The story of how a passenger got dragged off a United Express flight just keeps getting crazier and crazier.
It was terribly unfortunate that United decided they needed to send 4 crew members to Louisville on a full flight. The crew were needed to operate a flight in the morning, and if they didn’t passengers in the morning weren’t going to get where they were going.
So the airline asked for volunteers — offering up $800 in travel, a night’s hotel, and a flight the next afternoon. There were no takers. So the airline moved to remove passengers from the flight to make room, and a doctor refused to go.
Crew called the airport’s police, who dragged the passenger off the plane.
@United overbook #flight3411 and decided to force random passengers off the plane. Here's how they did it: pic.twitter.com/QfefM8X2cW
— Jayse D. Anspach (@JayseDavid) April 10, 2017
Officers bloodied him to the point he was muttering “just kill me” repeatedly. While the Chicago Police Department offered an absurd statement that the “man “fell” on his face,” one Aviation Police officer has been placed on leave over the incident.
United’s CEO made a dumb move apologizing merely for ‘having to re-accommodate’ passengers… not for the terrible thing that happened after the Chicago Aviation Police were called.
United CEO Oscar Munoz at Chicago O’Hare
But it gets worse. Munoz sent a letter to United employees beginning with the most important question of why the passenger defied the police rather than why the police bloodied the passenger. What ‘compounded’ the situation was the passengers refusal of the airline’s ‘polite’ request to deplane, making it ‘necessary’ to contact the police officer who appears to have beaten the passenger.
#flythefriendlyskies @united no words. This poor man!! pic.twitter.com/rn0rbeckwT
— Kaylyn Davis (@kaylyn_davis) April 10, 2017
There is no mention in the letter from Munoz, including in the airline Chairman’s ‘recap’ of events, of the condition the passenger was left in.
Here’s Oscar Munoz’s letter to United employees, via @jonostrower:
Throughout this incident I’ve said that the passenger should have followed crew instructions, and that while the situation that started all of this is frustrating but that the airline appears to have followed its own procedures.
However the lack of acknowledgment of the worst element of what happened — whitewashing, even — that a person was dragged off and bloodied by airport police is a failure of tremendous proportions.
“They needed to board the flight”. A fully loaded airplane is waiting to leave yet the crewmembers had priority to bump passengers off the plane. Where in their contract with the passenger does they can do that? That attitude means Oscar and United have little or no respect for their customers.
It’s time to “re-accommodate” Munoz. Deep-six him.
It just goes from bad to worse. UA is just a terrible, terrible airline, and Munoz should resign. The airline did not offer enough compensation since NO ONE TOOK IT! NOT ONE PERSON! Then they deplaned PAX which was the cheap and lazy way to handle this. Finally, the public comments have been so tone deaf that even if they are in the bureaucratically correct position, they have alienated even more people than they did the the famous leggings issue. They have no idea how to talk to passengers or to the public. Shame, shame, shame. The passenger may have been ill advised to not just act like a sheep, but the airline was way better equipped to find a better end to this. Instead, they will be correctly dragged through the mud in social media, the blogosphere and the mainstream press. Everyone loves to hate the airlines and this just plays into this. In any case, Munoz needs to go. He can run a railway with freight but not an airline with passengers! He is, frankly, in over his head and has performed poorly with the sole exception of an early win with the unions.
Good to see the Tom Horn days are back for corporate America, You should be proud.
Someone need to record a new version of “United Breaks Guitars.” Perhaps title it “United Breaks Your Arms.”
Time for the Board to boot this guy. He is totally incompetent. If you look at his resume he worked at ATT (not known as an example of customer service) and CSX which is a freight railroad known for moving containers and cargo around. Thus, that may be the reason why he has zero knowledge of how to treat customers well. He may think people are like containers that you just move around and “re-accomodate” any way you want.
We all know airline lobbyist wrote all the rules and regulations. By rules, yeah United is within their right. But those rules and regulations can be changed, because they are simply immoral. United is morally bankrupt and “We follow the rules” won’t be their saving grace.
And exactly how random is that selection method? I would like to see United algorithm that selected these 4 pax.
If they need to accommodate their crew, put them on DL, AA, WN.
Yup, this letter is completely damning. If he can’t comprehend the customer’s perspective in this case, we can’t trust him on the relatively trivial #paxex matters we normally talk about on here.
Glad to see this happen. This passenger behaved like an obstinate, immature child. The real problem here is passenger entitlement, not the police. Would love to see this same response by police every time some disgusting person takes their socks off and puts their feet on the bulkhead !
