Thrown Off a United Airlines Flight for Taking Pictures
upgrd.com
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However, it would have been impossible for the pilot to verify this - even if the author showed him the camera. Since the author was willing to 'prove' it, it had to be a digital camera - which the author could have very easily used the built-in delete function to remove all photos but one (or be a sneaky terrorist and swap SD cards).
In addition, the author made the statement "I am not a terrorist." There's no way for flight crew to know this to be true until the plane lands at its destination and you provably haven't blown it up, killed people on-board, or hijacked and redirected it to another location. There is absolutely zero value in making a declaration like that.
... In fact, I'd say there's negative value in making that statement. In a security conscious environment like an enclosed aircraft, it immediately escalates a situation from "photo-happy tourist or possible bad guy" to "higher probability bad guy or maybe making a political statement ... or just not very smart". It's also a (very small) step in the direction of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater as you've potentially now caused (possibly over-sensitive) people hearing this statement to begin to have concerns about you and their flight. You've turned what should have been an uneventful flight into a situation where tension can only increase before you've even left the ground.
When you add all of this up, especially when a flight is trying to get out of the gate on time, the pilot is going to err on the side of caution and kick you off the plane.
You'll either blow up in a rage of righteous fury (thus proving to all that you should never have been on that plane) or you'll leave quietly, a one-time mistake, and board another flight (hopefully with much less bother to the next crew considering how much time you just wasted).
You were not kicked off for taking pictures. You were kicked off for acting odd.
When a cop pulls you over because there was a kidnapping a year ago, you do not end up in jail for making the claim "Don't worry, I'm not a kidnapper"
No, but you'll get a more thorough check of your car (trunk and backseat), plus a more in-depth check of your car's plates and your ID - because you just made a seemingly unrelated statement about a horrible thing (kidnapping) when the cop pulled you over for something trivial (not obeying speed rules).
Not in a normal society.
Not necessarily. A plane is a crowded, cramped environment and other passengers (such as myself) might not want to be photographed.[1] A broad "no photos" rule is an easy way to make sure that those of us who don't want to be photographed don't have to be. Similarly, photo-taking by tourists is often distracting (people spilling into aisles, flash photography in a small reflective space, etc.). People often seem to have no idea how to take photos without being disruptive. I agree that the disruption is the problem, but a "no photos" rule is easier to enforce than "photos, but no flash, except the LED flash on camera phones..."
This interaction should have ended after "thanks, I didn't know there was a policy against taking photos."
[1] See, for example, the evergreen controversy about the photography rules at Burning Man. It's a constant balance between "people want to take pictures so they can remember what happened" and "some people don't want to be photographed in what for them is a very personnel experience."
There is any number of reasons why they might want to ban photos of plane equipment that just boil down to airline self-interest without playing the "security" card. Not that this invalidates them, but it does put the flight attendant's request in a less all-trumping context.
(for the curious who haven't travelled on the visa waiver program: http://www.usvisalawyers.co.uk/article6add1.htm )
Not even odd, slightly odd which is now apparently grounds for getting kicked off an airliner.
The terrorists have won a great victory if acting slightly odd is enough to terrify an airline company into kicking a passenger off a plane.
This isn't about terrorism. It's about a flight attendant taking exception to a passenger, and owing to what he later said and how he behaved, believing that he could develop into a problem on a long-haul flight.
Was it a good call? Probably not, given the author's flight history. It is, however, an understandable one, especially given how little it takes for one person to cause havoc on a flight, especially when it's long-haul.
If I pay for a service and it isn't delivered there better be a damn good reason. A lie about me doing something that I wasn't or me stating that I am not a terrorist are not good reasons.
Speak for yourself. But this is neither here nor there, as you well know. The issue is: have you announced your likelihood to become a problem later in the flight? If so, why should you remain?
I think in this case it was a harsh call, but ultimately an understandable one. Heck, who's to say the same flight crew hadn't earlier had to deal with an undeniably genuine problem passenger, and hence were being over-cautious? We're all human.
I do not; that would be asinine.
Not really.
It is political and military pressure on certain countries with high birth rates and weak economies that radicalizes young men - lift the foot from their neck and see them be as indifferent/slightly dismissive towards our lifestyle/religion like we are to theirs.
Airport/aircraft security seems to be part of a trend of law enforcement in the US: harsh punishments for minor crimes, "tough on crime", zero tolerance etc.
Sorry if I missed some sarcasm.
The billions of travellers since the attacks are now constantly nervous - not of an attack anymore because the odds of that are so vanishingly small you don't seriously consider it - but of saying or doing something that some over-eager security policy has irrationally branded dangerous. It's like passing a pack of dangerous animals: you never know what's going to set em off, but whatever you do don't draw attention.
So yeah, they have won. It's not hypothetical; it's a fact of everyday travelling life.
...which is still a fucking terrible reason.
