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.
the poor man was chinese… what if he were not fluent and did not understand why these officials were upset with him? and why this guy? could the officers not have moved on and chosen someone else with a better grasp of quixotic airline rules. i have no idea how long this man has lived in this couyntry, or indeed, was born here, but to someone new and with limited fluency, and coming from a different background – the posturing and verbal assault by police would ingender fright and paranoia. unless this is the desired outcome. well CEO oscar munoz certainly gets to earn his big fat exec bonus for this one.
i’d avoid this airline completely until they “get” the message.
@kelly
Well said – spot on.
Also interesting facts – these are from another “flight expert”:
This wasn’t a denied boarding. The passenger already boarded and was in a seat that he paid for. United’s Contract of Carriage dictates when a passenger can be refused transport, and nowhere does it state that United can de-board you because it wants to fly its own employees. I bet United will try to say that the passenger didn’t comply with crew member instructions, but that is bogus — why even have rules if a flight attendant can decide, without cause, to kick anyone off the plane? I can see this passenger’s mindset that he had to get home and did not violate the Contract of Carriage, so he shouldn’t have to get off
This wasn’t a traditional overbooking situation. According to the information we have, the flight was not oversold — United wanted to get its employees to Louisville to staff another flight. While it was in United’s best business interest to get them there, passengers should not be held accountable for the airline’s lack of planning. Frankly, Chicago is a United hub, and if it really needed to get employees to Louisville, it could have flown an extra plane to get them there.
*I had completely forgotten that Chicago is not only United’s headquarters, but also a United HUB. THEY MUST have had another plane in the vicinity. GOOD LORD.
Gary, I appreciate your perspective. However, in the time it took to summon the police and have the man dragged off after a confrontation, they most certainly could have run an auction for people to voluntarily disembark. Time wasn’t really a factor here.
Moreover, citing maximum *required* offers for passengers only means that they don’t *have* to offer more. But in such a situation, surely airline policy should be for their staff to be *able* to offer whatever it takes to resolve the situation without violence and reputational disaster for the airline. There is a price at which they could have gotten *every* passenger to disembark, and certainly one at which they could have gotten one more passenger to volunteer. Instead, they resorted to violence and threats of arrest for non-compliance with an arbitrary choice.
If it is not every airline’s policy to negotiate rather than brutalize or threaten with arrest, I hope this incident will teach them that an extra $10,000or free tickets anywhere is better value than a worldwide PR disaster costing the company a billion dollars in market cap and perhaps millions more in flights booked elsewhere.
In addition, United’s tone-deaf response that it was the passenger’s fault that he was bloodied on their orders does nothing to help them. Attacking the passenger’s reputation and his biography when a flightful of other passengers can attest that he was brutalized merely for not getting out of his legally purchased seat, with some crying out for the officers to stop what they were doing, adds oil to the fire: “Fly United where brutality is followed by character assassination!”
If, as you say, the crew was an emergency replacement, then it is clear they had to be on that flight. We have no disagreement there. But that is just more reason for United to have found a volunteer with the right offer. The fact that they didn’t *want* to pay more than *required* is irrelevant. They couldn’t get a volunteer at rate, so basic economics says, raise the rate. The further fact that their agents are not authorized to offer more is a fault of airline policy and rests entirely at United’s feet in this absolutely foreseeable situation.
Thank you for taking the time to give us another perspective on this awful event. The bottom line seems to be that the airline was unwilling to do what it needed to do to keep its paying customers happy and decided that brute force was better. Their cheapskate attitude deserves every bit of ridicule they are getting, and every financial punishment the market can dish out, IMHO.
Whatever reasons, explanations, or excuses you come up with, the fact remains that the optics on this are terrible for United and rightly should cause them a lot of damage. The passenger seems to not have the slightest understanding of what was going on. Most of us would be extremely upset to be dragged out of our seat and down the floor of an airplane to be tossed out. Despite what you write, Gary, people everywhere are going to see the videos and remember what a giant corporation did to a passenger who paid for his seat and expected, reasonably enough, to be taken to his destination without injury and humiliation.
Odd that you say there’s no reason why an airline would go over the required IDB amount. My wife and I have received vouchers for $1,500 each for giving up seats. That is above the amount and we ended up being quite happy about the outcome.
Gary is sucking United cock here.
Wow-What about the lost productivity in this country with everybody and their boss following these blogs and social media coverage of this issue! Got to be in the $$$Billions.
I am intrigued by the IDB vs Rule 21. I don’t know the answer, but I am not rooting for your ‘view’ on this Gary. Seems logical to me that Rule 21 would apply, but the law is frequently not logical.