#UnitedNowMyFaveAirline
From a PR perspective, this is the type of statement you release when there is no video evidence. When there is video like exists here, this response is idiotic because no reasonable reader will relate to this type of message in light of the videos. He thinks he’s defending his employees, but he just comes off as tone deaf and heartless.
Just being trump style super presidential
This letter was to employees and supports them. Oscar already lost the public, but the right move on his part is to support his employees. Nothing he states here is WRONG. Maybe this isn’t being handled with the best PR (I agree with that!) but ua did everything by the books. If your flight was delayed due to the gate agents having to play lets make a deal for over two hours because no one would take an offer, your tone would change. They went up to a thousand dollars per person. The drive was four hours. Obviously people wanted to fly on this flight. But this is a horrible confluence of events, everyone showing up for the flight (which rarely happens), the crew needing to deadhead (which it seems they didn’t know about?), and then the police going crazy. Everyone seems to be thinking that United ordered goons to come in and beat this passenger… They didn’t. Like it or not, his number was pulled when they had to invol. No one handled this situation well, but to call for the ceos head because of the action of the police and the regional partner is just dumb.
All united had to do was reroute someone’s flight to another carrier and someone would have bit. Its called customer service of course the logicpig i mean cop above me has no clue of that. Talk about entitlement? Its worse off when police find a way to always justify their brethren even when they are wrong.
United acts itself like an aggressive profiting machine while customers are just a bunch of parts to make the machine keep operating. Think back about its stupid boycott towards ME3 and later the discrepancy between US electronic bad and UK version, does it ever consider being a customer-facing corporate instead of being all dirty and stuff?
At what point does the brand damage exceed the value of the brand?
Now Untied can experience how it felt for 40 year customers to have their Mileage Minus program devalued 75%.
I notice their already deep discounting flights in heavily competitive markets. With any luck they’ll go out of business as customers discover Jet Blue and Alaska treat customers great all the time.
Gary, regardless of who each of us would blame for the United Flight 3411 debacle, I think every one of us would agree, this is a horrible memo that proves what I have argued from some time, that CEO Munoz is tone-deaf and insensitive towards his customers, the very ones that keep him in his job and keep United profitable. In fact, I have long complained ever since the United/Continental Merger that the new management team, almost entirely made up of former Continental executives, is particularly tone-deaf and insensitive towards United’s customers to the point of arrogance and disdain. Munoz’s predecessor, Jeff Smisek, also a former Continental executive, was essentially fired for corruption stemming from the “Chairman’s Flight” matter attempting to influence the Port Authority, but was also loathed by United’s customers and employees for his poor treatment of both. Honestly, until the Continental executives finally leave the leadership of United, we will continue to see this appalling attitude and disdain towards customers. Munoz needs to be fired immediately and probably will be pressured to go but it may not change United corporate culture too much and that is a shame!
Okay, that’s it. Goodbye, United. I’ll turn in my United credit card tomorrow, and you won’t see me again. This really, really isn’t how you run a company.
@LogicPolice entitled? u wouldn’t feel “entitled” to your seat that you paid for and was already sitting down on? Stop being a damn sheep and think for yourself for once instead of listening to what others tell you to do.
#Unitedsucks
On NBC news with Lester Holt it was mentioned that compensation should of been $1,350 in this particular situation according to the airlines T&Cs. The letter above says $1,000 was offered so they even got that wrong.
@Jason no, Lester Holt got it wrong, compensation is 4x the fare paid by the passenger up to a maximum of $1350
What was even more frightening there was another passenger, a loud mouthed American of course, who shouted out “Good job, way to go” to the Police thugs. This situation really is the end for me.
What right has a private company (UA) got, to call the taxpayer funded Police to deal with a private matter. We all support our Police but this was outright thuggery. There is no other words for it.
As for the recalcitrant who was yelling out “good job, way to go” I hope that loudmouthed American gets ID’d and we can all see who thinks like that. I hope his elderly Dr. father never has to endure UA’s bully-boy tactics. I wonder then if the mongrel would think it was a good job and the way to go.
I hope this man, the victim in all this, who did nothing wrong, sues UA’s sorry ass and gets millions and millions. He deserves it.
What’s happened to you UA. You mongrel dogs.
My guess is he’ll be asked to resign for health reasons or fired. In the world of social media United and the GC office and outside counsel seem to lack the skills necessary to avoid damage via lawsuits and public perception.
@Ella — What SHOULD have United done in this situation. In hindsight, I would suggest : 1) not board the passengers until they were certain how many seat they needed (not always possible, especially because they were trying to get the flight out and it was already apparently late); 2) offered more compensation, although the gate agents were clearly operating under a set of rules which seem to have served the airline well over many years; or 3) tell the police to be nicer to the passenger who refused to obey their crew member instructions.
