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United passenger forcibly removed from plane for not giving up seat

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GagHalfrunt said:
There's no buck to pass for them. There's plenty of blame to go around from the people who set policies to the ones who trained the personnel to the actual thugs who beat up an old man with 50 cameras trained on them (seriously, how do people still forget that everything is being recorded now?). But the pilots most definitely are not responsible. So they might as well distance themselves from the whole fiasco. The mechanics and the guys who clean the bathroom should issue statements too.
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The letter from United pilots union is basically saying it's not United fault and the whole thing is the fault of the Chicago Department of Aviation and Republic Airline. He's suggesting that if Chicago police officers had arrived instead of the officers from the Chicago Department of Aviation, perhaps the passenger wouldn't have been injured while being forcibly removed from his seat. And he's making it clear it's not United but Republic Airline that this happened in. Like I said, way to pass the buck. Maybe the Chicago PD would've done better job of removing the passenger with force than CDA. Maybe, maybe not. But they called for the muscle in situation that wasn't safety related to other airplane passengers or the flight crew. And United was the one who used Republic Airline because they were cheaper and trained them to follow the United way.

United pilot union letter is slightly better than let's blame the belligerent passenger letter Oscar Munoz wrote. But it's still horrible. To me, it does nothing but make the United pilot union look bad just like Oscar Munoz letter made United look bad. It's better if the pilot union had not released this letter, especially on Thursday when United had finally taken full ownership of the incident and apologized. This pilot union letter undermines the apology and tells me if I ever have a problem with United, they will just pass the buck and blame someone else. United, where employees come first and customers are beaten and treated as cattle and luggage.
 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...chers-skymiles-as-apology-for-flight-troubles

Delta is giving out hundreds of thousands of $200 travel vouchers or 20,000 Delta SkyMiles to all customers affected by travel cancellations last week. In addition, regular Delta customer service agents can now offer up to $2,000 for oversold flight, up from $800. And managers can now offer up to $9,950 per passenger, up from $1,350. 🙂 Stand up Dr. Dao. You made a small difference.

Hell, even United might benefit indirectly. People might be so willing to not fly United that they will be paying extra to fly Delta, American, and SouthWest. So these airlines can jack up the prices and avoid price wars. So United by default can charge higher prices than before even with their shitty reputation since rising tide lifts all boats. And hopefully, the United employees can be coached into faking like they care and provide decent service. At least until this blows over.
 
ponyo said:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...chers-skymiles-as-apology-for-flight-troubles

Delta is giving out hundreds of thousands of $200 travel vouchers or 20,000 Delta SkyMiles to all customers affected by travel cancellations last week. In addition, regular Delta customer service agents can now offer up to $2,000 for oversold flight, up from $800. And managers can now offer up to $9,950 per passenger, up from $1,350. 🙂 Stand up Dr. Dao. You made a small difference.

Hell, even United might benefit indirectly. People might be so willing to not fly United that they will be paying extra to fly Delta, American, and SouthWest. So these airlines can jack up the prices and avoid price wars. So United by default can charge higher prices than before even with their shitty reputation since rising tide lifts all boats. And hopefully, the United employees can be coached into faking like they care and provide decent service. At least until this blows over.
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Those are rational levels. I can't imagine that going over $2k will be necessary all that frequently. I'm sure they won't share but the data would be fascinating. With pushing ten grand to play with IDB should virtually disappear.

Viper GTS
 
C9Q-jgAUwAAPYdc.jpg:small

Some passengers are ready to "fight" back and remain on their seats once they've boarded. 😉😀
 

Delta approves offers of up to $9,950 to passengers who give up seats

Delta is letting employees offer customers nearly $10,000 in compensation to give up seats on overbooked flights, hoping to avoid an uproar like the one that erupted at United after a passenger was dragged off a jet.

United is taking steps too. It will require employees seeking a seat on a plane to book it at least an hour before departure, a policy that might have prevented last Sunday’s confrontation.
 
elitejp said:
And its a cultural problem of the usa to demonize any large business
Im beyond a shadow of doubt that neither united nor the security wanted this man to get injured.
No biggie. It will all be forgotten in a week
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If it happens, its because big business has been screwing over consumers for the past few decades.
The passenger will probably get a substantial settlement from United.
 
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bononos said:
If it happens, its because big business has been screwing over consumers for the past few decades.
The passenger will probably get a substantial settlement from United.
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His assertion that any big business is demonized is bullshit anyway. There are plenty of large corporations that are held in high regard, take most of the largest tech companies (by market cap) for example.

Even a firm like Verizon that has its detractors (too expensive) is still the most popular carrier, and generally considered to have the best national network of the big 4 wireless telcos.

I'll put it a different way, a company has to try pretty hard these days to slum it with the likes of Comcast. UAL on Monday seemed to want to join that crowd, and on Tuesday realized it's not a smart way to "maximize shareholder value."
 
manly said:
His assertion that any big business is demonized is bullshit anyway. There are plenty of large corporations that are held in high regard, take most of the largest tech companies (by market cap) for example.
.....
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The US public have always and still do have a more favorable view of large corporations but more recently people have been more uneasy about the lack of competition, large consolidations within many industries, off shoring of manufacturing labor and shrinking number of decent jobs, large salary hikes for executives. As consumers, quality of products are dropping, customer service is crappier, airline seats are shrinking etc. The Trump campaign played upon those feelings correctly and didn't try to fool the public with China is good for us bs like all the other nominees.
 
