Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal
resistancereport.com
resistancereport.com
The CEO states that the flight was 'fully boarded' and then later that it was decided to 'deny boarding' to four passengers.
So was it fully boarded or not? It doesn't really matter, the airline can change its language as it sees fit, to achieve its desired business objective and the customer has no recourse.
I'm an aviation enthusiast but I don't fly commercial airlines any more for this reason amongst others.
[0] Because when there's no safety risk they can just escalate until the customer becomes aggravated, and then there's a safety risk.
If anything we shall get to witness if the power of social media can overcome such abuse, It has helped turn the tables a bit with policing but usually only when it occurs in a public setting. People do need to take note that this actually is another case of police abuse just at the behest of a private company.
Not at all am I defending what happened on this flight. Just want to point out that last second adds of flight crew members is a VERY common occurrence and without it the number of cancels would skyrocket astronomically.
Gee, I wonder if they could, I don't know, hire more people so that these situations don't happen as often? Heaven forbid they lose a little bit of profit a year...
You simply delay the other flight. You don't force someone off of a flight they've already boarded.
Those extra people still would have to be sitting on call somewhere. Once they receive the call they're sent to where they're needed which still results in this situation. It's simply unreasonable to think they would have spare flight crews in every single possible destination. Unless you want about 1,000% increase in ticket prices of course.
I'm sure the other flight was delayed. Not getting a crew there on this last flight out for the night though would have likely meant cancelling the flight in Louisville or delaying it at least 24 hours. Stranding a plane in a city like Louisville would cause major ripple effects down the line resulting in probably another 10-15 flights being delayed. If they cancelled rather than delay now you have a plane full of passengers that need to be re-routed on multiple other planes that are likely already full.
Re-location of flight crews is simply a necessary option for the airlines at this point of time. Maybe down the road we can remotely pilot airliners and then situations like this won't arise.
Sure, there may be issues that can't be planned for, and you can't hire for every case and solve every issue. But that is still not this customer's fault, and he was punished for it, arbitrarily. Frankly I don't care how difficult it is for United to prevent this from happening again-it is their responsibility, it should not be the responsibility of their customers.
> Re-location of flight crews is simply a necessary option for the airlines at this point of time. Maybe down the road we can remotely pilot airliners and then situations like this won't arise.
Then reserve 4 seats on every flight for possible situations that arise. It's not my problem that United loses money this way. It's theirs.
By your logic they better go ahead and just block of 20 seats. You know, just in case they need to re-position a B747 crew. Wonder what tickets will cost when they can only sell 30 seats on those 50 seaters.
I would think that a better argument could be made than a straw-man, but in this case, I don't think there is, so I don't blame you for it.
What's unreasonable is to think that a moderate action shouldn't be taken due to an unlikely extreme result that would never happen.
The company needs to eat the cost. Whether that means blocking out a few seats or offering more to get someone to volunteer. And sure, you can argue, that this could make tickets go up for all-but the rates at which these events happen is very low, it's hard to argue that would happen. And due to competition, many airliners would find a better way-they still have to compete on price.
I guarantee you United wishes they did.
The airline needed to raise the compensation price until someone volunteered, and if still no one volunteered, then tough noogies. They still do not get to shift from a civilized situation to a violent one by dragging state police power into what is strictly a monetary dispute.
In your example the basis for refusing transport is that due to an equipment problem it's not possible for that passenger to comply with FAR safety regulations and therefore is in breach of the contract of carriage for the airline. The terminology of the word boarding isn't even relevant in your example.
Also, boarding is any time up until gate departure.
It wasn't worth a penny more than $800 + hotel and rebooking x 4 to United so they called the police to enforce their profit margin rather than pay the market cost of doing business.
http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-airplane-bedrooms-2015...
The airline ceased to be civil when they shifted from an auction, to inviting police power on board. It was morally wrong for them to do this, and it was even worse for the police to agree to it.
There's no ethical, legal, or contractual argument for what the airline did; or the power they claim to have in this letter. They do not have the power to deplane people for the reason stated, their contract lists out numerous reasons for passenger removal but this is not one of them.
And on top of all that, there is no transparency at all on how they kick people off. And they have the audacity to talk nonchalantly about this man who had obligations refused to get off so he needed to be bloodied when they could've done so much more.
Sorry, it's not this man's fault someone got sick and a flight crew needs to be in Louisville. Hire more people or save 4 seats on every plane in the future. We shouldn't be responsible for a company's mistakes.
(though if the crew wasnt there, they wouldnt board the plane anyways, the other flight would've been cancelled or delayed, which happens all the time)
When I was in the UK, I took the Virgin Rail from London to Manchester. The additional room and ability to walk around made it so much better than a flight. I would have paid more. The time difference was negligible once you count all the extra screening time for airports.
Airlines are better, not just because planes are faster, but because of flexibility. You can find a space somewhere and build a new airport, or add a new runway to an existing airport and use less than one thousandth the land the rail line will require. The planes you fly to one destination can suddenly be switched to fly to almost any another destination, in a day.
