional investors. In the US airline industry, taking common ownership into account implies increases in market concentration that are 10 times larger than what is “presumed likely to enhance market power” by antitrust authorities. We use within-route variation over time to identify a positive effect of common ownership on ticket prices. A panel-IV strategy that exploits BlackRock's acquisition of Barclays Global Investors confirms these results. We conclude that a hidden social cost -- reduced product market competition -- accompanies the private benefits of diversification and good governance.

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LINK

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Common owners don’t need to explicitly tell their portfolio firms, “I’d like to see them boost their fares but also cut capacity” (although some of them do). In fact, not saying anything about competition might be precisely how common owners cause higher prices. The alternative to the ownership structures we see today would be owners not having stakes across the industry. One example would be activist hedge funds, which are known to push for and successfully implement product market strategies that increase the market share of a target firm at the expense of its competitors.

However, market share is zero-sum: An increase in market share of one firm must come at the expense of a competitor. It would therefore be absurd to expect that a common owner of multiple firms in the industry similarly encourages each one of them to steal market share from the other firms in the investor’s portfolio. So even if Warren Buffett promises to remain a quiet (“passive”) investor, basic economic theory and existing empirical results indicate that his involvement in the industry is likely to help lessen competition between airlines and further improve their profitability.

Given the huge extent of common ownership in the U.S. airline industry, it is not surprising that the price wars of the 1990s have ended and that profits are on the rise. The result is an industry that has become “investable.” In contrast to his reputation, Buffett didn’t “pick stocks” in this case so much as pick an industry.

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LINK