I too am on the side of, “Where’s your outrage, Gary?” Two further points:
1. Police have hostage negotiators to minimize harm to even criminals in situations where they are not willing to give up. They try to talk them down off the ledge before storming in with laser sights. We ALL need to fight aggression by the police, they ALL need to be retrained to do no harm when no threat is present. The next victim could..rather will be us. (Sidebar: I am not involved in police protest politics and I voted for the Donald)
2. You are not required to follow an order that is “wrong”. It doesn’t matter how much “You need me on that wall” (A Few Good Men, best scene in movie history), you are not required to follow an illegal order. This is a teaching moment, Gary, don’t let that slip by. “You damn right I ordered him off that plane”, doesn’t matter. He didn’t have to go. If it was IDB they never disclosed it to him in writing. If it was Rule 21 there were no grounds.
Gary, please listen to the majority here, take a step back, what if it was your mother on that plane. They have no right to conduct themselves in that manner. It is a time for real change.
If not, then I am sorry you may go from Thought Leader to Thought Loser.
This is such a heartless and self-removed article.
There are so many ways to make this situation better after what happened. Simply saying “well it sucks for him” doesn’t do anything or explain the situation further.
For a white privileged man sitting at his desk and writing down “the real reason man get dragged off the plane” is quite astonishing.
Imagine if this happened to your father, family or friends, would you able to sit there and write this article?
Could really use some sympathy here.
It is absolutely false to say “This was a tough situation all-around for which there were no good solutions.”
It’s my understanding that the offer was an $800 *voucher* (good only for full-fare United flights), not $800 in cash. That, to be blunt, is ridiculous. Make an offer of $800 cash and the main problem would have been a stampede of volunteers… there were certainly at least four students/retirees onboard with enough flexibility to wait an extra day.
The “logic” on this $1350 cap does not remotely exist.
Just because some other system was going to limit the cap doesn’t mean you can’t exceed it on your own. Maximum “required” compensation isn’t some legal system that says, “You can’t bid people off the plane at a level above that.”
I don’t even understand why you keep making this false point.
There is obviously, on the other hand, truth that being empowered to exceed some level didn’t seem to be possible.
Now ask yourself why.
This wasn’t a “denied boarding” either, so again the comp stuff shouldn’t apply either legally or with respect to United. Instead, in this >extraordinary< circumstance of needing to remove people from the flight — which was 100% United's fault for selling seats they could not offer as they somehow failed to realize this was the only way to get a needed crew somewhere (Jesus, how can anyone even defend that?!?!).
This was a "remove butts from seats" case, which essentially does not happen. And with one call to an empowered supervisor there was an easy, easy fix: Offer $1500 per seat to get folks off the plane. Do it quietly if you want, front to back. Do it over the PA if you think you can safely (I'm skeptical that's a good idea). Once you have the seats, ask the pax to quietly disembark, voucher them off the plane, say thanks and be done with it. Make sure you can go to $2,500 if needed.
This takes so much time it will cost a slot? Well, um, FORCING people off the plane is not going to be faster even if you can skip the call to LE, the guarantee of angry people, etc.
United owns this 100%. They own that LE went overboard too (yes, the police own that too, doesn't absolve United.)
Rules here are not a defense for United. "Maximum compensation" drivel is not a defense for United. The passenger's non-compliance doesn't absolve United for a horrendous set of policies and operational incompetence errors.
The good news? United will lose millions from this. Maybe more.
And you know what? They deserve it.
Wow, another apologist masquerading as a reasoned analysis. You really don’t get it.
The reason that this video is so powerful is that everyone who has ever flown – be it once or 1000 times – can see themselves in the same position as the unfortunate passenger who was assaulted by Chicago PD on instruction by UA personnel. The passenger did nothing wrong, except for refusing to give up his seat due to airline incompetence. The airline did everything wrong. To pretend there are shades of grey here and equal fault is just ludicrous, as UA is now finding out.
This situation reminds me of the outcry over the tarmac delay rule, which was the result of similar abuse of customers by airline executives who just didn’t get it. So I would not be surprised if we see new DOT rules on IDB or passenger removal. Once again the airlines will rant about how they need flexibility to deal with safety issues, but that dog don’t hunt.
And you are 100% wrong about civil rights protests. Maybe you need to retake history to learn how Gandhi and MLK used non-violent protest to bring attention and action to their causes – a method that continues to this day. Certainly this passenger was well within his rights to resist being ejected from his seats, and I for one am grateful for his sacrifice.