There was a very simple solution to this situation; Suck it up, swallow your pride and apologise, whether you were in the wrong or not.
If he had been humble about it, he very likely would have been able to stay on the flight.
Courtesy, respect and humility goes a long way.
But apparently the FA decided to lie and blow this out of proportion
There is no way this was being reversed. Once it gets to that stage, it is too late.
I was referring to things like illegal turns and disorderly behaviour.
This thing where everyone shouts down someone who stand up for themselves, even when they admit that person is right is really awful. It's like people value obedience of arbitrary impositions of authority as the highest virtue.
Here's where the guy loses me in the article: he blames the FA exclusively, as if it would be reasonable to kick someone off a plane even if he had continued to take a picture after she told him not to (why is she running around demanding that people not take pictures?). In fact, he's crazy to have been loyal to the airline company in the first place and his surprise at the lack of reciprocation is baffling.
That is just about the greatest virtue in the context of being in a confined space with someone in a relatively flimsy metal tube jetting over the ocean (or wherever). One is already trusting the captain + crew with your life to a large extent.
>"he blames the FA exclusively, as if it would be reasonable to kick someone off a plane even if he had continued to take a picture" //
My take is that the FA flagged the subject's behaviour as suspicious [or at least potentially problematic] and the photography was used as the excuse to oust the passenger without troubling the rest of the people onboard with mention of "terrorism" or making potentially slanderous remarks about the general character of the subject.
You are guest on board a plane. They treat you like a guest, but they are busy and concerned people so do not overstay your welcome. That's the social contract around air travel.
And the payment? Treat it as entry fee to a nice party. You have to pay to enter but you have no right to be there if you can't behave.
And getting railed up by someone in power misrepresenting something about you that's unverifiable? Well... OP tells how it turned out. It usually turns out that way.
OP broke the rule (photographed equipment), when gently reminded about the rule, he made no efforts to make up for his violation (he didn't delete photos) and indulged his need to explain why he felt entitled to breaking that rule without clearly stating that he won't do it again but with using word 'terrorist' instead. Then he was asked to leave the plane.
> There was a very simple solution to this situation; Suck it up, swallow your pride and apologise, whether you were in the wrong or not.
And watch your self esteem plummet. Do that repeatedly and your self esteem would be in the negatives :)
That makes no sense to me because they off load the baggage from the hold of passengers who are not actually on the plane. A security measure that actually makes sense.
Basically, one has to be mindful not to use words that will cause people too stupid to parse the context in which they were used to be anxious.
It's not right that you have to hold your tongue in airport security or on a plane. But whether right or wrong in the moral sense, it's prudent to avoid alarming the staff if you intend to make your flight.
You're right... the fact that they are given arbitrary power without training or trust is more the problem than their judgement as individuals. Or perhaps, because they aren't trusted, their orders are to resort to extreme measures as a default response to certain specific behavioral indicators.
I honestly will never understand how a one-time attack carried out a decade ago could throw the American society off its rocker so much.
In my country (Spain) apart from an Islamic terrorism attack we have had local terrorists (ETA) killing people almost every year from the 60's to 2011, and there just aren't such taboos and irrational fear in our society.
NB: I'm not one of those Europeans who bash on Americans, I admire the American society in many aspects... but this one I just can't understand. Ánd I could expect to see this kind of thought among uneducated people, but in HN? Oh wow.
It has done with a passenger exhibiting odd behaviour leading to the flight attendant believing that he might cause a disturbance during the flight. People causing problems on planes are a nightmare for airline carriers as it can result in early landings, increased risk of life threatening incidents and subsequent scheduling problems.
When it comes to planes better to be safe than sorry.
Exactly. It's a long-haul flight, you might have a grudge against the flight attendant, you've already behaved slightly oddly - thinking it appropriate to say "I hope you didn't think I was a terrorist" is odd - and there are so many ways the flight could become a nightmare for all concerned, all thanks to you remaining on the plane.
Maybe the captain could have handled things better. At the same time, the author went off the plane calmly and without making a scene. The author's disappointment aside, it sounds like a success to me.
I can't imagine any criteria under which the handling of this situation could be considered a "success" and it scares me that individuals, not directly involved, could see it as such.
Not even the bit I wrote in the previous sentence? To clarify: "the author went off the plane calmly and without making a scene".
I've never had anything but good experiences with United through a couple of hundred thousand miles of flights (London <=> SFO regularly for a few years - still got about 100k unused miles...).
But if this had happened to me, I wouldn't be flying United the next time.
My choice of United instead of British Airways or Virgin for that period was entirely down to Uniteds much better (for me) frequent flier program (LHR <=> SFO gave me upgrades to business around one leg out 3 or 4 or so on average, while BA and Virgin were impossibly stingy, though the quality of their business class was better), but that would not outweigh a risk of not getting on the plane.
United is not exactly in an economic situation where they can afford pissing off their best customers.