Picture your personal favorite American Hero. Doesn't matter if G Washington, A Jackson, D Boone, D Crockett, A Murphy, J Wayne, G Cooper, A Earhart, C Barton, JFK and so forth. Do you see them watching a perceived injustice and recording it on a cellphone?
Half that plane should have walked off and that would solve the "deadhead employee" problem. Where was the "I am Spartacus!" attitude that made US (so famous? (mixing metaphors and time zones and fiction and reality)
 
Another incident on United.

Passengers said:

When they went to sit down they found a man stretched out and sleeping in their row. According to the couple they jumped up a few rows on the mostly empty plane and didn’t think much of it. When a flight attendant asked them why they weren’t in their assigned seats the trouble started.
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United said:

United Airlines in a statement said: “We’re disappointed anytime a customer has an experience that doesn’t measure up to their expectations. These passengers repeatedly attempted to sit in upgraded seating which they did not purchase and they would not follow crew instructions to return to their assigned seats. We’ve been in touch with them and have rebooked them on flights tomorrow.”
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Who is telling the truth?

https://www.yahoo.com/style/united-airlines-kicks-couple-off-plane-en-route-wedding-181721817.html
 
You forgot this part.

[QUOTE air marshal approached them and told them they had to get off the plane.][/QUOTE]

It was not United kicking them off the flight but the air marshal. Sounds to me like a couple of opportunistic people trying to shake down United.
 
Indus said:
And yet another incident on United.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...4b01566972250cf?k3f&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Why not just ask for passports to confirm identity?
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Meh. I have little issue with how this was handled. If we're going to ask flight attendants to be on the watch for child trafficking we can't then bash them for flagging situations that turn out to be fine. The system worked, they weren't harmed. Yes it may have been triggered by an idiot passenger but it worked as designed.

Viper GTS
 
It was totally avoidable though. Check in counter could have notified flight attendants seat 24J & 24K (or whatever) belong to father and daughter but they have to treat paying customers like camels.
 
The whole situation was totally avoidable if United used a private jet or turboprop plane for its crew. It could have been a lot cheaper than the PR nightmare and what they paid out so far and what they will have to pay later to Dr. Dao -

The Department of Transportation's rules on overbooking required United to pay cash compensation of $1,350 each to the four passengers that the carrier bumped, or $5,400 total. By contrast, the typical cost to charter a small private jet for the roughly one-hour flight from Chicago to Louisville would be about $6,000.

In fact, the founders of private aviation start-up FlyOtto recently invited United to try their service for free to reposition crews. FlyOtto would have been able to fly four people from Chicago to Louisville for just $2,930, albeit on a turboprop rather than a jet.
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https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/16/united-airlines-pr-disaster-was-totally-avoidable.aspx
 
To me the solution is to stop this whole overbooking thing across the industry. I think that is one of few industries where this is allowed. Can bus lines or hotels do this? Imagine booking a hotel, you get there and get in your room then half an hour later they're asking you to leave because they overbooked the hotel and need your room.

You would also figure that they would prebook seats for moving crew. Like always show 4 seats as being unavailable on a plane so that they are available for crew or other unforeseen circumstances. It's really not that complicated. If a flight is constantly packed then perhaps that justifies having multiple flights at that particular time, might even get more customers overall as lot of people who tried to book at that time but could not would just go on the next flight.
 
In fact, the founders of private aviation start-up FlyOtto recently invited United to try their service for free to reposition crews.
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brilliant business model; I bet interest skyrocketed.
 
Red Squirrel said:
To me the solution is to stop this whole overbooking thing across the industry. I think that is one of few industries where this is allowed. Can bus lines or hotels do this? Imagine booking a hotel, you get there and get in your room then half an hour later they're asking you to leave because they overbooked the hotel and need your room.

You would also figure that they would prebook seats for moving crew. Like always show 4 seats as being unavailable on a plane so that they are available for crew or other unforeseen circumstances. It's really not that complicated. If a flight is constantly packed then perhaps that justifies having multiple flights at that particular time, might even get more customers overall as lot of people who tried to book at that time but could not would just go on the next flight.
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I've arrived at hotels 4 times on popular weekends to be told that they overbooked and the next available hotel is over an hour away (each way, for a trip where I wanted to be right where the hotel was located).

Luckily for me, I've gotten out of that by (a) taking the hotel staff's room, (b) taking a room that they normally don't rent out to anyone unless you are paying 10x to 100x more per night, (c) taking the room that the person next to me is currently checking into, and (d) bigger hotels have that one room that they won't rent out because it is terrible but they have in reserve for this purpose.

As for flights, your point is true in general but not for this specific case as this flight was not overbooked. And overbooked flights are unavoidable. For example, they may book 95 people into a 100 seat plane but then that plane is broken and irreparable but they have a 90 seat plane available. Either 95 people get booted or 5 people get booted for a flight that was not overbooked.

Finally, even if they did add more flights, it is often for an overbooked time slot (only so many planes can leave at once). That is ultimately a much bigger problem. We need more airport runways as we can't just add more flights in the popular time slots.
 
Svnla said:
The whole situation was totally avoidable if United used a private jet or turboprop plane for its crew. It could have been a lot cheaper than the PR nightmare and what they paid out so far and what they will have to pay later to Dr. Dao -
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Boy, if I was United I'd be worried about the optics of that. "United crews fly private rather than United!" or "When United needs their crews to get there on time, they rely on FlyOtto rather than their own planes!"
United just needs to do a better job of enticing people off rather than beating the shit out of them. That's the only solution that really makes sense. $1500 instead of $800 and this never happens.
 
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