Jet blue apologizing, WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kntx]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: Kntx
To protect people from let's say... being stuck in a plane on the ground for 11 hours?

More generally, flying is an inherently dangerous activity. Government needs to ensure that certain standards are met. A for profit venture cannot be trusted to diligently protect the passenger's interests.

Not true at all.
If planes were dropping out of the sky every day people would stop flying on those airlines. It is in their best interest to have a good safety record.

Remember the Ford Pinto? Once the story got out that it tends to blow up people stopped buying them, the free market at work.

I am not saying we get rid of safety regulations though, I am saying we don't need a passenger bill of rights to protect us. We can protect ourselves by going with another airline.

How much business is Jet Blue going to lose because of this? Or more likely how much money will they lose when they are forced to drop prices to get people to take a chance on them?

However, when ever the government gets involved and start saying which airlines can fly where and how often and what they can charge they take away our ability to choose who we fly with. I?ll be flying to Virginia in a few days and I am picking the cheapest airline and one who also happens to have a great track record. If we still have government regulation as we did in the 70?s I would most likely have to pay more and get less.

Yes of course the free market is good. Responsible for great things. Where I think we can maybe do better is with regards to accident prevention. This includes security, equipment standards, maintenance requirements, crew training, etc. Having these standards in place can prevent the situation you describe where "a few planes fall out of the air" before the word is out on an airline.

Now I don't know what a passenger bill of rights would be. If it's a few sensible rules that need to be adhered to that could increase overall safety then by all means. If on the other hand it is a guideline of service standards, then I'm in agreement that it's not needed.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: Kntx

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Walter E. Williams filling in on the Rush Limbaugh program hit the nail right on the head.

We don?t need a passenger?s bill of rights; we just need to fire the airline.
If an airline can?t do the job in the right way then find one that can, pretty simple.

If I eat at a restaurant I don?t like I don?t ask the government for a dinners bill of rights, I just don?t go there again.

Jet Blue screwed up and they will pay the price.

The government is hugely involved in airline regulation. There is no comparison between restaurants and airlines. Use your head.

Part of his point was that we need LESS government regulation.
Let the free market decide.

Free market worked for nearly everything else in this country, what makes the airline business different?

Well for one thing, the airline industry ISN'T really a "free market". I agree that the free market solves a lot of problems, but only when it actually exists. The airline industry has extremely high barriers to entry, and thanks to the way airline routes are set up, you don't really have much of a choice unless you are lucky enough to be flying to or from a handful of cities with very large airports.

For example, I used to live in the Minneapolis metro-area. Given that there isn't another major airport within several hundred miles, you had pretty much one choice of airport. And at MSP, Northwest owns the vast majority of the gates. As a result, I've had the WORST experience almost every time I flew out of MSP. Thee was no incentive for Northwest to care about those routes, because there was no competition. And while MSP is one of the worst in terms of an airline monopoly, that kind of situation is repeated all over the country. My local airport, Baltimore-Washington International, has a pretty fair amount of choice given that it's not that big of an airport...but even then it doesn't really work the way you think it would because the destination cities also need a lot of choice.

Really this proves your point that free markets would help a lot, but it's really more of a theoretical benefit than anything else...because while no airline has a monopoly on the entire market, they very often have a monopoly on ROUTES, which pretty much amounts to the same thing. In theory, I can fly any airline I want to anywhere, but in practice I have to fly from BWI to MSP and I have to do it on Northwest.

Now the new startup airlines are, in many cases, moving away from the hub-spoke system to more direct routes, which should increase competition in the long term. But whether or not that works remains to be seen. Really the best we can do right now is for the government to try to insure the effects of a free market if not the circumstances of one. Shouting "less regulation" is not always the same thing as supporting a free market.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Walter E. Williams filling in on the Rush Limbaugh program hit the nail right on the head.

We don?t need a passenger?s bill of rights; we just need to fire the airline.
If an airline can?t do the job in the right way then find one that can, pretty simple.