Yea, the comfort of trains is better, but thats about it.
Nevertheless, we don't have the same security circus when boarding train.
Looking at what is happening in California, cost is the largest issue[1]. The other reason is the US optimized its rail for cargo which it does well.
Frankly, I do believe that automated cars with solve the less than 50 mile commute problems better than light rail. I actually am a little optimistic that one of the hyperloop companies will get it together to create a short elevated line that can actually start a new building phase for rail (well, tube) transport. The danger is that they realize they will probably make more money on cargo and go that way.
1) the compromises on speed are going to make for a lot of controversy if it ever does get done
London to Manchester is somewhat still OK but London to Newcastle takes longer and costs more than London to Brussels via the Eurostar.
The thing that mattered to me is that it was 2 hours, because a 1 hour flight isn't really a 1 hour flight after you deal with the airport.
IIRC the barrier of entry for "High-Speed Rail" in Europe (or in general) is 150-155mph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe
The UK has only 1 line with a speed permit of upto 300km/h (186mph) which is used for the Eurostar.
It has 4-5 other "fast" lines with a speed limit of 200 km/h (125mph) which doesn't technically count as highspeed.
That said, if you live somewhere with a convenient airport and a decent rental fleet (more places than you'd expect) it's highly liberating. I live near Denver and have gotten bored and flown to Canon city and surrounding areas for the day. Also, Pilots n Paws is awesome
Also, note that minimally you would need a commercial certificate to fly for hire. Even then, there are some restrictions on how you can do that. A private allows you to fly with friends, but you may not charge them. You can share expenses for the flight with friends, but need to be careful that it's legitimate sharing.
Surprisingly economical too, 2000mi on ~$200 in fuel. Probably around $60k to build right now (depending on avionics)
Edit: 100LL (aviation gasoline) is around $4/gal right now, hence the $200 for 52gal
They had better alternatives: other customers had offered to leave for higher voucher value, I'm sure they could have paid someone already in Louisville 4x overtime. Instead they chose force and intimidation.
So you're saying, unlike doctors, flight staff are demigods and must be given priority because they are irreplaceable?
(The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure United will view their flight crew more as cogs than demigods.)
Here's an account from someone who was actually on that plane: https://twitter.com/flsurfr/status/851556475013038080
http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/04/11/what-are-y...
If it’s more than two hours (four hours for international
flights), or if the airline does not offer alternate
flights, the compensation is 400 percent of your one-way
fare, with a $1300 maximum.
It doesn't mean they can't offer you more.
I think it's the timing that made things so difficult for them. If they asked me at the gate I'd be willing to take $400 plus flight comps. If it's when I'm already seated on the plane though (and reports said the man taken off was seated and buckled in already), my price goes way up.
One would think that since the crew dropped the ball by pulling people this late they would offer more money to make those guys volunteer happily.
Which explains why the crew offered $800 (it's a $200 ticket.)
BUT! Just because the the government caps the airline's liability does not mean the airline could not have offered more compensation to make it right. In fact given the unusual nature of the situation (flight was already fully boarded; the seats were needed for internal airline purposes, not other customers; the rule is for delays of 4 hours or more, while here the delay would have been close to 24 hours; the situation was escalating) they could have easily sweetened the deal further with an additional voucher or two, instead of calling the cops.
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/05/27/2015-12...
The airline may offer some alternative compensation (and of course one can accept it) but you have a right to a check.
Of course the airline may try to hide this from you, or give you a hard time, but according to the Dept. of Transportation you're entitled to cash.
Edit: I read it again, it read like cash compensation is not guaranteed though.
> Those travelers who don't get to fly are frequently entitled to denied boarding compensation in the form of a check or cash.
In other words, if you have a frequent flyer number or enrolled in customer loyalty program, airlines can argue that you "do indeed" fly frequently, can't they?
I'm not sure I follow your edit. How often you fly has no bearing on your rights. The DOT page says:
"Airlines may offer free tickets or dollar-amount vouchers for future flights in place of a check for denied boarding compensation. However, if you are bumped involuntarily you have the right to insist on a check if that is your preference."
If you were involuntarily bumped from a flight and certain other conditions are met, you are entitled to compensation (cash if you wish). It has nothing to do with frequent flier status.
Thus, if expected revenue from overbooking > expected payouts, overbooking is worth it.
HOWEVER, the legal compensation required scales really weirdly - $1350 maximum for anything over a two hour delay? Why would being delayed three hours be equivalent to being delayed something like 12-18 hours? I'm also not sure that maximum number has scaled with inflation.
Anyway, some airlines already do auction off this. All airlines ask for volunteers because the compensation they offer is always less than the legal requirement for involuntary bumping.
This is just a mess because United had already let the passengers on the plane, and weren't even offering that maximum, much less over it. If somebody here actually knows contract of carriage laws, does this sort of 'required compensation' thing hold after boarding happened?
If they elect you to leave the flight they have to pay you in cold hard cash - 4x the ticket value or $1350 max (assuming you are delayed by more than 2 hours).
