Fanny Marchevsky was flying from Charleston, South Carolina to Chicago to San Francisco to Bakersfield on United after celebrations for her 80th birthday. Far from an inexperienced flying the former professor and Microsoft employee is a United Million Miler. But she only made it to Chicago.
Tunnel Connecting United’s B and C concourses at Chicago O’HareShe wound up bloodied and in the hospital, didn’t know where she was and a lawsuit alleges United left her without notifying the emergency contact in her reservation.
- On the Charleston – Chicago United Express leg another passenger opened the overhead bin above her seat and a bag fell out on top of her.
- She “got dizzy” but on arrival in Chicago a flight attendant “walked her through the jet bridge and sat her down in the terminal” rather than “calling paramedics or using a wheelchair to take her off the plane.”
- She received “little attention” over the next 45 minutes before her connecting flight was set to board. She couldn’t board, and was sent to an emergency room.
“I was scared,” she said in an affidavit supporting her lawsuit. “I was injured and all alone in a city far from any family.”
- Her family tracked her down when a friend set to meet her at her arrival gate in San Francisco and take her to her connecting flight to Bakersfield discovered she wasn’t on the inbound aircraft.
- Her son “flew to Chicago and found his mother in an emergency room. She was bruised and had blood on her clothes.”
“My mother’s crying,” Otman recalled. “She doesn’t know where she is.”
United’s lawyers “acknowledged that its employees never informed Otman, Marchevsky’s emergency contact for the flight, of her predicament.” However they argue that United’s “conduct was not atrocious or intolerable” and that they haven’t “committed any wrongful act.”
This happened one year before United unveiled new measures to prevent poor customer treatment following the David Dao incident.
She has since moved to Charleston, and flew Delta to get there.
Lawsuit aside, this story raises a couple of questions for me.
- When an incident happens onboard a regional affiliate of a major airline, how much responsibility does the major airline bear? It’s their brand, their ticket, often their aircraft, we usually think of the major airline as responsible for their conduct regardless of who formally pays the employees.
- How much care does an airline owe its passengers? Aside from unaccompanied minors where the airline explicitly takes responsibility, does the airline owe a duty to care for someone from departure to arrival or are they more on their own? We frequently look to an airline to feed us and provide us lodging during delays, though they get an ‘out’ frequently for weather-related events where it’s not their fault. What about where an incident is caused by another passenger and not the airline itself?
United employees do enough to harm passengers without holding them responsible for the actions of other passengers.
I’m not sure they ought to be held legally liable here, although I’d like to think they’d care enough to ensure not just that an 80 year old woman receives care but that her family is notified where she is as well.
You are conflating many unrelated issues. Of course, they are responsible for informing the passenger’s emergency contact, and liable if they didn’t.
I’m no United apologist, but I would think a former professor and former Microsoft employee would have a cellphone and the wherewithal to use it to call family in the 45 minutes sitting at the arrival gate. And at the same time, the airline should have taken care of an 80 year old passenger, or any passenger for that matter, injured on their plane whether that passenger is a million miler or not.
This hideous g.d. airline cannot die soon enough for me.
People, please stop patronizing them.
Adding the following:
Compare this behavior by the UA employees to that of the Southwest agent who recently drove at 3 am, unprompted, on her own time, to a passenger’s house to deliver a needed suitcase which had been delayed.
Thanks, Scott Kirby.
Shame on you all for such grandiose expectations
It’s simple she wasn’t a Global Services member so she wasn’t entitled to any other
benefit other then being dumped off
Those overly entitled Mileage Puss elite members simply need to get over it
Just be happy she wasn’t beaten or dragged off before being dumped off
Where is the gratitude for those at the friendly skies of Untied
Sheesh
@Ray this happened before Scott Kirby joined United.
What else do you expect? When FA said “we are here primarily for your safety, not to serve you” while they turned to passenger help at the moment of emergency (sick-doctor on board, drunk-passenger to restrain, etc), its crystal clear the mentality of airline: LET ME WASH MY HAND SO I CAN’T BE BLAMED FOR ANY MISFORTUNE BEFALLS YOU.
And the reason airline keep making profits for such awful service? Because the fact is, that’s the american way.
When UAL decides to remove a passenger from one of their planes they use the term “trespassing “. So, clearly they claim you are on their property. Now, if someone gets injured on my property they can clearly sue me, and probable win.
Altho a bag falling onto another person can not always be avoid it seems to me UAL shares some responsibility in this case.
The entire United culture is beyond repair. Time for this sad excuse for an American company to expire. I haven’t flown them in 12 years and see no reasonable reason to do so.
I’m from Chicago. I love Chicago. I’m watching the Bears on my DVR now. I remember when they built the Helmut Jahn designed terminal. Used to be a primarily UA guy.
This story totally stinks of O’Hare-based bad attitude union lifers, whether United or airport employees or “safety” officers. Not a coincidence that this story and Dao both happened at ORD.
“United employees do enough to harm passengers without holding them responsible for the actions of other passengers.”
Wowsa Gary! Tell us what you really think 😛
While UA should have taken further action
1) when she was “sent” (taken by paramedics) to the ER the medical personnel should have been given the emergency contact info (and passed it on to ER staff)
2) Usually ER’s will attempt to get family contact info from the person – if she was too confused/unable to give it there may be more to this story than appears from the basic facts
I hope they have to pay millions for endangering people by allowing the stowage of those heavy rollaboards on top of passenger’s heads.
This person would be fine if it wasn’t for the heavy carry-on.
“How much care does an airline owe its passengers?”
When I worked at a major airline back in the day, we would remind ourselves that good judeo-christian values should dictate our treatment of others. We were encouraged to help people, even though we were not front-line employees. We were still employees of the airline and passengers were our customers.
Southwest is the only airline that seems to understand this. They have stories of going out of their way to help people in extraordinary circumstances.
Its called respecting one another and having empathy for one another. Something our society seems to have forgotten lately.
So, if the minimum requirement is for United to contact the passengers emergency contact, they do not even respect an elderly passenger enough to follow through on that promise.
The analysis requires that one define whether United (or its agents — the regional carriers using its livery and having United book for them) had a duty to the passenger. There is no duty concerning the falling bag — the airline took no action and most airlines warn passengers that “items may have shifted in flight”.
But when they voluntarily undertook to transport her off the plane, and then had her transported to the emergency room, they had a duty to act as a reasonable person would — which I think a jury could conclude includes informing the emergency contact on file with the airline. It doesn’t matter whether the conduct is “atrocious or intolerable”. That conflates the issue of ordinary negligence with gross negligence. It merely matters if they acted unreasonably.
There was that Air France crew that opted to remain with their passengers taken hostage back in 1976.
@MeganG re cell phone. It sounds fro. The story that she was dazed and confused, apologies to Zeppelin, from being struck on the head. That is, concussion, closed head injury, whatever term you wish to use. If so, she very well may not have had the ability to place a call…assuming she had a phone…
I agree with Amy (above comment) that the frequent incidence of heavy carry on bags being dropped on top of passengers, combined with the emphasis particularly domestic carriers are taking to get passengers to put more and more into the overhead bin, should be looked at from a liability standpoint. I don’t know how the system could be re-engineered (bet it could be, though), but the sight of an unassisted 100 pound or so lady trying to download a 30 pound suitcase, perhaps one that a flight attendant or courteous gentleman passenger placed there for her, is always scary. I bet there are hundreds — if not more — of injuries, some probably very serious, and airlines should not be immune from liability for these events.
Agree 100% with toomanybooks (and love the name). This airline can’t seem to run a humane and decent operation. Just stop flying them.