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A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

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Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#71

Post by lavezzi »

stagger87 wrote: post #16
douche wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little that airlines do appears logical, looking from the outside in. Especially United. I've never had so much as a mediocre experience flying with them - it's always been notably terrible.

What exactly makes the experience terrible? Are you exaggerating? There is nothing to it, you buy your ticket, and sit in a seat. It's the same boring routine.

On United you can get bumped from Economy if there's a high status flyer who needs your seat. I think United takes the crown with being shitty to general passengers.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#72

Post by ghaff »

rhino369 wrote: post #8

The outrage mob is pushing this pretty hard. Booting people off a plane is pretty shitty behavior for an airline. It's bad customer service and they should dealt with it earlier than after boarding. But if they have to do it, the passenger shouldn't be allowed to just refuse. This guy did. And he had to get dragged off the plane. I don't really see an alternative other than just letting anyone willing to scream to st…

They should have dealt with it earlier if possible. (I assume operations told them they needed to transport a flight crew after the airline was already boarded.) Given that they didn't, someone should have had the authority to offer enough compensation to get someone to voluntarily deplane. I have trouble believing that if they offered $3K or whatever, they wouldn't have been able to find another volunteer or two.

That said, refusing to follow the instructions of a flight crew and creating a scene is not going to end well for you however convinced you are in the righteousness of your position. (I have been bumped off a flight after I was onboard and sitting down. It was years ago and I don't remember what the exact circumstances were if I ever knew.)

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#73

Post by jessaustin »

panzagl wrote: post #45
bello wrote: post #21

They messed up and overbooked the flight, sure. But why on earth would they forcefully drag people out of the plane, while they could just find volunteers? They could offer cash/miles to whoever volunteered, increasing the offer until someone accepted. I've seen other airlines do this on several occasions. They couldn't have handled it worse than they did.

They did, they went up to $800 and nobody volunteered. They were too cheap to offer any more.

This is the problem here. If they would have offered $5000 they would have had four seats immediately. They're going to pay a lot more than $20,000 for this disaster.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#74

Post by strictnein »

jessaustin wrote: post #55
namlem wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it might be grounds for a suit against the police.

The passenger was attacked by a random big dude in blue jeans. Sure there were uniforms looking on with approval, but this guy looked like a baggage handler not police?

Sky marshal? Doubt some random just decided to drag someone off a plane.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#75

Post by inputcoffee »

rhino369 wrote: post #8

The outrage mob is pushing this pretty hard. Booting people off a plane is pretty shitty behavior for an airline. It's bad customer service and they should dealt with it earlier than after boarding. But if they have to do it, the passenger shouldn't be allowed to just refuse. This guy did. And he had to get dragged off the plane. I don't really see an alternative other than just letting anyone willing to scream to st…

I think physical violence is qualitatively different.

Consider: suppose a kid lays across your driveway and refuses to budge. Are you allowed to drive over the kid? After all, if everyone starts doing this, you will lose your job and can't feed your own family, right?

Well, no. You have to figure out a way. Take a deep breath and call their parents, get an Uber or whatever it takes.

The situation would be different if a random person was just asking you not to go. In that case, you could ignore them.

Because physical violence is different.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#76

Post by ssharp »

rhino369 wrote: post #8

The outrage mob is pushing this pretty hard. Booting people off a plane is pretty shitty behavior for an airline. It's bad customer service and they should dealt with it earlier than after boarding. But if they have to do it, the passenger shouldn't be allowed to just refuse. This guy did. And he had to get dragged off the plane. I don't really see an alternative other than just letting anyone willing to scream to st…

This shines a light on what is, most likely, a policy that is not in the interest of passengers.

In my experience, the airlines offer a decent incentive for taking a bump and they do this before boarding. I know delays have been crazy the past few days, so maybe people who were already delayed didn't want to wait any longer?

I wonder what kind of incentives were offered? You'd hope United would offer enough to get someone to volunteer, especially in cases like this that are so late into the boarding process. Why not just get a United official on the plane to start raising incentives until the $ amount makes someone bite.

Terms and conditions of the contract may be legal but it could very well result in incidents like this.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#77

Post by username223 »

What really gets me is the PR flack smirking and waving his middle finger:

> [Charlie] Hobart said in the statement. "We apologize for the overbook situation."

In other words, "sorry about selling more seats than there were on the plane, but yeah, we had that guy beaten and dragged off. Deal with it."

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#79

Post by draw_down »

rhino369 wrote: post #8

The outrage mob is pushing this pretty hard. Booting people off a plane is pretty shitty behavior for an airline. It's bad customer service and they should dealt with it earlier than after boarding. But if they have to do it, the passenger shouldn't be allowed to just refuse. This guy did. And he had to get dragged off the plane. I don't really see an alternative other than just letting anyone willing to scream to st…

It is wholly unsurprising to me that people are willing to be apologists for this. It's always "outrage culture", it's always clickbait, it can't ever be that these people really are pieces of shit. But still disappointing.

Re: A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off

#80

Post by btian »

bello wrote: post #21

They messed up and overbooked the flight, sure. But why on earth would they forcefully drag people out of the plane, while they could just find volunteers? They could offer cash/miles to whoever volunteered, increasing the offer until someone accepted. I've seen other airlines do this on several occasions. They couldn't have handled it worse than they did.

They made offers -

1) $400

2) $800

3 and final) Leave the airplane or we'll beat the shit out of you.

Glad I made the decision to not fly United 4 years ago.

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