Not only that, but a customer who writes a travel blog which appears to be fairly widely read (judging just by the number of comments on the original blog post) and who clearly knows how to use social media to get his story out.
This whole thing is a huge black-eye for United from what I can see.
I'm getting very tired of blogger-entitlement-syndrome. "I'm important on the internet! Respect my authoritah!"
Moreover, it was probably just so incredulous to the blogger that there would be any chance at all that anyone would imagine he'd be a terrorist because he was taking pictures of the little monitor in the seat in front of him that it didn't even cross his mind that it could possibly be taken in that context.
(slight tangent) Reminds me of this one time I mentioned nirvana in a school essay (not even the band, the actual word itself) and the teacher reported me to a counselor as a possible suicide threat in reference to Kurt Cobain. I didn't even know who Kurt Cobain was. This was in like 9th grade. WTF?
That's awkward, and it's entirely natural to want to deny the accusation. And sure that denial will also be awkward... but the problem is the assumption in the first place, not the denial. Everybody knows that the airport is a place of everlasting mistrust, no matter that it's not reasonable - and that you'll be treated unfairly because you're implicitly assumed to be a terrorist threat.
Everybodies thinking it (or trying to avoid thinking it) whenever the security is being particularly annoying, yet nobody is allowed to mention this thoughtcrime.
As Francis Fukuyama notes, "unlike money, which can simply be divided, dignity is something inherently uncompromisable: either you recognize my dignity, or the dignity of that which I hold sacred, or you do not" [1]. Trading immaterial dignity for getting to one's destination on time makes sense for most travellers.
That is, unless you are trying to make a statement. Fukuyama continues: "for democracy to work, however, citizens of democratic states must...develop a certain irrational thymotic pride in their political system and a way of life." If everyone optimised for their personal utility the aggregate situation would degrade.
There is a fine line between a prima donna and an activist. It is largely a function of the popular support for one's statement and the probability of it resulting in corrective behaviour.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/End-History-Last-Man-ebook/dp/B003DYGO...
If someone say "don't think of the red elephant", its not odd for people to say "what red elephant?". That's normal behavior. In same way, if you stop someone at the airport, the first thought people will think is "I am not a terrorist!".
You right however that saying "I am not a terrorist" is a bad strategic thing in a discussion. It anchoring you to something bad in people mind. It would be better to say "I am not the president of the air line, but I am a VIP priority customer for united", thus anchoring "the president of the air line" and "VIP priority customer" to peoples mind.
The OP could have added the guy behind him who also took photos into the conversation. But I agree, the pilot was right to take him off the plane without any further information.
I agree - you can come a long way by just saying "My apologies, I dit not know that", give a short smile and look another way. Inside you might mean something different, and you can silently ponder on what a jerk the opposite person is.. but you need to let the opposite person feel that he/she is in control - especially it it's their job to stay in control.
The risk avoided is ... that the FA feels annoyed while serving this guy who talked back?
It sounds like the captain also made no attempt to evaluate whether the passenger was actually crazy (making eye contact would be a start). Seems like captain is earning points w/ the FA - "you don't like the guy? I'll throw him off".
He oddly took a picture of his seat, as he'd oddly done numerous times before. He oddly got embarrassed by being singled out for oddly not knowing that an oddly common benign act is now regarded as odd. He oddly felt the need to clear the air. When punished for acting oddly human, he oddly pointed out that he oddly felt that he had been maligned.
Yes, travel blogger was acting quite odd.
I would have said something like: Sorry if I gave the impression of not cooperating, but I can assure you I did not and will not take any more pictures this flight. It would mean a lot to me if I could stay on the plane.
-----
feels a bit too servile for me, especially if I felt I didn't do anything wrong in the first place.
So wining, without anyone losing, what is so wrong?
Everything else (and I sadly, really often react that way) is the little child in a sand-pit: "But he started it" kind of argument. Not mature, not civilized, just childish - the way or societies more and more seem to become imho.
But the real WTF is: how would agreeing to be led off the plane have resulted in him staying on it? His fate was sealed when he explained his picture to the FA and she had a 'nam flashback, or whatever the fuck caused this; but what makes you think crawling on his belly after that would have changed anything?
Was it? Or did she misunderstand his need to justify himself as a way of indicating that he did not intend to stop? You assume she lied -- probably because that's what you are most comfortable believing -- but it's not necessarily true. People make false claims all the time that they really, genuinely believe to be the truth. Based on the scant evidence as we have, your accusation toward the flight attendant could even be an example of the same thing she did -- automatically assuming the worst of someone.
No, this is not correct. If the speaker doesn't know that a statement is false, the statement is not a lie. Lying requires knowledge that the remark is false and must include an intent to deceive.
----------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
Quote: "To lie is to deliver a false statement to another person which the speaking person knows is not the whole truth, intentionally."
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Lie
Quote: "1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression."
----------------------------------------
See the role of knowledge and intent?
