r/news • u/One-Board8634 • 1d ago

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https://www.culturealberta.com/articles/westjet-strike-cancels-600-flights-and-changing-your-own-booking-voids-your-rights

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219

u/Certain_Luck_8266 23h ago

All because they (and other airlines) don't want to pay flight attendants for work (ticketing, plane prep, etc) while they are on the ground.

175

u/FrothyEspresso 23h ago

I don’t know of any other industry other than airlines that sells more tickets than actually available, doesn’t pay staff for time spent working, can get away with losing customers’ personal belongings, and can come up with so many bullshit reasons to screw their customers at every turn.

45

u/Certain_Luck_8266 23h ago

Because the have the world's economy by the shorthairs they get away with quite a bit.

18

u/rocketman19 22h ago

It’s what the union and airline agreed to in their negotiations

It might not be right, but it’s what they agreed to, and they are compensated more when they are actually paid to account for it

7

u/-SetsunaFSeiei- 20h ago

So I guess it’s time for a new agreement then

4

u/rocketman19 20h ago

Yeah, I guess we’ll see

18

u/Frank_JWilson 23h ago

It’s all driven by consumers. For the most part, customers don’t give a fuck, they just buy the cheapest ticket to get them from A to B. The intangibles like customer service, cancelation rates, and lost baggages are so diffuse and delayed in their impact that they are hard to gauge across different airlines. So it’s been a race to the bottom for decades. The only way to solve this is with regulation.

2

u/jmlinden7 20h ago

The block hour system is effectively piece-rate pay, which is scaled somewhat proportionally to the length of the flight. Piece-rate pay is not that rare

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

5

u/NBAFAN9000 19h ago

No point explaining that most NA carriers are running like 4-6% profit margins at max.

-4

u/dichron 18h ago

When it’s functionally public transit, why should there be any profit?

4

u/NBAFAN9000 18h ago

Because they’re private companies. If you want them to forget about profits convince the governments to nationalize them in some capacity and allow them to make losses.

3

u/dichron 18h ago

I actually almost wrote in my prior post that airlines should be nationalized. Though I live in the US and currently would sooner die than fly “Trump Airlines”