Sunday’s incident where a man was dragged off a United Express plane and bloodied was terrible. It’s excruciating to watch the video of the incident unfolding, and later of the disoriented man mumbling “just kill me.”
#flythefriendlyskies @united no words. This poor man!! pic.twitter.com/rn0rbeckwT
— Kaylyn Davis (@kaylyn_davis) April 10, 2017
United is taking the bulk of the blame here, and that’s probably their own fault. Their PR response has been disastrous, with United CEO Oscar Munoz apologizing for having to re-accommodate passengers. As Jimmy Kimmel said last night,
“It’s like how we ‘re-accommodated’ El Chapo out of Mexico,” Kimmel said. “That is such sanitized, say-nothing, take-no-responsibility, corporate B.S. speak. I don’t know how the guy who sent that tweet didn’t vomit when he typed it out.”
This was a tough situation all-around for which there were no good solutions. And things turned from bad to worse when a passenger refused to get off the plane when told to do so by the airline and by police. And it became the source of worldwide outrage when the police overreacted, dragged him off, and bloodied him.
There are a lot of myths about the situation, and it’s leading people to some bad conclusions.
- This didn’t happen because United sold too many tickets. United Express (Republic Airlines) had to send four crew members to work a flight the next morning. The weekend was operationally challenging, this was a replacement crew, if the employees didn’t get to Louisville a whole plane load of passengers were going to be ‘bumped’ when that flight was cancelled, and likely other passengers on other flights using that aircraft would have their own important travel plans screwed up as well.
- United couldn’t have just sent another plane to take their crew even if they had such a plane it’s not clear they had the crew to operate it legally, or that they could have gotten the plane back to Chicago in time legally so prevent ‘bumping’ via cancellation the whole plane load of passengers it was supposed to carry next.
- If the passenger could have just taken Uber, why not the crew? because United doesn’t get to transport its crew any way it wishes whenever it wishes, they’re bound by union contracts and in any case they were following standard established procedures. We can debate those procedures, that’s productive, but United didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.
- United should have just kept increasing the denied boarding offer passengers didn’t willingly get off at $800, they should have gone to $1000 (would that have made a difference?) or $5000 or $100,000 — it’s not the passengers’ fault United didn’t have enough seats. Though the time this would have taken might have lost a takeoff window or taken time where the crew went illegal (and the whole flight had to cancel) or the replacement crew wouldn’t get the legally required rest.
More importantly, United didn’t do it because Department of Transportation regulations set maximum required compensation for involuntary denied boarding (in this case 4 times the passenger’s fare paid up to a maximum of $1350). So they’re not going to offer more than that for voluntary denied boardings, especially since the violent outcome here wasn’t expected and the United Express gate agent had no authority to do more.
I’m being called very terrible things in the comments that I won’t reprint here in this post. What happened to the man was terrible but it was a difficult situation all around, he should have complied when ordered off the plan by United and then by Chicago Aviation Police. It was a terrible situation for him, but one that at that point could foreseeably have gotten worse. I’m just glad he wasn’t accused of disrupting the flight as part of a terrorist plot that sort of thing can happen in confrontations like this.
The Chicago Aviation Police overreacted and appear to have used way too much force. One officer is already on leave because of the incident, the Aviation Police recognize some fault is likely there — and that’s a pretty high hurdle to climb considering the Chicago Police Department immediately stood up for an officer by claiming horribly that he had simply ‘fallen on his face’.
Is it possible that if circumstances were different — if different things had been done before Sunday — then the outcome would have been different? Sure. Although what those things are, what the consequences of those things would be, are debatable — and most people doing the debating don’t have much or even any information on which to base their judgments.
Fault here lies with:
- United for not having as many seats as they sold, although it wasn’t because they sold more seats than the plane held, it was because their operation became a mess and they needed to salvage that to inconvenience the fewest passengers overall. It wasn’t “to maximize their profits” although they certainly wanted to limit their losses by limiting passenger inconvenience.
- The passenger who should have gotten off the plane when ordered to do so. It sucked for him and wasn’t his fault, but refusing airline and police instructions unless designed to provoke a violent response for media attention to promote a civil rights cause is a bad idea.