Never volunteer to leave a flight until they state how you will be paid.
In Europe the airlines are not allowed to pay you in vouchers.
If they want to get out ahead of this they need to understand and come to grips with the fact that they are well nigh universally perceived to have been in the wrong.
See http://untied.com, a parody/complaint site.
Remember, the flight was NOT overbooked. They said they needed to get their four employees to a different state, so they wanted four people off the plane. This is all spinning by the airline, listen to the specifics.
I don't care whose fault it was, there was absolutely no need for that violence in the first place, the escalation was not justified in any situations. The protocol needs to be changed, that's what people need to start asking for. Change the policy to include exemptions such as doctors or others (firefighters, cops, etc), increase the incentives and so on.
The airline should've done its job correctly by informing their customers BEFORE boarding the plane and upping the incentives until it gets their goal. The customers should not be forced to give up what they paid before because the airline screwed up.
I could care less that overbooking is a common thing. The society should not be about protecting the profits of the companies, they should be promoting the humanity and moving it further. This is a huge regression by allowing the companies to have more power.
This is true until an officer of the law asked him to get off the plane. Argument time happens before that, and after that in court. But at that point, you're being ordered off a plane by a law enforcement officer. When you don't comply there's only one way for it to proceed at that point.
> The airline CANNOT act like the computer is right all the time
It was the police officers who were right when they ordered the man off the plane.
They could've listen and ask if anyone else would be willing to give up their seat for the doctor.
There are many options and based on the videos and what the other passengers said, the airline nor the cops gone through all of them before escalating the situation like this.
Sorry, the cops were in the wrong as well. They may have all the laws on their side I'm sure but if we treat cops as right all the time, we normalize their behaviors as acceptable as well.
Using your logic, if an officer of the law orders you to murder someone, when you don't comply there is only one way for it to proceed.
It's basically shitty logic, you should stop doing that. Hurts your brain and others' too.
The police overstepped their authority.
This is what happens when you get monopolies. Come on people, I thought we learned from the ISP monopolies already. Whenever you have limited or No choice: like monopolies, no good can come from it. I'm not surprised by this at all. And, I wouldn't be surprised if we see large increases in air fares above inflation, in coming years, as airlines consolidate their monopolistic powers. It won't be too long untill they're competing with Comcast and At&t for worst customer service.
Unlike any other industry of which I am aware, airlines are unbelievably skilled at making their problems their customers problems and then not apologizing for it.
And once you are in your seat, doesn't mean you can't be asked to leave.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/201...
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/593329-usa-today-ua-forci...
If airline employees cannot legally contribute to "overbooking" and if a passenger has different rights once seated, then there will be a legal settlement. In that scenario, every communication by United would need to serve dual PR and legal objectives.
CFR 250.2a covers overbooking but only applies before boarding. Since the United employees had no confirmed reserved seats on the aircraft, they cannot be given priority over a customer with a confirmed reserved seat.
The passenger was already boarded, so they cannot rely on oversales rules to refuse service. Instead they need to rely on their Contract of Carriage which does not allow them to eject customers for any reason whatsoever. The most circular thing they could eject him for was failure to follow the terms of the contract of carriage for refusing to disembark. They publicly stated that their reason for asking him to leave was because he was selected by a computer, but this is not allowed by their rule 21.
They had no legal right to refuse him service at that point.
This whole act of struggling with the police is never going to get a good outcome. It will only escalate things from a civil matter to a criminal one.
United asserts, they prioritise their employees gaining seats on the flight because their employees are actually necessary to the operation of this flight and others.
It makes business sense, and its logical.
There's no law on any book that will force someone to serve you, whether it be transportation wise or by letting you have use of their mobile property (land/residences are a special case). United can pick random people at any time to get off the flight, for any reason, and at worst it will be a contractural breach or a violation of a civil statue (like the overbooking clause).
Once he was told to get off, he should have gotten off.
It was United, not the passenger, who escalated to violence in a purely civil matter. He did not force himself onto the plane, he simply declined to give up the seat he had already been given.
You should go back to law school. They can eject anyone at any time for any reason.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/757712/passengers-rejoic...
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/201...
Both of your examples would violate Rule 21, H, 1, and therefore removal is allowed.
In the case under discussion, the passenger was not in breach of rule 21 for any of the listed reasons.
What did they do that should be illegal?
Overselling each flight makes the tickets cheaper. People want cheaper tickets. So it isn't obvious to me that over selling is wrong. Is the problem that they failed to stop the people boarding before deciding they didn't want to carry them on that flight?
The opposite setup would not, though. i.e., like refundable tickets, offer non-refundable guaranteed tickets that are locked out of the ticket system. This maintains the current pricing characteristics while offering travellers the option of paying more when it matters to them.
Or a sliding scale of probability of being seated. If your typical ticket has a 99% chance of being seated, most people won't care to pay extra but they know they have the possibility of being booted and cannot possibly complain.
The problem with all of these approaches is they add to the complexity of purchasing a ticket, which consumers generally don't like.
