United Airlines & Oracle on pricing

United Airlines, which used to be my preferred carrier, has trumped their earlier price gouging moves to charge passengers who check baggage by now requiring a minimum stay for nearly all US domestic fares beginning in October.

Not only is United charging passengers to check a first or second bag now they are just making it hard for business travelers period. Plus they’ve raised their lowest faires by $1-$90. And they’ve added fuel surcharges that range from $5-$75 on many flights.

Ah, let me see if I get this. The airlines are in trouble, so they institute new policies to overcharge and alientate their best customers? What’s next? Pay toilets? Now I admit, I can understand the problem that airlines face with rising fuel costs. Who hasn’t felt the pinch at the gas pumps. But United seems to be crossing over the line by nickeling and diming its customers.

This is almost as bad as Oracle’s latest price increases for application server and database licenses.

No wonder businesses are moving to more disruptive companies; whether it’s carriers like JetBlue and Southwest or open source software.

Of course, the low-cost carriers are having a field day with this. Southwest has a campaign that highlights how they don’t have “hidden costs” associated with baggage check, premium seating etc. It’s a good move on their part.

And Sun has also recently highlighted their Unlimited pricing plans for MySQL and now the Glassfish application server. For $40k, you can get unlimited MySQL for companies of up to 1,000 employees. If you want the same for Glassfish it’s another $25k. And you don’t have to count cores, CPUs or Servers.