- The Chicago Aviation Police shouldn’t have responded with the force they did. They’re the most to blame. If they hadn’t used as much force this whole thing would never even have been a story.
United’s statements backing their employee, refusing to name the victim, or acknowledge that the police really did hurt him are deplorable.
But the situation itself lands mostly at the feet of the police, who appear to recognize this based on actions thus far.
So what do we do to prevent this in the future? The truth is there’s not very much. Running an airline is hard. Weather and mechanical problems and back luck and IT problems cancel and delay flights, so they work hard to recover.
Maybe the maximum denied board compensation should be even higher, though that’s not clearly an issue. When the Department of Transportation began regulating denied boarding in the 1970s, there were about 150,000 involuntary denied boardings in the U.S. per year — and now with many more passengers the number there are in the 40,000s. As flights have gotten more full, the percentage of passengers denied boarding has gone down.
The real solution here is to change the culture of law enforcement in aviation. As soon as there’s even a misunderstanding between passengers and crew, that can trigger law enforcement. The assumption is that the passenger is always wrong, the airline backs its crew, and there’s tremendous risk to the public. Not every customer service situation is a crime.
This is in no way limited to being a United issue, it’s endemic to American society and aviation as a whole. It’s a function of the growth of the security state in response to 9/11. We’ve come to accept it, and indeed we get it from the TSA day in and day out. Until that changes, incidents like these are likely to repeat themselves.
Ruth Arnold summarizes it brilliantly. At worst, the passenger was guilty of passive resistance. You know, like Rosa Parks or Gandhi. United was the Bull Connor in this instance.
You do not forfeit all your human rights when you enter an aircraft. The government, acting on a private company’s behest, is not entitled to physically hurt you for passive resistance.
All of this could have been avoided if United had better logistical planning and a modicum of redundancy in their system. Instead, they plan for perfect weather and perfect everything else — 25 minute turnarounds for 200 passenger airplanes. And when it goes wrong, they plan “factors beyond our control.”
Everyone is ignoring the true reason behind this and most other UAL PR disasters (i.e.: The Legging Incident)- the lack of Awareness and Support for the company’s front line employees. United has neglected it’s front line employees (Gate Agents, Flight Attendants, Pilots, support staff, etc) for decades and the culture of neglect and indifference will ensure that incidents like this continue. Imagine if the Gate Agents had denied the 4 passengers at the gate instead of having them removed from the seats… no story! It comes down to having the proper people in the proper positions with proper support (autonomy). I am not bashing these agents themselves, but perhaps they weren’t given the necessary information prior to boarding (again- company error). Even so, they could have handled it much differently and could have utilized other resources first. I have been on such flights before where the Captain stepped into the aisle to explain the flight would not leave unless he had “xx volunteers who would be compensated”. The urgency and the assurance that the plane would not depart until then, enticed a few unwilling souls to delay their plans “for the greater good”. Again, this is just an example but one nonetheless of how empowerment and not authoritarianism is the way to run a business… UAL will never understand that concept.
What a lame and shameful excuse: That a mighty corporation such as UA is somehow powerless to compensate passengers at a level where someone actually takes up the offer to use a later flight. It is UAs money, for goodness sake. The whole situation was UAs fault, and attempts to blame the customer are shameful indeed.
And since when has an aviation corporation been unable to find a way to fly four people from A to B? You can order a business jet just as you can a cab. It costs more, but then again, should a large corporation be responsible of fixing its own operational issues without having its customers beaten to pulp? Many would argue it should.
This article completely ignores that the fundamental issue was NOT police behaviour, however outrageous that was. The police should never have been called in in the first place: it is up to UA to sort out its internal operational issues, not shift the burden and blame to their customers and then call in the police when these protest against their mistreatment.
I fly well over 200 000 miles per year. United I have managed to avoid for 7 years now. Because.
Exactly right. There’s a big difference between truly “exigent” circumstances, and faux-exigencies of the airlines’ and industry’s own creation. I have little to no sympathy for the latter.
United bears 100% of the blame. This is inarguable.
1) United stopped at $800 and never got to $1350. Personally I believe that @$1350 they could have gotten volunteers.