However, in this case, because the people were locked in an airplane for 11 hours on the ground, the issue of "wrongful imprisonment" comes up. Hey, if you come to my house and I lock you in the closet for 11 hours, I could end up going to jail or getting sued.

In this case, the airline didn't merely do a poor job; rather it imprisoned people in an airplane for 11 hours in unsanitary conditions (toilets not working) and probably without food or drink (I think I read that the had run out).

I'm all for a passenger's bill of rights within reason. Williams is partially correct--people can fire the airlines. However, he should note that in many locations, there isn't really any competition because the airlines have hubs which means that at a given airport, a certain airline will tend to dominate. Also, the airline market is more akin to an oligopoly rather than perfect competition. Don't like getting bumped or mistreated? Don't want the airline to overbook your important flight? That's just too bad because there are only a couple airlines and they all tend to have similar practices.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

If planes were dropping out of the sky every day people would stop flying on those airlines. It is in their best interest to have a good safety record.

Of course, under real laissez-faire capitalism anyone could start an airline using all sorts of airplanes in various conditions that have or have not been maintained. Of course, some people will die in accidents that could have been avoided until the free market sorts it all out. That's wonderful for everyone else, but it doesn't help charred victims after the fact. The same goes for drugs, etc. (Imagine how much snake oil and quackery there would be out there if drugs and medical practice weren't regulated.)

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: ShotgunSteven

Jet Blue is what would happen if Wal-Mart started an airline.

Wouldn't Southwest also be more akin to Walmart Air? I've flown on both and had decent experiences. Heck, on my Jet Blue flights the seat backs even had small LCDs and offered a couple cable channels for free (really made the cross-country flight pass by quickly).

Is Jet Blue wholely to blame for this incident? Wasn't the airport also part of the problem, not letting it pull up to a gate?

 

[Zorba]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Originally posted by: ShotgunSteven

Jet Blue is what would happen if Wal-Mart started an airline.

Wouldn't Southwest also be more akin to Walmart Air? I've flown on both and had decent experiences. Heck, on my Jet Blue flights the seat backs even had small LCDs and offered a couple cable channels for free (really made the cross-country flight pass by quickly).

Is Jet Blue wholely to blame for this incident? Wasn't the airport also part of the problem, not letting it pull up to a gate?

I've never flown Jet Blue, but I think Southwest is by far the best airline in the states. The only one were you can still except to get any service and a snack.

 

[Zorba]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Walter E. Williams filling in on the Rush Limbaugh program hit the nail right on the head.

We don?t need a passenger?s bill of rights; we just need to fire the airline.
If an airline can?t do the job in the right way then find one that can, pretty simple.

If I eat at a restaurant I don?t like I don?t ask the government for a dinners bill of rights, I just don?t go there again.

Jet Blue screwed up and they will pay the price.

Yeah that would work if the airlines operated on a free market, but they don't. They are an Oligopoly.

It always seems like a lot of the converative talking heads thought they learned everything they needed to know after the first three weeks of Econ 101.

 

[International Machine Consortium]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Walter E. Williams filling in on the Rush Limbaugh program hit the nail right on the head.

We don?t need a passenger?s bill of rights; we just need to fire the airline.
If an airline can?t do the job in the right way then find one that can, pretty simple.

If I eat at a restaurant I don?t like I don?t ask the government for a dinners bill of rights, I just don?t go there again.

Jet Blue screwed up and they will pay the price.

I guess all those regulations enforced by the health department, the booze license, the building codes, etc etc etc mean nothing to you.
A Passenger Bill of Rights is going to happen. It's necessary because the Airlines cannot police themselves. That should be abundantly clear. As for the market fixing this, Jet Blue is one of the few discount airlines. Not everyone flies first class.

 

[International Machine Consortium]

Originally posted by: Genx87
This is how ridiculous our society has become. We now apologize for the weather.
People went driving in snow storms that drop 10 feet of snow and somehow it is somebody elses fault?

kk

No, but if we can send people into space, we ought to be able to bus them back to the fvcking terminal. Yes, it IS someone else's fault, Jet Blues. At least THEY appear to be aware of that fact!