A United Airlines business class passenger held a phone call without headphones. She did it while the plane was taxiing out, “through the entire safety video” when she shouldn’t have been on a call at all. Apparently “flight attendants asked her three times” to stop but she still stayed on her speaker phone. Crew didn’t do anything further about it.
Can afford business class seats but not earphones
by
u/funkyboss7 in
unitedairlines
If someone is on speaker in business class, the issue is almost certainly not inability to afford headphones. It is entitlement, attention-seeking, indifference, or lack of basic social norms.
United just updated its Contract of Carriage to say that “[p]assengers who fail to use headphones while listening to audio or video content” can explicitly be kicked off” the aircraft.
If flight attendants asked the woman in 5D three times and nothing happened, then what is the policy worth? I’d love to see a policy where a passenger isn’t immediately ejected – they’re downgraded. You put them in economy and move up the next person on the upgrade list. Make PlusPoints great again!
Either that, or Sean Duffy needs to be stuffed in the closet of every departure, popping out to scold passengers as needed: “The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You.”
Time for the Dr. Dao special!
I really like the downgrade solution but United tends to avoid messy and discretionary solutions.
What are other steps they can deploy and escalate?
This happened to me on an overnight flight out of HNL several months ago during taxi out. The person was in the last row of business class blasting out a video. I turned around and said “sir, would you please use headphones or turn that off?” and was flatly ignored. After takeoff I informed the FA within earshot of the offender, so he then kept it off… until we landed where upon he blasted it again during taxi almost as if out of spite. I’m entirely convinced there’s considerable psychopathy present in people who use their speakers at full volume in public places. Normal people don’t do this.
Delete her MileagePlus account! And let her find out after landing.
The FAs didn’t want the hassle of escalating the situation any further so they decided to just let it go.
Had she been black they would have returned to gate and either arrested her (not following crew member instructions) or offloaded her. And I’m white. What I also don’t understand is UA just implemented policy of headphones. Why wasn’t it enforced?
@Rozvm – exactly. Downgrade her status and take her miles. Wish other neighboring pax would have put their phones music on speaker and forced her to end her call. So tired of all this over-entitlement and complete lack of regard for other people. Have had parents astonished when I asked them to please use headpgones for their kids’ noisy video games – they really have no idea how irritating it is to hear repeated bells and character noises on a long flight. I get that it’s not easy to keep a child entertained, but please have some awareness of others!
Maybe it’s being handled behind the scenes, especially given United’s updated contract of carriage to mandate that passengers wear headphones when listening to audio or watching videos. It’s probably the smarter way to deal with it. If they did let it go, shame on them. That’s BS.
The plan should have returned the gate, the passenger taken off (and in handcuffs if she refused) and denied boarding. Then escort outside of security where she can go to the Spirit ticket counter and purchase a ticket on an airline with passengers like herself.
A ban from flying is always a wake up call
What about flight attendants who didn’t enforce an FAA regulation? We have these regulations for a reason.
unfortunately the flight attendants are informers, not enforcers. All they can do is tell you you’re breaking the rules or the law. they have to turn it over to higher authority (police/fbi) to get it enforced.
this of course makes people think they can get away with anything. wait until landing!
@ John stone, actually, they do not have the authority. AAL recently made sure FA’s can’t get a passenger removed for any reason, it’s up to the Ca only. and even then the corporate management intervenes and decides if it’s worth risking the revenue or enforcing the rules.
Noise cancelling headphones are a must whenever traveling. Only thing I hate is not being able to hear any pilot announcements. Sometimes I wish that announcements would be made on display screens on aircraft that have them.
The only solution for me is to blast my phone speaker on classical viennese Lawrence Welk music. It’s not like the unionized trolley dolly is going to supply me with sufficient alchoholic beverages to de-sensitize me.
So…..downgrade these insufferable people to coach so that the pax in Economy with less personal space and separation have to endure this?
Return to the gate and throw the passenger off
Doug: The ‘higher authority” is the pilot in command , not the local police or FBI. The FA has to inform the pilot who has the final authority to remove the passenger.
Publish her name. Create an “embarrassing list” and put her, and others, on it. Have this show on gate monitors during boarding so everyone can see the names of bad passengers.