In my experience yes, but some planes ive notice they turn back on each time there is an announcement, so depending on how many it can be annoying. Eother way advertising is a cancer that plagues our lives more and more.
You can, but I've stopped ever using them because the screen completely stops for every. Single. Announcement.
And now you can have your phone out for take off and landings, so yea no thanks I'll stick with my device that keeps working when they're making some random announcement about drinks or some shit
For those of you contemplating ways of covering up the ads:
This is the same airline that beat the shit out of that doctor because the airline overbooked the flight. For your own safety, do not cross this airline.
It's clear from a lot of stories like this (severe customer mistreatment) that United employees are miserable people who hate their jobs but this is nuts. I hope Dr. Dao got a huge settlement from United.
Is United Express actually United? I thought those tended to be a regional carrier using the name under license.
I'd expect the labour friction to be still worse; I was peripherally involved with such a firm 20 years ago and know they had terrible problems with staff retention, mostly because they wouldn't pay enough to retain people after they got fed up with the free-standby-flight privileges.
And the CEO who brushed that assault off ‘suffered’ a ‘delayed promotion’. Poor thing. For saying that stuff about anyone, let alone a customer, he should have been fired, no golden parachute.
I think the doctor’s patients should have sued the airline too, since no doubt having their doctor pounded to a pulp caused them to miss their appointments.
Have you ever turned a screen off on one of these planes? They turn back on. So you turn them off again. Sooner or later, they turn back on. And repeat.
I have. It usually stays off until they rig the cabin for final approach. Comes back on for landing but hey, whatever?
I'm getting beaten up for my stance here, but seriously: if all it takes to put you over is some midflight ads the do the rest of us a favor and don't fly. Take a train or whatever.
Y'all are acting like they're gonna strap us down and tape our eyes open like that Alex Whasisname kid in A Clockwork Orange. I assure you that doesn't happen for another 22 years in this timeline (give or take).
I don't think you're being beaten up for it. I certainly am not beating you up for it. But usually, yeah, the screen does come back on during the flight. I think they turn it back on automatically every time there's an announcement. As somebody who finds screens like that very distracting and even migraine-inducing (the "busyness" of that sort of thing is a big trigger), it's really frustrating.
Depends on the plane and system it has. Last United flight I was on it stayed off the entire flight. I use my phone and generally don’t look at it anyway but it was nicer I suppose.
I honestly couldn't care less how many adverts they show me, they can have a constant stream of adverts the whole flight if it means that some shitty corporation is paying a portion of my travel coats.
People really need to grow up about stuff like this, if you don't want adverts then pay for a premium service - I'm poor, I'll accept the adverts.
Here's the thing: companies have learned they can add ads to make additional money without passing any of that on to their customers.
If you think you're going to get a better rate for having ads, you're fooling yourself. They'll always charge as much as they can get people to pay and that amount isn't affected by ads most of the time.
This is thinking based on emotion not reality, most of the internet is free because of adverts so your belief that it's not used to lower prices is clearly silly. Yes companies love profit but they often increase profits by lowering prices to attract more business, it's a perfectly valid business model to use adverts to reduce the cost to the customer and increase customer volume.
Those employees could have stood. Frontier and Spirit give vouchers out when they intentionally overbook.......which before the pandemic was everyday. If nobody takes the bait, they up the voucher value. For them it's essentially monopoly money.
If United couldn't get anybody to bite at the vouchers, then the employees should have stood the whole flight. Instead, they beat a man who was not fighting back physically. He only insisted that he get to his patient. They LITERALLY dragged him off the plane. By his ankle, as he tried to grab onto anything he could.
At this point anyone calling the police in the US is a necessary accomplice, and guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, aggravated battery, and probably several other crimes.
Overbooking should be a mandatory minimum compensation of the greater of 1000x the ticket price or $20k. It's a truly fucked up practice to disrespect people's time like that.
If you're getting targeted ads for penis enlargement pills, then the system thinks you have a small pp. If this is an error, you should submit photographic evidence to their office to prove you don't have a small pp.
Seriously. It's nearly a sure thing. I should buy on Monday and see how it goes. People are sleepwalking about adtech shit so they'll continue to fly United. There's already a dude in this thread telling people to chill and just don't fly if they don't like it. The ad revenue should be pretty juicy, too. They have a bored captive audience identified by full name and credit card number.
Part of the problem is that UA is such a massive airline, odds are any alternatives would involve quite a bit of sacrifice. Not many people would be willing or can afford to take an extra 2 layovers or 50%+ extra travel time or cost in order to get to where they want to go 🫤 That's not to say I won't try my best to avoid UA though, I was already sick of them after my last trip and now I find this news.
The thing I hate is that all these airline screens usually default to "on", and people tend to leave defaults. I'm a tall person, and can usually see a large number of the screens in front of me. So if I'm on a night flight, even if I don't intend to sleep, the only way to not be blinded by dozens of ads for a few hours is to bring a sleep mask.
I feel so bad for tall people on planes. It's uncomfortable AF for all of us, but you guys have to become human origami just to sit. It's insane that this shit is legal. I avoid flying as much as possible.
I'm tall and fat it's a double whammy. Granted one I've done to myself, luckily I generally only fly with my wife so I can get the isle seat to stretch
And for the low, low price of $4,99 you will get not one, not two but three ad blocking devices you can use to stop these ads from bothering you! Available in several cute patterns and colors. Get yours now, call now!
(warning: do not wash these cloths above 105°F or there might be ad-spillage while using the ad blocker due to shrinkage)
It's truly amazing....they must stand at the front of meetings and just ask "how do we make our passengers hate us most?"
Maybe I don't understand the economics of this move, but are they really going to make that much more money from targeted ads? If it's double the price, I assume it's worth it, but if it's a ~10% gain it's just dumb.
About a decade ago Fox News got brought to court, and had to defend themselves against the idea that their content wasn't actually factually accurate most of the time. Therefore not "news".
Fox responded by saying that their program wasn't meant to be news. I forget the exact quote, I'm sure duckduckgo is your friend, but it was along the lines of "No reasonable person would ever consume Fox News content and believe it to be trustworthy accurate news. It is an opinionated entertainment show about the news."
I don't remember their tagline at the time, but it was something along the lines of "Fox News is your only outlet for unbiased news!" Something to that effect. I just remember Jon Stewart calling out the hypocrasy of their tagline being the exact opposite of what they said in court.
If Fox News is entertainment meant to push the agenda that the right is right, and if CNN is entertainment meant to push the agenda that the left is right, then I don't see why The Onion can't join them as entertainment meant to push the agenda that the whole world is fucking stupid.
Still operating as a "real news source", except it's all bullshit like Fox News and CNN. Just entertainment.
Same thing happened with "VitaminWater", a product in the category of "enhanced water" (a term reminiscent of "enhanced interrogation technique"). Coca-Cola argued that, despite the name, no reasonable person would believe it's actually healthy. They settled.
It certainly wouldn't be OK for anyone that actually wants to use the in flight entertainment. I watch whatever TV shows and movies that I downloaded ad free and never turn on the seat back screens.
I already dislike the experience of being with other passengers on United. Nothing negative occurred on my part, just noticed how badly behaved other passengers were compared to every other airline I’ve flown.
My point is, I wouldn’t pick United to fly as my first choice.