@Gary
You keep saying this “didn’t happen because United sold too many tickets”
Yet United’s own COC clearly states that Denied Boarding Compensation only applies in situations “when there is an Oversold UA flight”, with the definition of “Oversold” being:
“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.”
So please, continue to spout this did not happen due to overbooking….
@Jon
Thoughtful comments. Yes I am glad Oscar stood up for his people. They were not the ones dragging the man down the aisle. In fact the gate agents may not even known what was happening. To those United haters I understand United has a ways to go to prove itself but of the 80,000 employees a large majority want to do the right thing and I am sure this incident was painful to watch. To those who insist on calling the crew “United Employees” miss the point. They were crew and as such mission critical. Ask the 70 people waiting in Louisville for the crew to show up. Mistakes were made and yes blame to go around. At the end of the day regardless the victim should have complied. When a police officer stops me for even a minor traffic infraction whether my fault or nobody’s fault I still comply. I realize to do anything else will end badly. Go on and hate United for whatever they “did’ to you 20 years ago but the reality is that they are trying hard to correct the past. They really do care about the customer..
this could have happened with any airline. unfortunately it didn’t. All of the airlines use the same protocol. Protocols are developed over time. It’s time to modify the protocol.
When the problem arose, rather than call the police (who acted like gestapo, much like our current ICE offcers today), they should have simply deplaned the entire plane and worked it out in the gate area.
Additional passengers could have been injured for no good reason.
of course Gary defines the problem directly as well. The police go straight to full blown escalation when their ‘victim’ is a person of color. In this case their victim was Asian.
I agree with your analysis, and now that we know that the flyer was a convicted drug dealer who plied patients with narcotics for sexual favors, I am likely to believe his behavior was erratic and most responsible for the incident.
Bottom line–when asked to get off the plane…he should have gotten off the plane….just like when the police pull you over and ask you to do something—-just do it!
Doh! There are other carriers that fly to wherever this crew needed to go.
Airlines do that frequently for each other. Why not this time?
“this could have happened with any airline”
Not true. According to this article, Virgin America and JetBlue don’t yank people off planes involuntarily:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-10/united-s-forcible-removal-from-overbooked-flight-triggers-outrage
Gary Leff, if you don’t already work for United, you should receive compensation for this post.
@FFlyer – while JetBlue doesn’t oversell their cabins, their rate of involuntary denied boardings skyrocketed last year BECAUSE OF EQUIPMENT SWAPS that meant they had fewer seats on flights than planned.
@Leona – not true, there were no seats available on other flights to take the crew to Louisville
Really? This whole article is bull! Stop defending the poor airline for the allowed abuse against a senior citizen! Greedy!
Gary–
I’m seeing a lot of talking past each other. People are saying the situation should have been resolved before boarding, and you keep saying back that the gate agent found out about the situation after boarding, so they did what they had to do, right?
There’s some point at which one can learn about a situation like this after which it’s just too late and the airline (and the crew, and the passengers on the flight from Louisville, etc.) would have had to just suck it up and deal with the fact that the crew couldn’t get from Chicago to Louisville that day. Presumably if the plane had actually taken off, they wouldn’t have turned it around, right? I imagine once it had actually pulled away from the gate would also have been too late.
This week, we learned that United Airlines thinks that after a passenger has physically boarded the airplane and taken their seat is not too late to involuntarily deny boarding to that passenger. The absurd phrasing and apparent inability to recognize that the emotional impact of that on the passenger is going to be much greater in such cases (I have a very hard time imagining that this man would have resisted to the point of police involvement before boarding the plane) is what people are finding so outrageous about the statements from various hapless United execs.
The required IDB compensation shouldn’t cap what United offers volunteers. No IDB is a good situation. Going forward, this will really be the case–United and all airlines are going to be under a microscope–for awhile at least.. They should offer what “United funny money” it takes to get volunteers. Especially with United, peaceful, happy volunteers will be ‘priceless’—ignore the accountants because they don’t want more problems like this. Similar problems will cost more in the longrun.
So anyone, at any time, can be ordered off a plane they have boarded–with a valid ticket and seat assignment–at the whim of the staff, and can be violently expelled if they don’t comply? This is the case regardless of whether they have done anything to violate the terms of service and even if no illegal activity has occurred? The staffing needs of the airline come first, per airline policy–not by any law– and government agencies can be called in to enforce private corporate policy with the full force and and authority of the police, up to and including violence?* Is this about right? Somehow this is supposed to make us more sympathetic to United?
Yeah–it’s not working and, frankly, apologists for this obscenity should really consider getting a moral compass check up.