Should the airlines be prevented from ever contacting law enforcement? Is law enforcement not responsible for their own actions after the airline asks them to do something?
If someone is actually causing a problem or is somehow dangerous, then yes, by all means, call the police.
Overbooking means airlines can offer passengers refundable tickets.
Occasionally they get it wrong and have too many people show up. So they offer compensation to get people to voluntarily give up seats. If they can't get people to voluntarily give up seats they have the right to pick who to deny service to (but by law have to pay specific compensation to).
It's a system that works well. It keeps planes as full as possible. It keeps fares as low as possible.
I'm not sure it should change based on one guy who decided he was too important to accept being bumped.
Point is the compensation is obfuscated. If people demanded their $1350 or whatever when this happened, things may be better.
Why is it now that the consumer always has no rights? Don't want your private information sold when using the internet? Don't use the internet.
Don't want to be forcibly removed from a plane in which you followed all the rules for purchasing a ticket that was most likely non-refundable if you didn't show up, lost your rights for privacy by being searched to board the plane, stood in line to board the plane, was on time, boarded the plane to sit in an uncomfortable seat, maybe had to pay extra to store your luggage, then get beat up when you were told they weren't going to honor the contract?
What is this country becoming?
I think it's a bad situation, but I also think people giving very high priority to price is a big part of the reason that the contract is shit.
In a sane world, overbooking would be at best illegal, the airline would realize the savings from the flight they were paid for but didn't actually have to carry the 200 pounds of passenger + luggage.
(That's about $90 worth of fuel on top of the average $350 price for a plane ticket)
At worst, overbooked tickets would be required to be disclosed as such at the time of purchase.
There's also fractional-reserve banking, hotels, old-style phones, online / mail-order shopping ("sorry, your stuff is in back order"), etc.
Statistical arbitrage is a thing.
Air travel does none of these things. They know they've sold more than they can provide, and do nothing to tell people until the last possible minute just to make a buck.
You must be joking.
That's false. They overbook because it makes them more money and for some reason people just accept it. Pretty much no other industry could get away with doing that to its customers.
Imagine the shit storm that would have unveiled if some random movie theatre sold 110% of its seats for the midnight premier of Star Wars VII and subsequently physically removed people from their seats because their employees also wanted to see the movie and they sold too many tickets.
Airlines are catering to their customers, if one didn't offer refundable their competitors would.
If one offered refundable but didn't overbook, 10% of their passengers wouldn't show up for every flight. They'd get killed by competitors who did overbook and could offer cheaper fares because that 10% is nearly pure profit.
And though they've actually made big profits the last couple years, historically airlines are one of the least profitable businesses, possibly even posting net negative profits over the entire industry lifetime. They require massive capital costs to buy expensive airplanes, and alternate profitable and unprofitable years. Warren Buffett said if he had been at Kittyhawk he would have done capitalism a favor and shot the Wright Brothers down.
They don't have fiascos like this because they aren't foolish enough to let them into the room before removing them. Unsurprisingly, kicking a guest out of a room/plane has a much higher risk of escalation than not letting them in.
IMO a better system would be a more market-based solution.
Disallow involuntary bumping except under exceptional circumstances, and require airlines to up theirs compensation until enough people voluntarily bump themselves. Airlines would still oversell but at lower % because the cost is now higher. And people who get bumped are at least given satisfactory compensations.
Not that that would justify doing this to anyone else but he had a very good reason to not want to get off the plane.
This is why offering more and more money is a good strategy. There almost certainly were people on the flight willing to get bumped for $1500. But the doctor likely would have turned down nearly any sum of money if it meant putting his patients in danger.
But he's a doctor, not royalty. Hospitals have more than one doctor in case someone can't make their shifts. He was no more important than any other passenger.
If United ran an escalating auction system - like Delta does on overbooked flights - they would eventually have found someone to volunteer to take the incentive and that person would have voluntarily disembarked. Because they were apparently too cheap to do this, their share price is getting pounded into the ground today.
Whether that gets United's sociopathic CEO to change policy or not remains to be seen. If it doesn't, I'm inclined to agree with the OP: the consumer protection laws, at least for commercial flights, need to be updated so this doesn't happen again.
I've been avoiding United for years, but a few years ago, a few friends wanted to be picked up at the airport after United flights. Over 50% of them bought tickets for flights that didn't exist, and were instead consolidated onto other, later, flights.
Airlines should have to pay large multiples of ticket prices (in cash) to passengers that encounter a schedule change or overbooking. As the overbookings increase, the refunds should grow exponentially. (2x if 0.1% are bumped, 4x if 0.2, then 8x, 16x, etc).
If they didn't change their behavior, United would have to pay out its market cap in a matter of days, which is exactly what they deserve for systematically abusing customers for at least a decade.
“The next time we book a flight, it doesn’t matter if it’s United or Delta or American, if one of those flights is a dollar less than the other one, that’s the one we’ll pick. They know this. That’s why we’re stuck with them.”
