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Comment by mattsfrey | Hacker News Reader

Sure it was a dumb/unethical thing to do on behalf of the airline and should have been handled differently etc. I'm wondering why nobody is commenting on the absurd behavior of the passenger however - insisting on forcing police to physically drag him from the plane. Once it was decided and the guys in uniforms with guns show up, what sane person is honestly going to do that? The decision to remove the passenger we can all rightly agree was wrong, but the graphic nature of how events unfolded at that point is really on the passenger.

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I think this is milquetoast logic. You acknowledge the airlines' mistakes, and then with exactly zero logic you shift the burden of consequence entirely to the victim.

Shit airline policy, shit airline decision making prior to boarding to avoid an altercation, shit airline decision making after the boarding process by being too cheap to bribe literally anyone off the plane, shit airline decision to have a "random" person forcibly removed. Yeah that's all bad but in the end it was the passengers fault for what happened? Ummm, yeah, that's shit logic. How did you just get from Exhibits A, B, C, D, and E to conclusion Z with no dots connected?

I also call bullshit on "the computer" picking someone randomly to be removed. I will eat my hat if the computer really has a random function for this purpose, rather than one based on seniority (miles status) or yet another shit decision on part of the airline shifting a personal choice to that of the computer, i.e. lying.

I'm glad this guy stuck to his decision. Even better there's video for his future lawsuit. The only thing they understand is money. And he should take as much of their money as his lawyer can possibly extract out of the airline. It's the only way airline employes who made bad decisions at literally every step along this sequence will make adjustments. Had he merely complied, it would have secured the policies as just and reasonable in the eyes of the airline, even though they aren't just or reasonable.

> and then with exactly zero logic you shift the burden of consequence entirely to the victim.

When did mattsfrey say anything of the sort? Seems to me that he said that, essentially, the passenger made a bad situation worse. And I think that his claim is objectively true. The passenger would not leave the plane, even when told to do so by the police. Does that lead to physical force? In the real world, yes, it does. Does the passenger bear some (not all!) responsibility for that? Yes, he does.

Absolutely not. The airline made a bad situation worse by refusing to offer adequate compensation, and they made it even worse by introducing violence. This man saw that he was being wronged, and he refused to allow them to wrong him without some type of protest. If he had left and said, 'Well, this isn't right,' nothing would have come of it. He would have received no justice. Now, there's a good chance that he'll be adequately compensated for his trouble, and United will be adequately shamed/penalized by would-be customers.

Yes, choosing an action you know will directly result in a certain outcome makes you responsible for experiencing that outcome. Logic seems pretty simple to me

No, you can't expect the outcome is to be violently assaulted while doing no harm.

Only in a fascist state.

In every single functioning state, you do what the police tell you or they use violence to coerce you. This is basically what defines the existence of a 'state', the alternative is anarchy.

Tell that to Rosa Parks.

The alternative is not anarchy. Peaceful resistance is a valid way to protest something that is wrong.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

Personally, I don't consider his behavior to be absurd. His form of non-violent protest to this situation helped bring to light some rather absurd policies. And as a customer who has been on some awful United flights, alongside the experience of waiting in airports and commuting for hours, I absolutely sympathize with his position.

Why should this man be forced off the plane when he bought a ticket, passed all the security check points, segmented a portion of his day for this trip, and was mostly a compliant customer? The fault of this is squarely on United who had many options available to them and opted to escalate it into the situation that it became.

This isn't a situation where only one seat was available on a plane and the only solution was to bump this one person off so that someone more important could take it. This is a situation where United could've easily upped the compensation to look for someone among dozens of passengers to give up their seat.

Honestly, most consumers are not going to look at this story and sympathize with United.

There is the possibility that the passenger was not American or was not familiar with American police tactics or was not familiar with this "IDB". Not everyone is a frequent flyer. Who knew airlines in US can use force to throw out passengers just minding their own business? It's news to me.

I understand what you're saying. But on the other hand I'm impressed. And I think good on him for standing up for himself and making United pay in bad PR for trying to bully him.

The airline should never have let it get to that point. That is precisely what is unethical about it.

If the doc ain't with his patients the next day, maybe he figured he'd at least make it as expensive for UA as possible.

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