2) If United had no volunteers at $1350, and cannot follow their contractual obligations with their union(s), then whatever disruptions follow from United not having proper personnel in Louisville is literally what CDB–Cost of Doing Business–means. Clearly this situation is an “edge” condition as it hasn’t happened previously. So if United wants to guarantee against this kind of edge condition happening again, United has present choices (only selling Capacity – N seats), and future choices (negotiating better with their unions by inserting clauses for “emergency” situations such as this.
But all this misses the larger picture–that the United States is turning into a Corporatocracy with taxpayer-funded law enforcement doing Corporation’s bidding and not working for the taxpayers.
There is an easy way to prevent this from happening. Make the minimum compensation for IDB twice the last minute walk up fare payable in cash as well as a refund. Anyone IDBed would be able to take the cash and walk over to the competing airline and buy a walkup fare and be on their way.
Airlines would make a genuine effort to get a VDB as twice of a walk up fare is going to be pretty high. Also the airline should have to provide the person alternate transport ont he next available flight from the airport rather than on one which is convenient to the airline. In this case United had a flight the same night and in the morning but tried to put the passengers on one 20 hours later.
@Gary
You’re doubling down, that’s for sure. You claim that the IDB compensation rules set the maximum compensation permitted by law, and that’s just flat out incorrect.
Second, you disclaim rather strongly a lawyer’s opinion on which section of an adhesion contract applies to the case at hand. No offense or anything, but I’m trusting a lawyer’s opinion on legal matters, not yours. Your expertise is in frequent flyer programs, not contracts of carriage.
You state that “denied boarding” is a term of art, but Banzhof’s commentary makes a rather clear case that United’s Rule 21 (Removal from aircraft) is a separate matter from Rule 25 (Denied boarding compensation.)
If you ask me, this is a civil issue; United overreached (and the Chicago PD was complicit in this) by involving the police in something that is strictly civil. Contract violations (which this is) are not criminal matters.
@Truth – $800 + hotel was for voluntary denied boarding offers, $1350 was the maximum they’d legally be obligated to pay based on the one way fare of the passenger.
Stop apologizing for United.
Their conduct, beginning to end, is not defensible.
There seems to be momentum building behind the argument that United may have acted illegally. See OMAAT. I think you should at least consider acknowledging that you may be in the wrong here.
Never mind that folks are right — $800 is funny money of dubious value. I may or may not have taken it. $1000 in cold hard cash? Yeah, I’ll spend the night at the Motel 6 and tell my boss to pound sand.
I have far more uses for $1k in cash than I do airline funny money.
@tom — at the point this happened no other airline had a flight (american has a flight shortly after the scheduled departure time of this one, unclear if that was sold out though likely, and united had one more flight which was sold out)
@ jkh_gs — Like many passengers, you don’t appreciate the redundancy that UA DOES have. They don’t plan for “perfect weather and perfect everything else.” One of the redundancies is doing exactly what they did on this flight — and it would have been an adequate response 99.99% of the time!
Sure, UA could have spare flight crews — and airplanes — sitting around at all their airports just waiting for an unforeseeable problem to develop. But they’d have to pay for this. And YOU would have to pay for this when you fly. But you’d probably choose an airline that had a lower fare and less redundancies. I could name a couple of such airlines: Spirit and Frontier. And people are willing to trade back-up reliability (which they don’t appreciate) for lower fare much of the time. If UA were to adopt the strategies you’re advocating, I’m pretty sure they’d eventually go out of business and we’d all have suckier airline service.
@Shane — United PR doesn’t seem to think so given the nasty calls I regularly get from them
Another classic case of victim blaming – this is whats wrong with this country
@Miguel OMAAT’s post is incorrect, as I noted in the comments there.
@Dan there are lawyers and there are lawyers, this one is neither an aviation nor regulatory lawyer
People who says emotions and all that, i hope that you have to fly to meet your patents on the death bed. It is very important to you and paid for the ticket, but you missed the last words of your parents just becauze an airline decided to remove you for the sake of their interest.
@Dan
Gary is continuing to rely on a confusion between the “maximum compensation required by law” ($1350) and the “maximum allowed by law” (infinite). There is absolutely no limit on what the airline can pay. But Gary glosses over that for reasons you all can speculate about.
I will re-iterate, because Gary and others clearly don’t get it: United gate agents, can and sometimes do, offer a lot more than $1350.