Yes, it requires both -- both knowledge that the statement is false, and an intent to deceive.
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie
Quote: "Lie : noun : 1 : a : an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive"
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/lie[noun]
Quote: "Lie : noun : a statement known by its maker to be untrue and made in order to deceive <he wanted to deny the accusation, but he couldn't tell a lie>"
Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie
Quote: "a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood."
Here's how this works. If you have an idea about how a word is defined that conflicts with another's claim, before objecting, look up the word.
EDIT: also, think for a minute about your claim:
> While lying requires intent, it does not require knowledge that the statement is false.
How can a person be said to have an intent to deceive if he isn't aware that his remark is false? How does he form an intent to deceive using a statement he believes to be true?
You are also selectively quoting from the dictionaries. E.g. from the merriam-webster dictionary you only quoted meaning 1 a. The other meanings clearly contradict what you claim.
1 :
a : an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive
b : an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker
2 : something that misleads or deceives
3 : a charge of lying (see 3 lie)
By this definition, selective quoting qualifies as a lie (meaning 2: something that misleads or deceives). This definition also shows that intent is not even necessary. As written, something that is both true and thought by the speaker to be true and said without intent to mislead can still be a lie if it is misleading the listener. I'm not sure if I agree with this definition, but that's what it says.
> While lying requires intent, it does not require knowledge that the statement is false.
Explain how a person can possess an intent to deceive while telling what he believes is the truth.
Also, I chose the most common definition of lying for a reason -- it's the one recognized in courts of law. While under oath, if you speak a falsehood, but without realizing your remark is false, you cannot be charged with perjury. So knowing the most common definition, which is also the legal definition, would seem to be important.
> Explain how a person can possess an intent to deceive while telling what he believes is the truth.
Read that sentence again. It does not say what you insinuate it says. Not knowing that a statement is false != knowing that a statement is true.
> Also, I chose the most common definition of lying for a reason
Yea, the reason being that those directly contradict what you said.
It appears that you are not interested in having a honest discussion...only in misrepresenting and twisting what you wrote and what I wrote for the sake of defending a claim you made that is obviously false.
The legal definition of lying, and by far the most common one in the everyday world, is that lying requires an intent to deceive and the utterance of a knowing falsehood.
> It appears that you are not interested in having a honest discussion.
What? By defining "lying" as it is defined in the law and in most references? How so?
> only in misrepresenting and twisting what you wrote and what I wrote
When I have quoted you, I have done it by cutting and pasting your exact words, as you typed them, directly from the display. How is that twisting your words?
> for the sake of defending a claim you made that is obviously false.
It is not "obviously false," it is not false at all. Lying is knowing, intentional falsehood. To lie, one must know that the statement is false.
Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lie
Quote: "1 : a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood."
How is that in any way confusing to you?
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury
Quote: "Statements which entail an interpretation of fact are not perjury because people often draw inaccurate conclusions unwittingly, or make honest mistakes without the intent to deceive. Individuals may have honest but mistaken beliefs about certain facts, or their recollection may be inaccurate, or may have a different perception of what is the accurate way to state the truth. Like most other crimes in the common law system, to be convicted of perjury one must have had the intention (mens rea) to commit the act, and to have actually committed the act (actus reus)." [emphasis added]
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230329960457732...
Quote: "When federal prosecutors can't muster enough evidence to bring charges against a person suspected of a crime, they can still use a controversial law to get a conviction anyway: They charge the person with lying.
The law against lying—known in legal circles simply as "1001"—makes it a crime to knowingly make a material false statement in matters of federal jurisdiction." [emphasis added]
Still confused?
Anyway, this is all a bit too meta. It sounds like a huge misunderstanding and an awkward and somewhat confrontational social situation to me.
I would bet that you say things all the time that you do not know with 100% certainty but which seem likely enough than you assume them to be true. I have never met someone who does not.
For example, have you ever told somebody that you were meeting somebody else when you were not looking right at them as you prepared to sit down for the meeting? What you actually mean is that you believe you will meet them based on your understanding of a conversation you had. You could have heard the wrong day, they could be right about to cancel, your car could break down — you get the idea.
But DoubleCluster is right. Accusing the FA of lying just displays a huge lack of social awareness. It's also not factual - the OP doesn't really know whether the FA made a mistake or not.
If you flat-out accuse the flight attendant of lying, you're going to trigger an "us versus them" situation with the flight staff. At that point the captain is definitely going to side with the FA.
The reason his fate was sealed was that the captain had to decide whether his staff were going to be comfortable sharing a flight with this guy. Under the circumstances, I think he made the right decision.
That was already triggered by the FA's clandestine response to the traveller's openness, and the COMMAND to leave the plane. To blame this on the passenger is very comfortable and very cowardly IMO. "she lied", "that's not true".. those are the same thing when it comes to what this actually was about. He wasn't escorted off the plane for hurting the ego of staff by failing to be intimidated; it was about wether he took pictures after having being asked to stop, at least allegedly.