I don't understand the dynamics of how it ended up this way. Air travel used to be a luxury, and had fairly high margins. The race to the bottom has inspired a lot of terrible practice...unbundling things like "baggage fees", pushing load factors beyond what's reasonable, increasingly smaller seats, etc.
It's been a very sharp double-edged sword: on the one hand, it gave us effective competitors like Southwest and jetBlue forcing the "legacy" carriers to compete on price and routes, enabling far more people to be able to fly. On the other, it caused the legacy carriers compete on price, not service (the only thing they could really compete on before deregulation).
Personally, I fly Southwest and jetBlue when I'm in the US, but to get there, I end up on Delta/KLM/Air France. The prices are usually around what the legacy carriers are, but they have pretty much maintained the level of service they started with (Southwest famously never had meal service, only packets of peanuts). I think because they never got into the habit of cutting back a little bit each year, they haven't gotten into the same downward spiral the legacy carriers seem to have.
I'm sure there are more factors as well. Flying is just a chore these days. And there's not much granularity of choice. There's 'cattle class', and the jump in price to something better (business, first) is huge...and does little for large parts of the bad experience. Compare to say, hotels, where there are many tiers of quality you can choose from.
Thinking you can have the good parts of competition without the bad parts and being surprised when something happens according to basic economic theory is economic doublethink at its finest.
PS: I'm all for cheap flights. It has allowed the working class (and myself) to travel and see the world and not go broke doing it. Hard to imagine but people outside of the IT bubble have to budget for vacations and having cheap flights helps a ton. Ultimately, incidents like these are so rare compared to the passenger volume that it makes no sense for a regular person to worry about it happening to them.
Er, okay. There are other products and services with heavy competition that aren't a terrible experience. There's more going on here than just generic capitalism.
Please, elaborate, and be specific about the regulation present in the sale of those products and services.
If so, automobile manufacturing is highly regulated, as is banking. Plenty of competition exists. In both, I have a very granular range of choices at different price points, and have no trouble finding ones I am happy with. Airlines generally have two tiers of service, and business/first does nothing for large parts of what makes the experience terrible.
Or are you asking about less regulated industries, like hotels or restaurants?
Or maybe things that are completely unregulated?
Your manufacturing analogy isn't appropriate, since they have to meet a minimum standard of safety for the product being sold. It is regulated heavily, because it deals with the potential loss of human life.
What's more reliable - a flight that departs on time every time or the aircraft that performs the flight? (In case it isn't obvious, it's a rhetorical question)
> as is banking
Sure, if we're talking about the safety of putting your money in a CD, which offer no consumer utility whatsoever. It's actually not a service for the consumer, since the bank is the one that makes money on the deposit.
A better analogy would have been different credit cards, which is quite a predatory service that, in theory, is possible to benefit from by the consumer, but in practice has little consumer protection if the "incentives" of the cards expire.
What I was asking for, and sorry if the intent wasn't clear, were products and services without consumer protection that offer surplus utility to the consumer beyond the service itself, that aren't terrible. If you have a rudimentary knowledge of economics, you'll know it's a trick question, though.
Cars can be safe, but still crappy. Only part of their function is regulated.
Similar for banks. My bank provides great online functionality, friendly service, and more they aren't obligated to do.
More legroom? Premium Economy (or business/first class) Aisle seat? Pay for seat selection. Slow boarding? Pay for priority. No food? Onboard purchases. Security line too long? TSA Precheck. Long lines at immigration? Global Entry.
Whether you're willing to purchase these upgrades is a personal decision, the options are there.
In your original post you commented about the pricing "race to the bottom" and the "unbundling of baggage fees". Unbundling means more granular pricing segmentation to attract a higher volume of customers.
Such perceptions are common but usually in the eye of the beholder. HN is divided about such things.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-250
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?packageI...
For example, getting person A to a city so they can crew in place of a sick employee, where otherwise we would have a plane with no pilot.
But that doesn't seem to be legal. It wasn't an oversold flight and the rule is "In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily."
The airline didn't do that because ensuring the "smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space" would mean the non-flight employees get bumped not the passengers.
Instead, employees never count towards overselling in the flight, but if their aren't enough employee-only seats, they'll take a customer seat instead.
Regardless, this is all a civil matter, and in civil matters you do not have the right to physically fight with staff or the police because you aren't getting your way. Instead, you go to court.
Short version: if bumped, you're legally entitled to a cash payout equal to 2x fare cost.
Even if the law is on their side, they still overbooked the plane by themselves, they still let everyone check in, they still let everyone in onboard and they still forcibly removed some random paying passenger just because someone on their staff wanted/needed (anyone can clarify this part?) to board.
Here is an idea for United (your HR department can contact me, I'm available to hire for 50% of your CEO and I easily come up with much better ideas):
1 - you just have to simply get the attention of the passengers on the plane (if you can be a bit smart and do it OUTSIDE the plane it's even better).
2- keep increasing the compensation you give one (or the needed) of them in order for them to catch a later flight.