The story is inaccurate and misleading. United does not have the right or standing to remove passengers once they have boarded. The doctor did not warrant removal under rule 21, nor did he need to follow the order of the flight attendant. I predict he will settle out of court but I will not fly United again unless the CEO is fired and they change their practices.
The less-than-gentle gentleman was reported to be Vietnamese, not Chinese. Also, reports, if accurate, say his license to practice was under suspension so his claim / calling out he had to see patients the next day was BS… unless he was seeing them illegally. Most certainly, the police were not ‘gentle’ … way too much force was used. Most certainly United screwed up on many fronts. A total lose, lose, lose situation all around.
Gary Leff is obviously an expert on mileage points, per his bio. His attitude towards the passenger’s rights, or lack of them, shows he knows nothing about humanity or compassion, only corporate policy.
Leff: “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.” WTF? This sounds like a threat of future airline positioning.
Wanker.
If police tell you to get the fuck off the plane, you know what you should do? Get the fuck off the plane. Tired of the whole pity me victim bullshit.
I hope much-needed changes to the system are being formulated now based on the situation. Had the man not been bloodied and the video gone viral, the event would have not had enough momentum to effect change, to wit, United would have gotten away with the event until something like this happened. Sometimes civil disobedience is required to effect change. We have a long, unfortiunate history of that here in America.
First and foremost the United gate agents could have diffused the problem without calling security. Escalating a problem without trying all options is dumb, lazy and unpredictable. If you have to officially bump passengers for $1350 should have asked for volunteers. There’s a big difference between the last $800 offer and $1350. The real undercurrent here are gate agents with little respect for passengers and an Us vs. Them attitude from the CEO on down.
I find your analysis misleading. Just because United can not be forced to pay more than the maximum statutory compensation does not mean they can not do so voluntarily. If they cared about actually providing decent customer service, they would up the compensation till they got volunteers. The whole it ‘takes too long’ to offer compensation is a red herring as it also takes to time to forcibly remove a passenger.
The operational incompetence that led to United having to deny service to 4 paying passengers is 100% United’s fault. The tone deaf response of the CEO is 100% United’s fault.
As for the union contracts, as I customer, I don’t care what your labor issues are as the vendor. That’s your problem as the vendor. Perhaps United shouldn’t have agreed to the contracts. Again 100% their problem.
The denied boarding compensation limits should be abolished. Airlines shouldn’t be allowed to deny boarding at all. If they oversell seats, they should be forced to buy them back from passengers at market rate which is the rate needed to convince a passenger to give up their seat which might be $10,000. In other industries, we avoid this problem by not selling things we don’t have.
That doctor was a fool. There was no reason for him to be so belligerent. All that screaming and fighting, for what? Just because he was going to have to take a later flight? I fly for work all the time and flight delays, etc are just part of the deal.
Its a shame it got violent, though. I personally would have announced that the flight could take off as soon as the passenger left the plane. The other passengers would have eventually turned on him, and he would have deserved it.
Three reasonable, rational people got off the plane when asked—-the fact that this one individual created a problem for himself is his fault alone! There were other ways he could have handled himself and expressed his issues without resorting to defiance and childishness.
You may be well informed but are completely missing the point of what people expect when you buy a ticket on an airline and then are allowed to BOARD THE PLANE. Expecting that gentleman to go quietly when the airline sold him the seat THAT HE IS SITTING IN is ridiculous.
Love the fact that so many Americans would not dare to talk back / question a cop or even a private security guard. Seems the land of the free is actually full of scared pussys.
limiting losses is in fact “maximizing profits” – it’s all one figure in the end – they were thinking bottom line and not customer care. Period. Having said that I’m glad you at least addressed the overall rise of the security state – that’s at the heart of the problem.
Three others took the offer and walked off the plane. $800 plus hotel. He brought this upon himself. A real loon!
Wow…well, I am going to comment on the initial, now deleted, posting you wrote which was mainly based on victim shaming and attacking that poor man. I learned all I needed to know about Mr. Leff’s moral compass when I read that piece. The fact that you deleted it…shows a small glimmer of hope that you can still separate good & bad.
Now after deleting that one you put together this weird “can’t we all get along” kind of apology tour for United. Seriously, we all saw that the handling of the situation was wrong on multiple fronts, the most obvious and low-hanging fruit is blaming the police…it should have never gotten to that point. I am curious why the flight crew was not more empathetic, trying to work with people, regardless of the dollar amounts offered. Some people can fly another day, some can’t/won’t…force is never right. The human thing to do would have been to LISTEN to the person and work with him or at least understand where he is coming from and what his needs are. Kicking him out under these circumstances was horrible and I hope everybody down from the Captain (who is responsible for his flight crew) and Police (they at least took immediate action) will be reprimanded. Special shout-out to the moron who prepared United CEO’s public statement…time to look for a new job in PR….re-accomodate..what?