The one major point you missed is that the “de-accomodating” of the passenger(s) should have happened at the gate, before boarding. That was United’s biggest fail.
And, comment section really tells how little you know about the law, Gary. Just admit it and stop the nonsense like you know severything about aviation law.
I have to disagree, at least in part. The key failure was in United’s not having the seats for the four employees properly set aside before boarding started, so the entire process of looking for volunteers and then, if necessary, selecting passengers for IDB, could have occurred at the gate rather than on the plane. It still would have been unpleasant, and the one passenger could have still caused an altercation, but it wouldn’t have become the PR nightmare it did.
“More importantly, United didn’t do it because Department of Transportation regulations set maximum required compensation for involuntary denied boarding (in this case 4 times the passenger’s fare paid up to a maximum of $1350). So they’re not going to offer more than that for voluntary denied boardings”
I’m sorry, this just doesn’t follow. Airlines (at least the good ones) go above and beyond the bare minimum required by the law all the time in order to give good service. Virgin gave me a $50 credit just for switching seats to keep a family together for instance. Considering United’s market cap has lost like $200 million since the incident, its hard to argue that a few hundred dollars more would not have been a fantastic tradeoff
If the airline had just upped their offer to $1,350, and waited a few minutes, this would not have happened. But they are used to bullying passengers with threats of physical removal if passengers do not comply. They didn’t want to pay more, and decided to call in some muscle. Well, no more. This incident will change things. (Turns out this passenger has a shady history, but that’s irrelevant. It could have been just a guy with some emotional problems… no reason to call in thugs to beat him up.)
Oh Gary….. for a “thought leader” it seems that most of your leadership is devoid of EQ and communication savvy.
No matter where the blame is, right after someone gets the crap beat out of them and dragged off the plane is not the time to point out what the person did wrong.
When you’ve taken a stance and tone that lacks empathy and compassion that people react emotionally to, that is not the time to hammer them with rational arguments and try to educate them. You’re never going to get through.
Right now you’re doing what exactly what United and Oscar Munoz are doing: trying to shroud and dissipate customer/audience emotions with rational arguments that make you seem like a robot. This is not the time to do that and in turn you’re getting taken to the cleaners in the comments.
You and United are getting exactly what you deserve for the way you’re handling this situation.
Gary thanks for the background and deep dive on this. Now, can you educate us on what happens at a real world class airline when this happens? Let’s take Lufthansa or Singapore airlines and compare their policies vs the United policy of calling 9-1-1.
Wow, it is amazing how you can spin a story when you want to.
United had a moral obligation to transport the passengers who bought tickets.
United makes more money by over booking its flights.
There is a cost of an empty seat and there is a cost for bumping a passenger.
You are correct that the video made this such a disaster. Without the video nobody would be talking about it now.
All airlines need to stop randomly taking passengers off of planes. They need to be able to bribe the customers to volunteer to get off the plane. Video or no video, preventing people from flying when they paid for the tickets is wrong.
This is a genuine question which I can’t find an answer for. Why did they board all the passengers if they knew they didn’t have seats for their crew? I get you might have to “deny boarding” to certain passengers when you are unable to convince anyone to volunteer their seats. But why did United end up in a situation where they had to remove people from the plane? This just seems like a huge screw up on their part — for which they have not acknowledged responsibility. You board a 1/2 hour before the flight time, did they really not know a 1/2 hr before the flight they needed those seats? If that’s the case, I have much deeper questions about United operations.
My question is why couldn’t this have been resolved at the gate? Why issue a boarding pass and then effectively pull it by offloading a paying customer?
Don’t board anyone until the issue is resolved, even if that means the flight is delayed. If you are going to deny boarding, deny it in the lounge and provide max cash compensation. And no incident ensues. Even if someone vocalizes their unhappiness in front of witnesses, it won’t rise to the same level of someone dragged off an aircraft.
“especially since the violent outcome here wasn’t expected and the United Express gate agent had no authority to do more”
Wrong. It’s expected by the half of America that doesn’t have a good relationship with the police (i.e. the half that isn’t white and/or well-off and/or suburban). Don’t call the police. Don’t talk to the police.