And yes, the captain has to decide wether his staff is comfortable with passengers, and more importantly, wether that is the fault of said passengers or said staff. If it's the passenger, kick them out, if it's the staff, likewise. In that sense I totally agree, but someone who can't even make eye contact is not up to this; so it's up to the airline weither they feel comfortable having weak staff on board of expensive equipment.
BTW, you do lose. You lose self respect and dignity, and yet more freedom. Every time each of us has that chipped away, its another win for the terrorist, who must be laughing their nuts off watching scared westerners become more and more borg like.
But hey, you get your flight, and as we know, that is way more important than freedom, self respect and dignity. Short term gain always trumps long term decency. Of course the vast majority are quite happy for that trade off, given how scared we all are of a 1 in 2 million chance terrorist attack in the US. Context: 1 in 900,00 that you'll die in your bath... Or 1 in 19,000 of dying in your car. 15 US citizens died of terrorists in 2010.
Is acting submissive to control someone else really being submissive? (No. It's just another tool in the dealing-with-people toolbox. Save your flames for the Internets!)
That's not "control", that's "hoping to influence". And yes, it's being submissive.
Act like DoubleCluster suggests before the plane takes off...
... on landing, once most people have evacuated, take them aside and unload your full fury upon them!
Full of just cliché advice and fluff. In fact you'll get as much good advice from reading the wikipedia article as you will from reading the book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influenc...
This is generally helpful advice in many life contexts. I wish Elon Musk had followed it recently.
Because if you can't do that, what's even left for terrorists to destroy? And how is lying, claiming he took more pictures, an appropriate response? How can you possibly rationalize this to be the fault of the OP? As a comment to that story points out, that's a big part of how society got to such a low point.
----------------
Why would it freak someone out, when no terrorist (to my knowledge) has ever declared "I'm not a terrorist" ... right before hijacking a plane?
Oh please. Imagine you have a guest at your house who asks to use the bathroom. You reply, "Yes, it's the second door on the left, and I haven't installed any recording devices in it." Would you seriously be surprised at your guest's sudden unease while relieving himself?
No one's saying that this is the OP's fault, but telling a flight attendant "I'm not a terrorist" is like saying, "Use my bathroom, I didn't install any cameras in it." Proffering information of that kind is just plain suspicious in itself.
There is a guest at my house, and I have a rule that nobody is allowed to take screwdrivers to the bathroom, because, as all my neighbours know, I am paranoid about people watching me as I take a crap (even though I have telescopes on the roof of my house pointing in all directions, and none of them into the sky; but that's a story for another day). So this guy walks towards the bathroom, and I see he has a screwdriver in his hand; I stop him, ask him to leave the screwdriver, which he does.
I make no further attempts to assure him I know he's not going to install a camera, or to be friendly or a human or something like that; I just bark my orders and waddle off. So after he finished his business, and because he's expecting to be over for a few hours and wants to clear the air, he walks up to me and says "About the screwdriver.. I didn't install a camera or anything, I just like to play drums on my knees while I poop. But I managed fine without it, so we're cool, right?"
I smily emptily, say, it's okay, waddle away... and then call the cops. Then I lie to them and say he took a screwdriver to the bathroom even after asked him not to, and onlookers actually turn my guest reacting to my pre-existing suspicion of them installing a camera in my bathroom into my guest raising that suspicion in the first place. The last part just boggles my mind.
Seriously, he was ejected because of taking photos, not because of the "T word". The fact that he took one photo and ceased activity means that he is NOT in the wrong.
While it is common sense not to use the word "terrorist" on board or in an airport (I certainly wouldn't), this doesn't mean that it is logical or justified. 1000 years ago it was common sense that you could fall off the face of the earth. We seriously need to stop being so precious about this word and take our power back.
They should be transparent about which words are forbidden and put that in their policy like they put the restrictions on photography.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to rape you" is not something you suddenly exclaim for no reason while walking behind someone in a dark alley who's nervously looking back over their shoulder.
Although, if you're trying to allay fears or play down your own 'threat', it probably helps to work your way up to terrorist through a series of denying smaller dangers instead of jumping straight to terrorist.
"Naturally, the FA's warning bothered me and I felt the need
to explain myself."
"I want you to understand why I was taking pictures. I hope you
didn't think I was a terrorist. Here is my business card
[offering her one]. I write about United Airlines on an
almost-daily basis and the folks at United in Chicago are even
aware of my blog."
"Sorry about taking that picture. I just want to say that I love
United and everything you guys do. I'm really excited about being
in BusinessFirst class on this new aircraft and wanted to capture
the moment. Thanks for letting me know about the photography
restriction, though. I respect that and won't take another
picture."
"Me: That's a lie, captain."
