Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

291–300 of 549 posts

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

#291
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…

You should read "Debt the First 5,000 Years". It's an amazing book, and one of the things the author talks about is how debt requires violence.

You can't put a man into debt unless you have the capacity for violence to enforce it. He doesn't pay you back, you break his legs, or take his sons and daughters as slaves. Today we have reduced the violence. Now companies ruin credit, get a Sheriff to evict someone from a house foreclosure, harass you with phone calls .. it's a less violence but it's still a form of it.

This violence is also the origin of money (and debt). A conqueror takes a country. That leader needs to pay his army (they are expensive). So you take the area you took and they can only pay taxes with coins; your coins specifically. Only soldiers have those coins, so you leave a garrison that gets paid from the debt you put the people in.

Before the US destroyed Libya, it had the highest GDP in Africa and no debt to the WMF. Today, the "rebels" the US imported are now in debt to the WMF and the people no longer have free electricity or education.

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

#292
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if he had the right to his seat, then why should he leave?

Once the cops show up and tell him to? Because the cops told him to , that's why. Note well: I am not saying that the cops are always right. I am not saying that we should all be good little citizens and obey whatever the authority figures tell us to do. I am saying that, in the actual world we live in, disobeying police orders will often involve painful physical consequences, almost immediately. You can argue about…

> I am not saying that we should all be good little citizens and obey whatever the authority figures tell us to do. I am saying that, in the actual world we live in, disobeying police orders will often involve painful physical consequences, almost immediately.

> Because the cops told him to, that's why.

"I am not saying obey authority figures whenever they tell us to do something. Even though I said in the previous sentence, 'because the cops told him to, that's why'."

Your note completely and utterly contradicts your previous statement. There is no way to reconcile them.

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the mistake was United's. But the passenger also acted unreasonably. If you act like a two-year-old - even in a situation that, initially, totally isn't your fault - then you may get treated like a two-year-old. And if you act like a two-year-old after the cops start telling you to leave, they're typically going to make you leave - using whatever level of force is required to do so. So, yes, the initial fault i…

but still, in the face of a passenger trespassing, you call cops and have it removed, not a burly man and have him beaten.

They could have gotten someone who looked more like a cop to do the beating, but that would be the only difference. Cops are often poorly trained, out of practice, and in bad health. It's easiest for them to fall back on beating you with whatever tools they have available until they are satisfied that you will comply (or that the question of compliance is no longer relevant.)

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

#294
post #255

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.

A ticket is just a deal between you and the airline. At any point the airline can decide it's not going to uphold that deal.

Sure, you can try to go to the courts to get monetary compensation for that, but you can't force them to provide the service.

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

#295
post #130
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…

So what do you do when someone refuses to leave? I'm on the doctor's side, United should not overbook a plane and bump a customer to get their own people on board, but when someone refuses to leave what other options do you have? Taze him and drag him off? You'll have to use force to remove someone.

Like the GP said : this was a logistical problem. They needed to get 4 employees from point A to point B 300 miles away. There are several ways of tackling this challenge :

1. continue escalating their shitty voucher bribes : sooner or later someone's gonna bite

2. arrange alternate air transport for the crew : they're already in an airport, and 2 of their competitors (American, Southwest) have multiple direct flights between Chicago and Louisville each day

3. arrange ground transport : otherwise known as renting a car and driving. Not super fun, but I've had ironically had United pull that shit on me from NYC to DC - i.e. they cancelled a flight and put us on an overnight coach bus. If it's good enough for customers, it's good enough for the crew.

4. suck it up and delay whatever flight that crew was scheduled for. It sucks, but it was their mistake to overbook and this isn't a safety-critical situation.

Bottom line, there are about 951 different ways to tackle this problem and they chose the absolutely worst one out of the bunch. That kind of stupidity is legitimately impressive to behold.

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

#296
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.

There are some airlines that do not set out to oversell/overbook flights - JetBlue, for example. Even in a situation where a flight is only sold to capacity, there can be various reasons for people to be IDBed. Damaged seats, Equipment Changes (A321 -> A320 for example), etc.

At some point, every US carrier has has or will have to IDB people, and they all have a policy that gives them as much leeway as possible under federal regulations to do so.

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

#297
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just released this non-statement: https://twitter.com/united/status/851471781827420160

"So sorry we had to reaccommodate your forehead by concussing it against an armrest"

If I'm understanding correctly it was not United that did this but the police officer. The airline doesn't control the officer.

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

#298
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but then there is a prescribed compensation that everyone involuntarily denied boarding (IDB) is entitled. The vouchers is an attempt to avoid this IDB by getting someone to voluntarily fly later.

Plus, I am not a lawyer, but I think IDB means just that -- boarding. Once you board the airline cannot change its mind, not for commercial reasons (although it might be able to weasel out of that by getting everyone off and re-boarding without some people). Again, take with a grain of salt; this is just what I heard.

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Last minute logistical changes based on timetables, planes, weather, etc. The reason why I guessed this is because my brother is a pilot.

That's not overbooking then, do the same rules apply?

Whether or not they do, the airline is still able to remove any customer and offer customers money to volunteer to be bumped.

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

#300

Sure it was a dumb/unethical thing to do on behalf of the airline and should have been handled differently etc. I'm wondering why nobody is commenting on the absurd behavior of the passenger however - insisting on forcing police to physically drag him from the plane. Once it was decided and the guys in uniforms with guns show up, what sane person is honestly going to do that? The decision to remove the passenger we c…

If the doc ain't with his patients the next day, maybe he figured he'd at least make it as expensive for UA as possible.
Post reply on HN