Your whole thing of being glad he didn’t get a terrorist charge for interfering with the flight crew…wow…I mean…wow….good job introducing a non-related tangent.
I think you have revealed yourself as an Airline man…through-and-through…which used to be something I actually looked up to with my Dad working 40 years in the Airline business…you however, have no ethical compass (or it is being severely messed with by your personal interests) and are just another privileged person looking down on problems the plebs are having.
What I still don’t quite get is why they just didn’t simply went down one more row and asked somebody else…why pick on somebody who obviously feels extremely strongly about his right of transport.
Anyway, you used to be part of my homepage tabs…that’s it…I don’t need your kind of “analysis” or questionable reasoning anymore.
Reflect and re-consider…perhaps by putting yourself in other people’s skin & experiences for a bit….
This article perfectly describes everything. I wish that everyone who said “they’re not flying united anymore” would just read this article.
For poster Aj, he was in violation of the policy he agreed to when he bought the ticket. It wasn’t security that kicked him off the plane. It was actual police. He was disobeying a lawful order. I have a brother thats a cop and he talks about this attitude all the time. This is the same ridiculous stuff you see everywhere on Facebook. You see the last half of a video where somebody is getting pounded, but not the first half where they’re given ample opportunity to comply with a lawful order.
I understand that this so called “Doctor” has previously lost his license for trading drugs for sexual favors. I doubt he needs to rush home to tend to his patients’ needs anymore as he won’t have many patients now wanting his services.
But I do enjoy all the rush to judgement pundents who love to blame the capitalist pig companies for putting profits over customers. He is not a victim, just a perpetrator who put his needs above all others.
Need to now go book my next United flight…
Well then United’s operations must be a mess pretty regularly. I flew back from Belize in Feb. There were no less than four pilots in the passenger section.
United’s Contract of Carriage lists valid reasons for removing a passenger from a plane: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx#sec21
None of these reasons applied. Doesn’t the contract then mean that they _cannot_ remove the passenger? What’s the point of listing reasons when they _can_, if other reasons work too?
The law states the maximum that the airline is *REQUIRED* to provide, but does not forbid them from making an offer that exceeds the $1350 amount. Given that their stubbornness cost the shareholders over $1 BILLION this morning, the smart business decision would have been to he offered a significantly higher amount. IMIR, the highest offer they made that I have seen was $800, which is not even the maximum *REQUIRED,* so the airline can hardly be said to made a serious effort. On top of that, after the legging lap a few weeks ago, how could management have been so blind to image – from the gate supervisor through the incompetent CEO?
“He should have just got off?” He paid for a ticket and was on the plane. His part of the contract had been met, paid his fare, got through security without incident, not told he might not be able to fly prior to boarding, and was on the plane as instructed ready to go! Just because United had a poor organizational setup where the crew wasn’t on a plane they should have been, is no reason to pull this man off. I hope he sues the shorts off United, and gets millions for his injuries and insulting disgraceful abuse by United and the Airport police. It is not his fault that other passengers might be disrupted if a crew could not board, that’s United’s problem and they handled it horribly! The lack of remorse by the CEO is inexcusable and he should be fired. This airline relies on customers for its success, and it should also be judged by its behavior to customers. AWFUL!
This incident informs the general public, but folks that write or blog about the industry, or who travel frequently, are not surprised. Its a natural consequence of the way this industry operates.
Readers of this blog may not be lawyers, but have seen many examples of airline excesses in the management of airport operations and marketing programs. Significant frequent flyer program changes that dramatically reduce the value of one’s earned points are highlighted on these blogs, but ultimately we must surrender to the airlines.
Efforts by a collection of attorney generals in the 1990’s to establish meaningful policies for airlines to follow, such as sufficient notice of changes, but the airlines consistently defeated such attempts by falling back on the federal government’s sole an unique role as the only legal regulator of the industry.
The feds essentially relinquished its regulatory role after the dissolution of the Civil Aeronautics board during the Carter administration, which set in motion a chain of upstart airlines, bankruptcies and mergers that resulted in the today’s airline industry.
In a political environment where new regulations tended to be looked upon with disfavor, the status quo is maintained. Yes courts have ruled that the lack of federal interest in these matters does not mean that other governments can pick up the slack.
Almost 40 years have passed since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. It may be time for a bi-partisan review of the airline industry’s practices.
He had trouble follow medical laws also, and lost his license for a while,
This guy is going to be trouble for everyone..