None of this excuses the flight attendant's alleged retaliatory action. However, having the situation escalate to that point could easily have been avoided.
It reminds me of an experience I had recently at Best Buy. I bought an item and immediately after paying for it, before picking it up off the sales counter, I noticed that the end of the box had been untaped and opened, so I asked if I could exchange it for another. The cashier said, "I'm sorry but you'll have to exchange it at the service desk." I argued and was able to exchange it, but was flabbergasted.
Because that's a very natural reaction to being accused, explicitly or implicitly, of being a bad person. (Yes, it would have simplified his life to have suppressed his emotions at this point. But I completely understand why he felt like he did.)
Under every scenario I can imagine, you have now moved from "may" write bad things to "sure as hell" will write bad things.
If that was her motivation, she came up with the dumbest solution possible.
Here is the photo policy:
http://cdn-img1.upgrd.com/featured/united-photo-limits.png
It says photography is strictly prohibited of aircraft equipment, and if not of aircraft equipment, prohibited unless of "personal events".
His explanation:
"I want you to understand why I was taking pictures. I hope you didn't think I was a terrorist. Here is my business card [offering her one]. I write about United Airlines on an almost-daily basis and the folks at United in Chicago are even aware of my blog."
This falls outside of personal use. This is professional use, and therefore absolutely outside of the personal events category. Taking pictures under his business card and related to his blog is strictly prohibited, and his arguing means he was arguing with the rules that were shown to him by the FA before he began arguing.
Aside from being absolutely in violation of the rules, perhaps this had nothing to do with "I am not a terrorist"; perhaps the FA and captain were disinterested in having their entire route evaluated and blogged about.
No idea what United will say in response. And frankly, I am shocked to be siding with United. But in this case, they handed him a printed rule, and he chose to explain himself in a way that put him in violation of it, and took himself out of the regular passenger category.
In their shoes, I'd point out that by his own explanation, he was wilfully breaking the rules.
He took one picture when he was unaware of the rule. Once informed of the rule, he immediately stopped. How is that "willfuly breaking the rules"?
He then went on to say that he always took photos on United flights and never had a problem.
There are now (wrongly, in my opinion, but that's another story) homeland security guidelines about passengers exhibiting behavior that suggests they don't or won't accept the flight attendant's authority. Flowcharting those rules leads to the captain deciding whether he wants the passenger on the flight. It's clear this guy got himself classified into that flowchart.
Really? Saying that you don't like a rule imply's thay he would break the rule, thereby meaning (according to DanBC & Terretta) that he broke the rule? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
Not breaking "the" rule, future rule breaking. There's a difference.
According to current flight regulations, arguing about breaking a rule is cause to suspect other rules may be broken later.
> thereby meaning (according to DanBC & Terretta) that he broke the rule?
Not according to Terretta. According to post 911 flight regulations being followed by the FA and pilot. These new security regulations say someone who objects to authority can be denied travel like "pre-crime" suspects on Minority Report.
> Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
Yes, which is why I wrote, "wrongly, in my opinion, but that's another story" about these regulations.
The situation will remain ridiculous until enough people realize this ridiculousness is now policy and needs undoing.
1) He knew about the rule and decided to flaunt it anyway.
2) He did not know about the rule because it is so rarely enforced as to be invisible.
Personally speaking, #2 sounds more likely to me. I take photos onboard most times I fly, and not once have I been asked to stop, even on United flights. I've never heard of any friends or family being asked to stop. I've never even read about this on a blog before, and lots of people blog about flying and travelling.
In short, whether or not he was in technical violation of the rule, it's ridiculous to hold someone strictly to a standard that is never enforced with any regularity.
Why do victims protect their aggressors in this way? The captain made a wrongheaded decision, and he should at the very least have his name attached to it.
I do not know the US law in that case, but in Germany, the captain then could go to court on terms of "wrong accusation" and the OP would have to prove his accusations.
Legal liability. The author could be sued for defamation of character if any of the details are wrong, or in the case that a truthful account emphasizes negatives over positives, something called "false light". Some readers may find this hard to believe, but it's true:
Basic human decency rather.
"Bob isn't so bad -- after all, it's said that he's stopped beating his wife."
Kudos to the blogger for not exposing these people to internet anger.
As the article its self said, from the captain's perspective he was likely always going to believe a FA over a pax, in particular if the FA claimed the pax wasn't being cooperative.
Now if the quotes were accurate I think the captain was quite rude, but we really don't know what the FA said to the captain, maybe he got the impression the guy was being a massive ass.
But regardless, the author was very professional for not releasing the name. It adds nothing to the story. It would just be petty revenge.
It's interesting that you seem to be claiming the captain wasn't an aggressor, but then believe that giving his name to his actions would be "petty revenge."
Edit: Reference. RULE 21 REFUSAL TO TRANSPORT in United's Contract of Carriage [1] outlines UA's right to "remove from the aircraft at any point, any Passenger for the following reasons". The reasons are, as you would expect, broad and vague, essentially giving UA cover to remove anyone from the flight.
