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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

#261

Post by MattSteelblade »

mcv wrote: post #255
MrMember wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the circumstances (he wasn't a danger to anyone or acting out in any unreasonable way) the better choice probably would have been to just leave him be. He may not have had a legal "right" to be on the plane and United may have been within their rights to remove him but it can't have been worth the image hit to have him strongarmed off the plane. If they had given up on removing him and just picked someone el…

Did he not have a legal right? I thought the only reason they removed him was because the plane was overbooked and they wanted the seat for their own employees. Sounds like he had a valid ticket and every right to be on that plane. The airline should not have overbooked, and discovering that they had, they should have put their own employee on the next plane. Treating paying customers like this is inexcusable.

Airlines are legally allowed to overbook. It's an established practice.

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

#262

Post by rbritton »

lightbyte wrote: post #174
Flammy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They messed up and overbooked the flight, sure. To be clear, every flight is overbooked. The airlines have run the numbers, and it is clearly more profitable to sell (for example) 105% of the plane, and then if more than 100% show up, pay people off to take a different flight.

That's a horrible reason in my opinion. What other industry could get away with doing this? If someone sold 105% capacity for a concert or sports game and just told the last 5% who arrived "sorry, no more room" people would be extremely upset.

Hotels do it routinely. I've personally been moved to another hotel because we arrived later than enough of the checkins before us.

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

#263

Post by crooked-v »

ksrm wrote: post #250
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reverse auction. Ok, we're offering $10,000 to anyone who gets off. I see twenty hands and we only need four. How about $8,000, ok, down to 19 hands. 10 minutes later, and they probably would have ended up paying LESS than $800/seat.

What is to stop the four "winners" of this auction demanding more money? (Apart from the threat of assault of course!)

"Hey, so, these four are being jerks, so we're starting over again, but they're not allowed to participate."

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

#264

Post by [deleted] »

douche wrote: post #176
raverbashing wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't even need to offer more money. Offer $1000 and two free return tickets to anywhere in the US, or miles. I find it hard to believe no one volunteered, even for a small amount, unless they were already delayed

When they do this, it's usually a shittier offer than it sounds. They're not offering cash, but value in tickets, which has an expiration a short time in the future, and can only be applied to certain flights. It'd be interesting to see statistics on how often these offers are even redeemed.

[deleted]

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

#265

Post by threatofrain »

inputcoffee wrote: post #169
vwcx wrote: post #101

The real thing to fear here is the normalization of violence. Good perspective in the WP comments: "The truly shocking thing here is that violence - with the real possibility of serious injury - was viewed as appropriate in a situation that was purely logistical. The airline wanted seats for its own employees. This was not an emergency - such as a terrorist attack or a drunk passenger endangering people. The lack of…

I agree. I will point out that it is not United that "chose" violence. They asked the police to intervene. The state is supposed to have a monopoly on physical force, so they did. Now, for the police, violence has always been normal, or normalized. Consider the appropriate responses: 1. An airline should not call in the police when dealing with customers because they can reasonably expect violence. 2. The police shou…

Violence will always underlie government, law, courts, and police. Nations can do research on de-escalation or non-violent interventions, but what happens when a nice method doesn't work? Violence comes next.

The objection here is that violence wasn't sufficiently gated, and nor was violence minimally applied -- the airline could've just paid people to get off with a real offer, and not a dishonest offer where people suspect they're going to get tricked by funny coupons and vouchers.

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

#266

Post by colmvp »

ArtDev wrote: post #65

I hope he sues the pants off them. There is a racist angle here too. Why target the Chinese guy?

Oh, I don't think there's a racist angle to it since it was random selection, but I will say that if by chance the guy who had been forcibly removed was black or Muslim instead of Chinese, and the physical force was the same as what occurred here, you can easily imagine the national outrage would be even greater.

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

#267

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

ErikAugust wrote: post #217
dboreham wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that airline crew have infinite powers on their own planes (well...nearly). They can actually thrown someone off a plane on a whim. Source: I saw this happen last year.

Right, you can "throw" people off a plane. But if you do so in a manner that is totally illegal, you have still broken a law in doing so. That would be my point.

But the point is the pilots have legal authority to throw people off the plane. Therefore it is tautologically legal.

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

#268

Post by acchow »

mtgx wrote: post #108
treehau5 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other problem is what society views as ethical or moral is now subjective to each on a variety of different factors in this post post-modern society. There was once puritanical values, however despised they are by certain factions, which unified the "ethos" of the nation on what is and is not ethical. The civil rights movement came along and augmented that ethos for the better. Now we have groups who place abando…

Airlines shouldn't be allowed to overbook. Causing people to miss their flights just because the company wanted to ensure 100% profitability per flight is unacceptable, and it shouldn't be legal (the overbooking, not the throwing off a plane for whatever other serious reason per se).

They'd have probably staying profitable if they couldn't overbook. Overbook it, sure, but offer escalating incentives to get people to voluntarily disembark. Physical removal is ridiculous and should be removed from the carrier's legal rights.

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

#269

Post by tedmiston »

scott_usa wrote: post #239
_red wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of points: 1. You are correct that is what they CoC states, however its not like this is really a free market (ie. the customer didn't really have a choice but to accept those terms). United, and all commercial airlines, effectively have a monopoly license. So, it wasn't really a free and open market that produced those CoC terms. 2. As sign of the "bad faith" of United's contract, the reverse situation is n…

Well said. I'd be curious to hear if there is a major airline that does not have the IDB policy.

I would be extremely surprised as not having one is all downside to them.
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