@jkh_gs
That’s exactly right. United could have paid any amount they needed to in order to free up those four seats. They CHOSE to not keep increasing their offered compensation and instead went to the involuntary bumping option and eventually escalated this to law enforcement. That is 100% United’s fault.
That the law enforcement personnel escalated even further is a different situation.
Gary, please read http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-corporation-does-not-always-have-to-win-1794181209.
“You are not the corporation. You are the human. It is okay for the corporation to lose a small portion of what it has in terrifying overabundance (money, time, efficiency) in order to preserve what a human has that cannot ever be replaced (dignity, humanity, conscience, life). It is okay for you to prioritize your affinity with your fellow humans over your subservience to the corporation, and to imagine and broker outcomes based on this ordering of things. It is okay for the corporation to lose. It will return to its work of churning the living world into dead sand presently.”
‘The whole point of this post is, as you say, “I’m simply sick and tired of American people’s mentality that justifies police brutality because of disobedience that poses no life or security threat.”’
And yet in every one of your revenue-generating posts on this issue, you’ve slipped in a remark saying that the passenger shares blame.
I blame one entity, and one entity only: United.
They could have offered more than $800, and they could have authorized their agents to offer more than $1300. They didn’t, because they figured that whatever ill-will they generated with a single customer would be outweighed by the total dollar amount that they would save by not offering more. Their only problem is that instead of just having a single distraught customer, they’ve broadcast their lack of empathy to the entire world.
You wrote…
“United didn’t do it because Department of Transportation regulations set maximum required compensation for involuntary denied boarding (in this case 4 times the passenger’s fare paid up to a maximum of $1350)”
This is simply not correct. Nothing prevents an airline from offering more than these amounts. They just have to over at least this much before involuntarily denying anyone boarding.
Let’s repeat that. This is the maximum an airline has to pay before invoking IDB. That is the meaning of maximum. The airline breaks no law, nor any regulations if they offer more.
Gary, if you believe otherwise could you please provide substantiation for your position.
I want to echo these two sentiments:
1. thanks for the deep dive on this issue. Whatever our opinions, the fact is United has not committed to doing anything to avoid a repeat of this issue.
2. there is too much victim blaming in this post. The correct amount is zero. There’s an unsettling insinuation that the victim was acting the part of a civil rights martyr. Maybe he just really wanted/needed to go home to his patients? To dismiss this by saying everybody has a reason to travel is disingenuous. The blind compliance advocated in this article is at odds with the libertarian overtones of this blog. SURELY the airline could have moved on to the next person down the IDB list and called it a day.
And I want to add one of my own:
3. can we please get a post exploring the racial/cultural factors at play here. I concede the victim could have been anybody, and there is zero evidence of racial foul play; however, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I concede UA’s IDB algorithm has no explicit racial bias*, but I will not be so quick to dismiss that the way in which the victim was treated (by airline personnel or by police) was affected by his identity. Was the victim stereotyped as someone whose culture and language barriers made him an easy target? Did police believe that an Asian would not make a scene or complain about police brutality? Given the strained relation between blacks and LEOs, would police have been more gentle on a black passenger, ceteris paribus?
* although, by favoring high fare class and elite status, which are disproportionately held by rich white men, UA is complicit in entrenching their privilege and superiority — this could be a dissertation-worthy discussion.
This is a pretty grotesque apologetic.
First: yes, the airline could have offered more than $1350. In fact, there’s an image on Twitter showing that they DID have a volunteer, but she was asking for $1600, which means that this whole mess happened because an agent of the airline was afraid of calling someone higher up and asking if they could kick in an extra $250.
(or, more likely, she was afraid of asking.)
Second: don’t quote procedure at us. That’s also grotesque. “They were only following orders” is not a line you should ever, ever deploy in a situation like this. Besides, all of these procedures are tied to being denied boarding; that isn’t what happened here. This man was deplaned because United employees couldn’t sort out these issues beforehand, and because of a business model (overbooking) that people have always found distasteful and now looks plainly dystopian.
(How on earth did they not have this flight crew’s issues sorted out long beforehand? Who the hell handles staff scheduling at United, exactly?)
“Term of art”. Good grief. I hope you’re getting paid for this.