All sound great — as Monday morning quarterbacking. But the current system gets millions of passengers to their destinations without incidents of this type happening. Obviously, in the age of social media, new strategies will need to be implemented to deal with passengers who refuse to give up their seats. I’m guessing it will start with higher compensation limits for volunteers willing to give up their seats but, at the end of the day, if nobody gives up their seats and a passenger refuses to listen to police, this incident could occur on any airline.
You can obviously fly on whichever airline you want, but being holier-than-thou regarding this very weird incident isn’t right.
The stock holders need to drag Munoz out of his office.
@Gary
You are coming across as if you are on the UA payroll.
Most of the time you make sense but keep in mind you need maintain your reputation. You have seriously undermined yourself, for example, you said:
1) “but that the airline appears to have followed its own procedures” You are wrong Gary
2) “I’ve largely felt that United was doing its best under a set of bad circumstances.” You are wrong Gary
3) “my guess is that United is the least to blame here” you even made “least” in italics. You are wrong Gary
4) “Beating Up a Doctor on a United Flight Was Terrible… But Maybe Unavoidable” Unavoidable? You are wrong Gary
5) “But the real scandal here is the police response” You are wrong Gary
“@Ben Bentzin says: April 10, 2017 at 6:33 pm Gary, You have missed the mark with your analysis. United Airlines is not the victim… Instead of acting as a United Airlines apologist, how instead holding them accountable for delivering a better customer experience?”
“@Lb says: April 10, 2017 at 6:21 pm Ick. Total airline-a** kissing propaganda. You are gross and completely in-credible, in the truest sense of the word.”
“@Tom said April 10, 2017 at 4:58 pm Gary, you are a complete idiot. I’ve lost total respect for you as a human being”
“@Aj says: April 10, 2017 at 6:41 pm Stop supporting the airline industry when they are totally wrong.”
“@Ed says: April 10, 2017 at 5:37 pm Gary, You need to re-assess what you consider wrong and right. United made a series of mistakes and situation was entirely foreseeable. ”
“@seedeevee said April 10, 2017 at 5:01 pm You don’t pass the smell test, Gary Leff”
“@Goodbye says: April 10, 2017 at 5:02 pm There is a stunning lack of empathy here. To sit here in judgement of this fellow—and then invoke the spectre of state sponsored torture— reflects a callousness such that I am no longer reading this blog.”
“@Jane said April 10, 2017 at 5:40 pm Rubbish. This is such a piece of shit article. It’s completely avoidable… And as for you, Gary, you’re just a low-form paid vassal. Shame on you for condoning this corporate activity. Your moral compass needs to extreme re-calibration”
“@Kelly said April 10, 2017 at 3:50 pm “While United is being roasted for this, the horrifying story here appears to be police misconduct.” C’mon, Gary. This is like an aviation crash: it’s a series of missteps that must be taken back to the first step. Don’t blame the crash on the engines failing because the pilot forgot to check the fuel before they took off.”
“@Fred says: April 10, 2017 at 4:27 pm If you took the airline company’s cocks out of your mouth while spouting this shit you’d be clearer you fat apologist shill.”
“@Fred says: April 10, 2017 at 4:24 pm Stop apologizing for the airlines, shill.”
No Carlos — if the Chicago Aviation Police hadn’t overreacted (and one is already on suspension), brought a disproportionate response dragging the guy on the ground and bloodying him, this would not even be a story today.
United does appear to have followed its procedures in a very unfortunate situation, though we can talk about whether those ought to be revisited (most suggestions are potentially far worse). The passenger should have complied with the airline request to get up, though it absolutely sucks that he was being booted from the flight.
By the way if United hadn’t gotten that crew there it would have sucked for everyone on the morning flight.
A very tough situation all the way around — that exploded because of the police response.
This is a terrible situation – and poor handling by UA and Munoz.
The passenger should have complied with crew member instructions – that’s what you agree to when you buy a ticket, whether you understand or like the instructions. From opening the window shades for departure/landing to, yes, leaving the plane if so ordered.
BUT United DID cause this problem by maximizing their profits over customer service:
1. Why do they not BOOK a seat for their staff – it was ok to fly staff without booking when utilization was 60% – but nowadays, it’s just contributing these issues!
2. They have a contract with the passenger and should be required to make offers until somebody takes it and not just break their contract. The law makes it easy for them to do the latter, different from any other industry. How would you like it if your car dealer says: “Sorry, we need the Cadillac you ordered as a sales demo. We give you this nice Chevy Cruze – if you don’t like it, you can sue us and get some floor mats with it!”