Sooner or later someone would just accept the compensation. Also, that compensation wouldn't be anything special anyway since you have a plane full of people competing for it. The passenger would be happy, United would get what it wanted and you wouldn't have this media shitstorm in your hands.
Yes... it's really that simple United (again, tell your HR department I'm available for hire).
The reason this happened is they had another crew that missed their flight and needed to get to Lousville in time or another plane load of passengers would be stuck on the tarmac.
The next bit will probably not make me particularly popular, seeing most of the reactions to this debacle, but here goes.
The airplane itself is not a suitable place for any form of protest. No ifs, buts or anything else.
Once the flight personnel asks you to leave the airplane, you leave. Take the fight outside of the airplane, in court or wherever or however you deem appropriate. But not on the plane. Your work/patients/personal tragedy is in no way relevant. If you disagree with the service offered, don't use it. Vote with your feet and your wallet. Don't claim you have no alternatives or whatever. Society does not owe you your preferred lifestyle in any way.
If this guy refused to leave after he was asked to do so, according to the rules het agreed by upon entering an agreement, and I would be delayed by the ensuing situation, I would even consider pursuing some form of legal action towards him.
Having said all that, I do feel the way commercial air travel is organised these days is beyond ridiculous. I therefore avoid it whenever and however I can. If more people did that, it would have changed by now. People don't, so it doesn't. Because most just feel entitled to whatever they feel entitled to, without any basis. Fuck them.
Oh, and screw airlines too.
The real advice here is to vote with your dollar.
There was no security issue, there was no emergency, there was no legitimate reason to remove this person from the plane. The abuse and physical harm of a passenger was done entirely in the name of saving a few dollars by not sending their staff on another flight.
This was wrong and it was an abuse of the security personal to enforce their monetary needs.
Separately, the security personal should be fired -- for also being utterly unprofessional, unable to read the scenario, and reacting with unnecessary force.
Is it any wonder that "failure to comply" has become legalese for, "You've given us the right to do anything to you, up to killing you on camera."
This isn't the airlines, although obviously their customer service is appalling; this is an issue with our police.
So yeah, if the police tell you to do something, you should expect to do it. It's neither the place nor the time for a debate and if you think they're wrong, you need to argue that in court. And that will be a lot easier if you don't resist arrest in the first place.
In what sense? You can say that you only have to comply with lawful orders, but unless the cop believes their own order to be unlawful, which is unlikely, they're going to force you to comply. And if you're wrong about the order being lawful, you will get hit with resisting arrest, which will only make life harder for you in fighting it.
If you want to put a stop to it, do so in the courtroom. Do it on the streets and you'll be tasered and accomplish nothing.
Compared to... people with no contact with the police? You cant actually be saying that the average arrest is resisted, can you?
What is needed is extensive revamping of legislation to curb both police powers, and equipment, starting with an end to the war on drugs and associated weaponry/vehicles/agencies.
And he wasn't abused. He was told to leave multiple times by airline crew as well as security. He refused every time and forced security to drag him out. Whereupon he accidentally hit his face on an arm rest.
It's not abuse for profit. We all benefit from cheaper refundable fares from the overbooking system. We also benefit from having our flights not be canceled when the air crew isn't able to show up on time.
There was no safety issue, and the crew only has power over you in the event of an issue of safety. There was no such issue.
I have not seen such ridiculous defence of something indefendible like you're doing on this thread.
s/leave/sit in the back of/g
What about the security apparatus that underpins the no fly list and is feeding this comment into your "is this a terrorist" machine learning profile?
What about the idea that corporations (like private prisons) sometimes have the right to completely ignore due process?
Please stop acting like everything is OK and this is not about civil rights.
The crew is not "King." They have an expanded set of duties they can enforce.
This sort of grandiose interpretation of the law is why we have absurd egotistical displays of violence in the name of non-offenses.
Harming a passenger when you had a peaceful solution available is the exact opposite of what they are meant to do.
Second, most of the encounters people have with institutionalized racism and arbitrary violations of civil rights involve air travel.
The unconstitutional "constitution-free" zones are exactly the place protests should occur. The current situation is akin to "blacks sit in back" of buses in the US. It is better in some ways better, and worse in others. The mix of victims skews to different socioeconomic groups (muslims, middle-lower class) than the old Jim Crow laws (and it is easier to avoid the airport than public roadways) but that doesn't make the current situation OK.
Anyway, history has decided Rosa Parks was a hero. I think it will eventually make the same call with respect to air travel.
2. Overbooking rules can only be used to deny boarding. The passenger had already boarded.
3. United's own Contract of Carriage enumerates for "Refusal of Transport" in rule 21. None of the rules apply.
What United did was illegal, plain and simple. They may have made false statements to authorities to get him ejected as well.
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag...
I think that this case was about "acts of God" because I don't find any other reason to be force majeure.
Overbookings are industry standard, and they called security for someone who wouldn't leave. "Correct" protocol.