Third: there’s way too many shoulds and maybes and other conditionals here. Could they have taken Uber, a cab, or a bus? Was there personnel available? Could they have come to an agreement with another airline to transport the crew? WAS “no ground transport” part of the union contract? What on earth happens if they need to get a crew somewhere and they DON’T have a flight to empty out?
And finally…why him? This is a physician, for God’s sake. He had an extremely good reason for wanting to stay on that plane. Why didn’t the staff on board find someone else?
It’s highly suspect that they chose an elderly visible minority to be forcibly removed. Were they motivated by prejudice to believe that he’d be compliant, and reacted with fury when he contradicted those prejudices?
No, dude, it’s not all on the cops.
Can you please clarify how the term Denied Boarding can be used when the man is already bucked in?
Also, you have an it’s typo in the last paragraph.
Thanks.
“Gary is continuing to rely on a confusion between the “maximum compensation required by law” ($1350) and the “maximum allowed by law” (infinite). There is absolutely no limit on what the airline can pay. But Gary glosses over that for reasons you all can speculate about.”
“I will re-iterate, because Gary and others clearly don’t get it: United gate agents, can and sometimes do, offer a lot more than $1350.”
Thanks for this, @jkh_gs. It’s a point many others have made, but it bears repeating.
I respect Gary and his right to offer an opinion I disagree with. But I too am troubled by this and many other assertions he’s made in this discussion.
I’d add that, even if Gary were right about this matter, he should be lobbying for United, the airlines and the U.S. Government to change the rule as he (apparently incorrectly) interprets it, rather than defending United.
And I’ll again ask Gary: Have you ever been bumped in ways that caused serious problems for you in terms of work or other matters? And if so, how serious were the consequences?
@Gary —> Yes, you have been “called very terrible things in the comments,” and — in the cool light of day — some of the reactions (though not the words themselves) have been justified, and some not. And I *appreciate* your post today — THIS post — trying to pour oil on the turbulent waters. I, too, have tried to keep my reactions calm and on point, to avoid the emotional, knee-jerk reaction and the slippery slope of name-calling, racial slurs, and worse. However, I wish to add some comments of my own and hope you take these in the spirit they are intended.
Yes, the flight was NOT oversold. Ergo, this was not a case — as most comments seem to indicate — of too many seats sold for too few seats. United had X number of available seats and sold X number of tickets, not X+4. The tickets were sold by United Airlines. Meanwhile — for whatever reason — the actual operator of the United Express flight in question — Republic Airlines — needed to move a flight crew (I am presuming this was a pilot, co-pilot, and two FA’s) to Louisville to operate a flight the following morning. Therefore, United/United Express/Republic needed to COMMANDEER four of those seats from paying passengers for their crew.
It is *probably* not the fault of United that Republic needed to move their flight crew. It is certainly not the fault of Republic that United sold all available seats onboard the aircraft. And there is NO WAY that ANY of this is the fault of the paying passengers that *expected* an uneventful flight.
However, what your post above fails to address is the old, “what did they know, and when did they know it” question. When did Republic know they needed to move their crew? I mean, they know their plane needs a crew. They know the plane needs to depart at ________ time, and that the crew needs to there for pre-flight and all the rest, so they have to arrive _____ hours prior to departure. And since 3411 was scheduled to land at 8:04 pm, and the crew needed to depart the next morning, we can presume there was some issue of required sleep . . . I still don’t know why this wasn’t handled PRIOR to boarding.
You mentioned this was a “replacement crew.” Why? Where was the original crew? Why couldn’t they make it as scheduled? Did all four suddenly come down with food poisoning, or something else — what prevented the original crew from performing their jobs as scheduled? Clearly, there are still a number of unanswered questions . . .
You have repeatedly stated that UA has the least blame here, and — sorry — I do disagree. It is the passengers who are blameless here¹. And while you are quite right that an officer or officers of the Chicago Aviation Police overreacted and *appear* (from a legal definition) to be guilty of using excessive force, causing injuries to the victim that would result in (at a minimum) charges of battery if it were not a LEO that caused it, UA/Republic *does* bare their fair share of responsibility for the situation. Again, at some point, they knew that their employees needed to get to Louisville — why was this not taken care of PRIOR to boarding?
Besides, UA is the public face of this incident. Not UA Express, not Republic Airways, and — for better or worse — not the CPA.