I don’t think we’ll see more regulation to fix this anytime soon, so customers just have to make their choice with the wallet and fly different carriers! I don’t think Southwest or Alaska would have handled it this way!
@Carlos — Gary is trying to be rational and logical about this incident. You are not being rational and logical. I know it’s hard to understand, but passengers don’t have a “right” to fly when they want to. If an airline needs your seat — and UA needed this man’s seat — it has the right to remove you from the airplane and offer you compensation. Is that fair? I think it is, although I would suggest the compensation for being involuntarily denied boarding should be higher to incentivize the airlines to offer volunteers even more money. But when a police officer tells you it’s time to leave the aircraft, you leave the aircraft. You a not a hero if you make up your own rules and demand to fly. It would appear that the police officer may not have followed proper procedures in removing the passenger, but is United to blame for this? Should it get the right to supervise the hiring and management of Chicago police officers?
While there is clearly faults on all sides here, that letter is incredibly insensitive.
@Rupert this is NOT a case of United trying to maximize profits, they were trying to recover from a bad situation while causing the least damage to the least number of people, they didn’t expect to have to send extra crew to Louisville and if they didn’t more passengers’ important travel plans would have been ruined.
I think that United could have found another flight for their staff on a competing airline for less than the max. offer, or they could make a quick decision to offer higher compensation. The way this was handled is disgusting and will alienate many future travelers from choosing UAL.
I reject the argument that United was simply following its own rules or some federal rules (that United’s and other airlines’ lobbyists helped write). Change the rules so that compensation can be higher and make the compensation in cash. Problem solved.
Looks like United PR department has mobilized into the Comments sections of news and blogs to try to put a bootlick’s shine on their shit storm. Sorry, you’re out of business United – with the worst PR disaster in American history, costlier than the value of your airline. This is the hottest item on every major media outlet in the world right now, and your handling of it has only made it worse.
To the Trumpian authoritarian bootlicks: We don’t have any history here with dictators, so while a third of the US might be stupid enough to believe fake news and elect the worst President in world history (twice), telling us to line up to kiss the corporate ring is about the same as telling us to never fly United again. Not even a nice try. Ad disoriented man was terrorized, brutalized and ran trying to find a place to hide to get home from jackboot troopers who today have shown the world how ugly corporate law enforcement can be if you don’t follow their mindless rules which would be criminal in any sane society.
@iahphx @Gary
The rational and logical situation is:
The issue is the IT scheduling department screwed up for whatever reason and these four people needed to be somewhere. That is the issue. Period. Nothing else. It is the IT dept that should have figured out options to solve that issue. There are many things they could have done as others have suggested. They should have solved their own problem and not kicked the can down the hall. That is what “exploded” not everything thereafter. If the IT dept can’t do their job, fire them. UA is the MOST to blame here, not the least to blame. Focus on that. Admit that is where it started. (Then there is blame on the person who manhandled the passenger. Then there is blame on the passenger. But these two are later and would never have happened if the first was handled correctly.)
The fact is the passenger did nothing wrong as the passenger legally purchased a ticket with money, got boarding pass, was scanned at gate and boarded flight like everyone else. Passenger did nothing wrong. There was no denied boarding. There was no involuntary denied boarding. Period. Passenger did nothing wrong. Yes I agree the passenger should have followed instructions but that is not the issue because that came later. It “exploded” because UA IT screwed up. That came first. Focus on that.
Everything else y’all have talked about (removing someone from the plane, IDB, etc.) is the aftermath of a bad situation but you have lost the focus on the issue and the fact mentioned above.
There is a quote from another reader, something like if I was sitting in a restaurant and you ejected me because someone else wanted to sit there, or if I was asleep in my hotel room, you would break the door down and pull me out of bed at 3AM because someone else needed a bed, and many other examples I am sure you can come up with. Focus on the issue.
Absolutely disgraceful. United, their airport employees and the officers that removed this passenger acted 100% inappropriately. They should have found another way to get their 4 employees to Louisville without inconveniencing paid passengers. This man was a doctor who needed to see patients the next morning so why should he be forced to deplane? If people didn’t accept the $800 they were offering they should have increased the amount to $1300 or whatever it would take to get 4 people to agree to deplane. Shame on Oscar Munoz for running such an incompetent airline. I was on the verge of booking 5 employees from LAX to ORD for a trade show next month and out of protest for that mans treatment we will not book on United.
Blame breakdown:
75% United: they made this mess, it’s their brand
10% Chicago Aviation Police: thuggery
10% Gary: for being tone-deaf himself, and increasingly out of touch by defending United, even on a technicality
5% United Express/Republic – why wasn’t it known earlier they had 4 crew who HAD to be on that flight.