The one I expect they would cite in this instance is:
H4: "Passengers who, through and as a result of their conduct, cause a disturbance such that the captain or member of the cockpit crew must leave the cockpit in order to attend to the disturbance;"
Other fun conditions that UA have felt the need to enumerate:
21:H5 Passengers who are barefoot or not properly clothed;
21:H16 Passengers who have or cause a malodorous condition
[1]http://www.united.com/web/format/pdf/Contract_of_Carriage.pd...
What's with the need to exercise control over another human being like that? Hang up your own coat. The fact that he feels entitled to such service says something about him. People that bark orders at flight attendants probably feel that are part of some untouchable/infallible class of citizen. It makes me suspect his retelling of the facts has been greatly marred by his feelings of superiority in the situation.
I guess I'm just too servile. I would have put my iPhone away and read a book and never have been kicked off the plane. (And if my coat needed hung, I would have just sat and been uncomfortabaly warm until I could hang it myself: your failure to prepare should not become the burden of another human being. )
> People that bark orders at flight attendants
I didn't read it the way you did.
So the timing is weird, but the request in and of itself is totally normal for that class of service.
The coat closet is at the front of the aircraft. You aren't really allowed to just go rummage through it yourself. So you ask the FA to put your coat in there or to retrieve it.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/safety/4...
Which is funny, really, because it makes you think people would pay extra to sit in the back...
(Never paid for business, but United is ludicrously easy to get upgrades on if you fly trans-atlantic flights with any frequency and pay attention to ordering correctly coded tickets)
No wonder things are the way they are - the general public supports it.
There were no faults in the way he handled it. The airline was completely to blame, severely inconvenienced him, falsely accused him, and cost him money. Outrageous behavior against any passenger. That he is a 950,000 mile traveler on the airline and often writes articles recommending them to others (at a time when United is well known for being among the worst of the carriers) makes it completely idiotic from a business standpoint as well.
The irony here is that you're demonstrating the same sort of knee-jerk misinterpretation that arises when people say "terrorism" on an airplane.
I swear sometimes it is like the whole world is a slightly mentally handicapped child who, upon hearing a bad word, starts repeating it getting more and more upset.
I guess being adults and thinking things through is too much to ask from your average full grown adult?
When no one has accused you of stealing a cookie from the cookie jar, saying out of the blue, "I didn't steal the cookie from the cookie jar" instantly makes you a suspect. This is Encyclopedia Brown level stuff.
(As an aside, your lack of intuitive understanding of this principle, combined with your righteous indignation and judgment of the world at large, makes me feel very much like you describe while writing this reply.)
It's the same as if he replied 'okay, don't worry, the photos will be dead and gone', and the flight attendant misinterprets that to mean he's going to blow up the plane and kill everyone.
If the story is as he's relayed it, he's absolutely 100% not at fault and the flight attendant is a total fricken idiot.
It's part of an idiom, and that'a among a small niche community, mostly in London.
Even if the guy was aware of the idiom I doubt the staff were too.
Wait. A plane is an appropriate context for the word "terrorist" ?
Interesting.
Context matters. A sentence matters more than a word. A group of sentences matters more than just one. A conversation matters more than just a few sentences.
Quit acting irrationally. Think things through.
Word mightier than sword
So what I do not get is, why is he not holding UA responsible for the lost money, lost time and his trouble. Is he such a big fanboy, that he does not want to cost his big love some (by his account) well deserved money?
Or might it just be, that there are some other aspects to his story, not told in the written blog post? His tone of voice, while talking to the FA? Was he calm, might he come about as being aggressive? What was his body language? Might she have felt threatened.
Maybe he is right in his point of view - but maybe - and just maybe, he acted from a position of blogger-power, taking his blogger-influence for granted and letting this show.
I know, that this is just me speculating, but I haven't been there and did not hear anything from the other side of the story. But reading the comments here and in the blog, UA is guilty until proven innocent, or so it seems.
I estimate the author will get 50,000 frequent flyer miles and an apology. Seems to be the standard procedure when the central office wants to make up for poor customer service on the line.
The other factor involved is CRM, Crew Resource Management. The days were the crew passively follow the Captains decisions are over, and for good reason. Captains are trained to listen to their First Officer and FA, and actively respond to questions.
This means its quite possible that the Captain didn't want his flight delayed, or cause unnecessarily tension on the flight with his FA, and so took the easy (but highly questionable) option to simply remove him from the flight.
Note: This should not be interpreted as taking the airlines side, just explaining my thoughts on the factors involved.
This society is way too fucking paranoid.
And it will get you absolutely nowhere in life. Nowhere.
You know that crappy little country, just off the north coast of mainland Europe, its where I live, its called the UK? Well, that's why we have far too much influence for our size.