Again, United is at fault in that, while the limit of compensation is capped by regulation, you say that limit is the maximum *required* — but nothing prevented UA from going higher, from offering more.
Finally, there is the matter of Oscar Muñoz, who has only made matters worse — indeed, couldn’t have made things worse if he wanted to!
There is NEVER any excuse for insults, name-calling, or racist speech — online, or elsewhere.
_______________
¹ This is NOT a case of blaming the victim here, but the passenger in question does bear some responsibility (though less than UA, and certainly less that the CPA!) in that he refused to obey an order from law enforcement. No one knows how they will react in a certain situation, and I think certainly most people would always say that you do what a police officer says to do, and yet hundreds if not thousands do it every single day.
@Gary As you try to defend the dubious legal grounds United used to justify their actions and policies, the court of opinion is already making a judgment- outrage on blogs, twitter, late night TV, Chinese media, and most painfully to United: the stock market. Would have cost a lot less than a half a billion dollars to cancel the next days flight, compensate the passengers more, or charter a private jet to fly 4 employees.
Wasn’t there an American Airlines flight that left only one hour later or even later that evening? In any case, is United “too cheap” to put that crew or other passengers on that flight, or is that not allowed by some contract.
To quote: “More importantly, United didn’t do it because Department of Transportation regulations set maximum required compensation for involuntary denied boarding (in this case 4 times the passenger’s fare paid up to a maximum of $1350). So they’re not going to offer more than that for voluntary denied boardings, especially since the violent outcome here wasn’t expected and the United Express gate agent had no authority to do more.”
I’m a United 1K (for 7 years running now), and have always been mystified that the airline doesn’t do more to empower its staff. Certainly the airline has some of the blame here for not allowing their employees to do more to help passengers and negotiate their way out of a tough spot.
Also, to reiterate other commenters, the maximum required amount is not the maximum amount allowed (which is infinite). Moreover, airline vouchers are useless to most passangers (including me). Cash, on the other hand, makes it worth your while.
The fat shill is still shilling. How much you make out of the incident, shillboy?
This is a silly defense of United’s position. The real problem is United’s (and Continental’s) longstanding indifference to their customers.
There is a difference between what they are obligated to pay and what they are willing to pay and, in this case, they were unwilling to pay even the obligated maximum. You are a frequent flier (as I was for many years). Airlines will go well above and beyond their legal obligations to keep key customers happy. But United has long failed to empower gate staff to make these types of low cost customer satisfaction decisions. This is what they get for it. It’s why I stopped flying both partners to this merger long ago.
And the Chicago police? The watch commander has discretion here. As long as the passenger was non-violent he did not need to get his folks involved in what is effectively a civil matter. I suspect he will be the next to be put on leave.
I believe an error you make is to continue to treat this as an IDB situation. Those can only occur with an oversell (https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights).
UA COC defines an oversell as “Oversold Flight means a flight where there are more Passengers holding valid confirmed Tickets that check-in for the flight within the prescribed check-in time than there are available seats” (https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx?Mobile=1#sec1).
Since this was not an oversell, UA had no right to involuntarily force anyone off the plane. The crew for Louisville clearly did not have confirmed Tickets, and they cannot post hoc say the seats for the Louisville crew were “unavailable.” This also means that the DOT limits have no relevance. If they needed the seats for the next day’s operations to function, they HAD to do enough to get people to volunteer, however costly or inconvenient this may have been for them.
@jason – I’ve said elsewhere, we agree, that (1) United’s IDB priority is not explicitly racist. The gate agent following that priority isn’t being racist. I’m not sure that Asian men are on average less affluent or buy lower fare classes, although elite status is held disproportionately by men vs women.
There may have been an element of racial animus in the reaction by aviation police, but I have no way to know this so don’t feel I’m in a position to speak confidently about it. It wouldn’t just be speculation, but speculation without any basis.
@Steve I did *not* say United couldn’t have a policy of exceeding DOT requirements.
@Mike I believe it was a mistake for the passenger to refuse to get off the aircraft when the airline instructed him to do so, before the police were called.
Obviously I’m missing something and it’s something I haven’t seen anyone state. If they had put the crew in an Uber, it would be a 4.5 hour drive. The crew would have gotten there long before the flights the next morning. Instead………