Leaving aside the matter as to whether the pax should have meekly complied and deplaned, the response of Munez to his ‘Team’ was entirely inappropriate, and nowhere near adequate. No matter that he probably didn’t write it himself, he plainly thought it OK to sign off and authorize distribution.
He is paid mega-bucks for his work, and a less blinkered response to an outrageous situation that got entirely out of hand would be expected, to start making amends. He should be seriously considering his position. Way not good enough!
I will never use united again , and I travel 70 days out of the year.. I MEAN NEVER
Sack all those involved in this incident and compensate the passenger who was assaulted for no reason.
You defend United/Republic Airlines when it is very clear that standard operational procedures were not followed. Republic Airlines knew for at least a week that these 4 crew members needed to be on this flight. The gate agents worked the flight incorrectly. Before boarding, the situation should have been addressed. For United and dumbass Munoz to be making all kinds of false statements and trying to cover up what happened is beyond disgusting!
I’m not someone that comments a lot, but I think you should take a step back in your posts regarding this happening…
Gary says: “@Rupert this is NOT a case of United trying to maximize profits, they were trying to recover from a bad situation while causing the least damage to the least number of people, they didn’t expect to have to send extra crew to Louisville and if they didn’t more passengers’ important travel plans would have been ruined.”
So get the crew a rental car, or have a driver drive them while they rest. So many alternatives. But no, they decide to remove ticketed and boarded passengers. For what? UA’s convenience, obviously. I can’t believe you think that’s OK.
Time for Munoz to go. Completely incompetent. Can they figure out that the awful publicity from their mishandling of this, not to mention a likely lawsuit, will cost them thousands of times what it would have to offer sufficient compensation to get volunteers? The leggings incident was embarrassing, but harmless in the end. This one is catastrophic.
If I bomb a building just because I was “following my own rules” is that fine?
@ Gary: United may have been legally wrong. Note that per 14 C.F.R. 250.2a, “In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily”.
Assuming this applies, it could mean that a paid passenger takes precedence over crew members flying to work another flight.
Credit: commenter NegativeFeedback on TPG
UA simply chose to force a customer (who paid for his ticket in full at time of booking) out of his seat because they made the decision that it was more important for one of four of their employees to be in Louisville. Showed absolutely no care for the rights of this customer and when he stood up for their “company policy” he was forcibly removed. This is not right at so many levels. Everyone can sit here and say, “well that’s UA company policy and they were following it”. This is BS and weak excuse. Don’t sell a product, take the money and then force the product out of someone’s hands because another employee needed that product.
UA CEO’s statement and this email is pathetic. Be a leader and assume some responsibility for how one of your paying customers was treated and physically forced out of their seat just because you had to place an employee in that seat. It wasn’t the customers fault that UA screwed up its crew scheduling. UA is in the business and I’m sure they could’ve found a solution for this without using force to remove a 60-year old paying passenger.
Are you effing kidding me Gary? United wasn’t trying to maximize profits here? I don’t know who’s more clueless and tone-deaf, you or Oscar. If they didn’t just care about profit, why wouldn’t they offer more compensation? Airline passengers’ time is valuable. No one bit at $800, but offer $1500 and the conversation changes. For $1500 I’m calling a colleague and asking if I can get coverage for tomorrow. Of course everyone’s threshold is different, but UA thought they could get out of this on the cheap. Clearly you can get Oscar would’ve the GAs offered up $2k each rather than the millions they’re going to have to settle for now.
I used to respect Munoz. Clearly he is protégé of Smisek and has drowned in his own ignorance of what’s important – the customer. I hope people vote with their wallets by avoiding United.
Scott Kirby is sitting back rubbing his hands waiting in the wings… This is why he went to UA. Kirby is very street smart.
UA had no service recovery plan at the gate and they have none now. Pitiful.
To Miguel’s point, UA deplaned PAX with confirmed reservations for staff flying standby for positioning. This could, indeed, be contrary to the contract of carriage. However, we have allowed the airlines to legalese us into a no-win position. They hold all of the cards. I say, call their bluff!
#re-accommodatemunoz!
Gary, you said the passenger should’ve complied with crew and police – I agree with that, but you are completely taking out the human element here, which many United apologists have as well.
Try to imagine YOURSELF having to make it to your destination the next morning for an important business meeting that will decide the fate of your company, or attending your loving father’s funeral, or needing to be at the surgical table for a crucial heart transplant for a patient. I don’t think you would have just packed up your bags and left the plane. Sure, in hindsight we can say oh a rental car is an option, but during the heated situation, the majority of people will not have a clear and rational mind to think about alternatives.