We rip on our powerful people something rotten. It helps to keep the powerful on their toes and makes the rest of us feel a little bit better. Its a British tradition. And for us, it works quite well.
It's possible that his saying "terrorist" was part of it, or maybe UA has a very strict no-photos policy, or maybe there's something else we don't know (and I think this is probably the case,) but this still seems pretty absurd.
1: http://consumerist.com/2011/07/28/united-says-photographing-...
2: http://consumerist.com/2011/04/25/allegations-of-photography...
[0] http://www.aclupa.org/issues/freespeech/kyrwhentakingphotosa...
I understand the "well, it wasn't settled ACCORDING TO ME, so I want to clarify" mentality, but if you can't control that urge, don't be surprised to find that you escalate your way into situations like this.
With such a mentality it's no wonder TSA still exists.
Regardless of your view on Matthew's story - has the site been working well for everyone? Is my little FreeBSD VPS (with photos on cloudfront) setup performing well? I can see the stats from my side, just wondering how it loaded for you. Thanks!
Actually showing the photos would have been a stronger argument than saying "That is a lie." Also, he could have volunteered to delete the one photo that he took.
Someone in the comments suggested that this is a "he said, she said" situation. Not really, because there was a camera involved. The camera is the authority on the subject of whether he took photos that he should not have taken.
I recently was at the Port Authority, in New York City. I was amazed at how busy it was at rush hour, so I pulled out my iPhone and took some pictures. I did not realize this was forbidden. A policeman approached me immediately and asked me what I was doing. I showed him the photos I had just taken and I explained I wanted to send them to some friends who had never visited New York. He suggested that I delete the photos but he walked away without making me do anything, so I was able to keep the photos.
The justification given that I could have been planning a terrorist attack, so it was regarded as suspicious behaviour.
Okay, I was a little annoyed. But the attendants weren't bothered... and the guys did settle after a while.
It wasn't anything to do with photo taking. You _don't_ say on a plane, "I'm not a terrorist". That's kind of dumb.
That said, he was perfectly entitled to take photos for personal use. So the photo taking wasn't really an issue.
There's more to this than the OPs mentioning perhaps.
I can buy simple digital video recorders embedded in pens, watches, bluetooth earphones, baseball caps, ties, crucifixes and more from just a casual search of Amazon, for example, and that's hardly the state of the art in covert recording.
The more obnoxious anti-photographing policies people experience, the more attractive it will be to make recording devices less obtrusive.
http://upgrd.com/blogs/cloudcommuting/this-is-my-emotional-s...
The terrorists have won.
There are a few words you can not say on a plane. Never say "bomb", and NEVER say "terrorist" in any context. When you said, "I'm not a terrorist", you were doomed. Sorry. It had nothing to do with you taking pictures, just your naivety about language, perceived threats, and the illusion of security.
Also don't mess with business class. That is their cash crop.
That's obviously the problem. When I read he said he wasn't a terrorist I thought "uh-oh, this isn't going to end well".
The US have this very strange custom of having "forbidden words" -- words that can't be said on TV and/or words that can't be said in an ordinary conversation. Those words are alluded-to with their initial: F-word, S-word, N-word, etc.
The T-word needs to be added to that list.
Now I know my ABCs,
Next time won't you sing with me.
It's just that for me as an European seemingly all crazy stories like "X tazed by cop for doing nothing at all" or "Y put into jail for having her small children play naked in the garden" come from the US.
Or to back my claims up, let's take some per-capita numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Incarceration_rates_worldw...
Sorry if this comes across as arrogant.
No talk policy will make everything go away.
This is beyond understanding for me, how can a word ban someone from flight.
In ol' days when you could smoke and drink and have a nice discussion about shit in world... while in airplane.
People still travel to the U.S., but it's very likely costing the country a lot of tourist dollars - not that the U.S. cares, they have enough tourists as is.
How so? It's explicitly said that you cannot photograph aircraft equipment.
They don't have to actually think he'll blow up the plane; it only takes one closet nut case to overhear this and cause a ruckus mid flight. In a small confined space at 30k feet that's a very real safety issue. Consider that an irrational fear of flying isn't that uncommon, and this is a route where there isn't much of an alternative.
Finally, they're under no obligation to tell a passenger the real reason for booting him off the plane; if it was the above, doing so could only make it worse for themselves.
And, yes, United are under obligation to tell this passenger the real reason for booting them off. They are a business. He is their a loyal customer with almost 1,000,000 ffms. He conducted himself, according to his entry, calmly and in a very transparent manner. The behavior of the stuff was disgusting, humiliating and unprofessional.
If this seems okay to you; fine. But this is not the world I want to live in.
> this is a route where there isn't much of an alternative
You make a case that people shouldn't be allowed to fly while black/muslim/wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a gun on it/etc in case some "sensitive soul" kicks up a fuss, and that it is not that sensitive soul's fault. I disagree.