I think what most likely happened is the security guard that has been placed on leave did his job very poorly. As soon as he hit the passenger his coworkers probably thought "Uh oh. We need to just get him out of here before this gets worse. Because this is not what's supposed to happen."
It's obvious to us though that calling security is a way to make ALL your customers unhappy, and should be avoided at whatever cost. They should have just kept raising their offer for passenger's seats, that would be the better protocol.
"They were just following protocol" is the new "Befehl ist Befehl" - also known as Nurember defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
The fact that a defenceless man has left a plane covered in blood should give everyone pause. They followed orders is a very poor response.
My comment was meant to suggest that anger at the CEO for supporting his employees, who only called security, and didn't beat the guy up themselves, is misplaced. UA screwed up, but the email wasn't what went wrong.
The UA employees followed protocol by calling security. Protocols are generally in place for a reason, and they can be reworked. I don't think comparing overbooking to German soldiers entering a plea against war crimes is a good analogy.
As comparing overbooking to German soldiers - the Nuremberg defense, despite originated from Nazi's trial, refers today to any account where "I was just following orders". It refers to /any/ situation where someone claims unaccountability because "it is the protocol". This is exactly the case. If the protocol accounts for beating up a passenger, are the employees unaccountable just because "that's what the manual says"? No, they are not. They are human beings and they could say "fuck the protocol". There are a million other ways to handle a logistical problem without the use of violence.
If I were a United employee I would also not be impressed. UA is now instantly associated with violence.
You want to know that something went wrong and that UA doesn't stand for violence, as most other employees would.
But that's what the letter's saying...
He says it right here:
He was approached a few more times after that in order to gain his compliance to come off the aircraft, and each time he refused and became more and more disruptive and belligerent. Our agents were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security Officers to assist in removing the customer from the flight. He repeatedly declined to leave. Chicago Aviation Security Officers were unable to gain his co-operation and physically removed him from the flight as he continued to resist - running back onto the aircraft in defiance of both our crew and security officials.
It's very clear to me that UA did not condone or suggest the violence against the passenger. The CEO's description of the events makes it clear to employees that this situation escalated out of control after they passed it off to security.
Just because you can apply it doesn't mean you should. You really need to define what protocol they have that you hate so much. The guard that attacked the passenger was placed on leave. Suggesting the violence wasn't protocol.
a. It wasn't overbooked. It was apparently exactly 100% booked and filled. Four paying customers were replaced by four non-paying crew. That is not an overbook situation, so United's entire rule 25 in the contract of carriage doesn't apply.
b. The removed customer didn't violate a single listed reason under rule 21 of the contract of carriage. Where else in the contract is passenger removal permitted?
c. Even if it were an overbooking, the airline's contract only says boarding can be denied. It doesn't say anything about rescinding an authorization to board, i.e. changing their mind.
What's going on here, are unwritten rules that they just made up out of thin air, convinced the police they exist, and got the police to do their dirty work. That rule is "upon refusal to comply with a polite request, the airline will petition an ignorant police force to (violently) remove the passenger from the plane."
This perverted, uncivilized, unwritten rule needs to be challenged. I hope this passenger takes them to court without settling. It needs to become part of the public record. If he settles, the details will get buried behind a non-disclosure agreement, and we won't actually learn that it's the airline who violated their own contract of carriage, and the police almost certainly broke the law not just their policies, in physically removing this person from the plane.
And unfortunately most of the media has spread false information by saying that the airline can have a person thrown off a plane for pretty much any reason, which is only true if you agree. If you look at the written contract, removal in this case is not supportable, even with a very vivid imagination.
I am a weekly business travel as are all my peers so this is purely my observations from 15+ years of frequent business travel.
The Aircrew could announce on the PA that "we're very sorry that the fligth will be be delayed but we're overbooked and still looking for X ppl willing to take the next flight. We're offering a X $ compensation for your trouble."
Then you just increase X until you will find people willing to take the deal.
Idiots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars
Now they break passengers, too.
1. Hand out prefilled in vouchers/checks to all the passengers with the amount filled in, which become valid when redeemed at the counter. There's an irrational human thing that people hate losing something they have more than they like gaining something[1], so helping to feel like they are losing the $800 voucher by not redeeming it would be more beneficial. I imagine that having the (fake) voucher/check in their hand would increase voluntary rates by a lot (and lower the compensation the airlines would need to pay), while only increasing some paper printing costs.
--- Other ideas ---
1b. Add in language during ticket purchase saying "To keep prices low, bla bla bla, 1 in 20,000 passengers may be unable to fly. Purchase protection from this event for $1". The passengers that don't purchase that protection would then be eligible for denied boarding, but at least they had more of a choice. Although, it still feels like "guaranteed seat" should just be included by default when you purchase a ticket (as I type this, it feels insane that "guaranteed seat" would be an upsell... but that seems to be the case).
1c. Offer more in compensation to passengers (obvious). This is not like eminent domain, where you need 100% of people in a given area to agree to something. You only need 4/100 passengers to agree to something, it truly can work like an auction.
--- Other thoughts ---
1. Everyone is blaming United for this event, but is there a different US airline who this event couldn't have happened to? They all have involuntary boardings, and presumably if you choose not to go peacefully, the airline will involve law enforcement. The only reason people leave peacefully when they don't want to is because they know the airline has the ultimate physical control.
2. Jimmy Kimmel mentioned it, but you just cannot imagine this happening in any other industry. Being kicked out of a restaurant table after being seated, being kicked out of a hotel room just checked into, etc.
3. The management of United seems completely out of touch with sentiment and reality, given their statements. Using the word "re-accomodate" in a three sentence statement seems like a symptom of a larger problem... it should have been obvious how people would react to that. I believe they are so deep into their philosophy of "this is how the industry works" that they have lost sense of the bigger customer picture. It's really as simple as: He bought a confirmed ticket with real money->boarded the plane->told ticket is no longer valid and kicked off. No amount of industry financial rationalization will change that.
4. This is still a rare issue, only about 1 in 15,000 flyers in the US is involuntarily denied boarding[2]. That said, United has 5x the rate as Delta, so this problem is not inherently terrible everywhere in the industry. Worth noting that this flight was operated by Republic, not United.
--Citations--
[1] https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-buyers-and-sellers-inherently-di...
[2]http://6331-presscdn-0-25.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/u...
I don't claim that there aren't better ways to handle the situation, but I also don't see any wrongdoing in how this shook out.
That is your claim but it does not appear to be true.
Read this comment on reddit from a lawyer (unless someone shows that to be wrong I'll assume it to be true):
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/64nluh/united_ceo_dou...
(EDIT: The comment is actually just a quote of another comment here: https://thepointsguy.com/2017/04/your-rights-on-involuntary-...)
According to that guy's reasoning they violated the law and that's all.
> and escalated the situation
I don't understand the mental gymnastics unfortunately performed numerously by people like you which can be found all over the comments to somehow let United be in the right here. Apparently in your eyes customers have no rights, and anything the corporation demands must be done, period. Especially when I look at how you phrase it: It seems more than obvious that if anyone escalated the situation is was United. The other people on board apparently saw it that way too! Nor did they do what they were required by law to do, to the end the compensation they offered was below what they were legally required to offer. Who escalated, tell me again?
Who was bleeding, the police, a United airlines person - or the passenger?
But it is interesting that you still try to reframe the problem, anything to twist the issue. Do you work for United? I'm not accusing you, just asking, there certainly are more than enough people who are even more obedient to authority than at any time in the Kaiserreich (19th century Germany) whose only way to read any such story is "how can I possibly read this situation so that the big guys are right". Your idea of law and order seems to be top => down, and one-way only, the top guys command, the bottom guys obey - immediately, no questions (again: the passenger did not do anything, reacting to aggression is not aggression!).
I didn't intend on reversing a question. The only questions I see in this thread are ones I asked. I initially approached the situation from the perspective of the passenger, his decisions, and what would be right or wrong actions for him to take. Thinking about the same questions for the other actors in this situation — as you suggest — is also a good idea.
> Do you work for United?
Nope.
> Your idea of law and order is top down - and one-way.
If you knew me, you might reconsider that evaluation.
I didn't talk about "intent" but about what you did.
> Nope.
Ahh, somebody likes selective quoting. Care to read the entire section next time?
> If you knew me, you might reconsider that evaluation.
I know what you wrote and that's what I responded to. I don't care what you do with the rest of your life, I don't see it so there is nothing to comment. I commented on the visible part.
I personally think he did not violate that law and thus was not legally required to disembark.
Anecdotal evidence, obviously, but I've been on many overbooked flights. Have never seen anything arise to this level of authorized violence. YMMV of course.
The law is not always just. At one point it was illegal for women to vote, for minorities to work for free, for nations to invade others, etc.
A man bought a ticket, was seated in his paid for ticket, then instructed that he didn't really purchase that seat and must leave. What makes this legal? Likely some sub-clause in the 4 point typeface on the back of the ticket? Are you ok with being forcibly evicted from your apartment because there is some sub-clause that allows the landlord to evict you if his kin/employee needs a room? That isn't allowed because that happened in our past and our laws correct that misbehaviour. Perhaps our laws need to be revised again?
Yes.
Partly because my parents had that own sub-clause in their tenancy agreement and exercised it to allow me to move back home when I really needed it.
It's a common sub-clause permissible in cases where the rental property is part of the primary residence. It was added because getting into a situation where your own family cannot live with you because of an existing lease is.... awkward.
People who get married and need a tenant to move out, would instead have to move out of their own houses and rent an apartment.
One point in favour of UA though, is that they're perfectly within their right to deny boarding for any reason whatsoever. Yes, it's completely a dick move on their part, but just because they're acting like dicks does not give a passenger the right to refuse disembarkation, it's not his aircraft.
FWIW I 100% think the passenger was mistreated regardless, just saying there aren't enough facts to pass judgement so easily
I answered his question, I didn't say anything about demigods.
I was answering to this.