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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

#401

Post by jessaustin »

dvcc wrote: post #397
maxerickson wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the thing people actually shop on is price.

Well, differentiating airlines is hard. To me, a for the most part non-traveler, they all offer pretty much the same product, quality-wise. Unless I was to up my ticket to some other class, every coach ticket is pretty much the same. So what am I supposed to differentiate on other than price?

Well, differentiating airlines is hard.

In future one might consider, "how likely are they to violently drag me off a plane?"

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

#402

Post by tedmiston »

AngeloAnolin wrote: post #399
tedmiston wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part of the CoC I read this morning (linked in another comment), after making the above comment, sounds like the rules for removing a passenger are independent of boarding.

Maybe you were referring to this: 2. Boarding Priorities - If a flight is Oversold, no one may be denied boarding against his/her will until UA or other carrier personnel first ask for volunteers who will give up their reservations WILLINGLY in exchange for compensation as determined by UA. If there are not enough volunteers, other Passengers may be denied boarding involuntarily in accordance with UA’s boarding prior…

The section I was referring to for removing a passenger independent of boarding is #21 - Refusal of Transport.

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

#403

Post by jessaustin »

mastax wrote: post #121
xapata wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever decided to force the guy off the plane is an idiot. They could have simply raised the comp for volunteering slowly until someone took the money.

According to Reddit hearsay they offered increasing amounts up to $800 but no one budged. One passenger offered to leave for $1500 and the crew laughed. I'm assuming there's corporate policy that puts a maximum cap on compensation.

...the crew laughed.

I guess we should film everything while traveling. Editing the laughter together with the dragging and screaming would be golden...

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

#404

Post by jessaustin »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #242
ErikAugust wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure assault and battery is not legal.

Well if the contract and the law says they can involuntarily remove passengers from the plane, then it is necessarily legally permissable for United to assault/battery their passengers. Whether or not that is morally the right thing to do, or whether that is a wise business move in this case is a separate question (probably answer is no). Hypothetically they could legally shoot their customers if battery was not enou…

Illegal things don't become legal just because they're in a contract. Otherwise, people who can't pay credit card debt would be under the whip in work camps.

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

#405

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#406

Post by zeveb »

SamBam wrote: post #186
zeveb wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With that said, don't drag people off your flights. No matter what it costs you to get staff where they need to be when you make this mistake, it'll be cheaper than the negative publicity of a physical altercation removing a passenger (even if you need to retask a commuter aircraft just to relocate the crew, or ask another carrier to get them there). Of course, that just gives a hecker's veto to anyone insubordinat…

No, what they should have done is exactly what other airlines do when they are overbooked: keep raising the voucher amount until someone volunteers to get off. And if you can't find someone to get off at a price that seems appropriate (which is very unlikely: you're always going to find someone willing to take $1000), work out other arrangements. The moment you've escalated to "we've selected people at random, and we…

> And if you can't find someone to get off at a price that seems appropriate (which is very unlikely: you're always going to find someone willing to take $1000), work out other arrangements.

I think that randomly selecting passengers is the 'other arrangements' their policy works out.

I agree that they should have increased vouchers past $800, but I disagree that it's guaranteed that there would be enough takers at e.g. $1,000 per, or even $2,000 per.

And I'm shocked at the downvotes: flight crew instructions have the force of Federal law; people who violate Federal law get arrested. The biggest mistake United made here was allowing there to be a disturbance in the first place, which caused a PR disaster. 'Man arrested on landing for refusing to leave plane' is a much better PR situation than 'man dragged bodily from plane.' Granted, 'United pays record-setting $100,000 in vouchers to convince four passengers to give up seats' is probably better PR still.

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

#407

Post by roninb »

blawson wrote: post #372
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The police in the US are trained to de-escalate situations too. Sure, but practically speaking if you have a realistic understanding of how most US police forces operate, you know that involving them in any kind of dispute greatly increases the chance of violence and harm for all involved. YMMV per locality and situation, but it's a pretty sensible rule of thumb that police involvement equals increased risk of viole…

That's probably because there is a not-unreasonable expectation that the situations the police are called out for will involve deadly weapons. Obviously not the case here, but in general, when anyone could realistically be carrying a gun, I don't think the current situation is a big surprise.

Right... because a doctor on a plane in the US has some semblance of a chance of carrying a deadly weapon...

This is kinda the point of OP, police violence has become so common-place that we take it as normal happenstance when it's used. There's an air of expected guilt for anyone on the receiving side of the violence but no doubt whatsoever on whether the violence was necessary in the first place.

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

#408

Post by dvcc »

jessaustin wrote: post #401
dvcc wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, differentiating airlines is hard. To me, a for the most part non-traveler, they all offer pretty much the same product, quality-wise. Unless I was to up my ticket to some other class, every coach ticket is pretty much the same. So what am I supposed to differentiate on other than price?

Well, differentiating airlines is hard. In future one might consider, "how likely are they to violently drag me off a plane?"

I'll be sure to select the non-violent checkbox on Google Flights, despite the need to save the $4.50 round-trip.

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

#409

Post by dvcc »

maxerickson wrote: post #400
dvcc wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, differentiating airlines is hard. To me, a for the most part non-traveler, they all offer pretty much the same product, quality-wise. Unless I was to up my ticket to some other class, every coach ticket is pretty much the same. So what am I supposed to differentiate on other than price?

Sure, but part of the point is that it isn't an accident. Airlines are paying attention to what people respond to so instead of going out of their way to compete on quality or whatever other factors, they compete on price.

I understand, but I don't think we can put the blame on the consumer alone. When all pretty-much compete on price alone, we can only compare on price alone.

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

#410

Post by jessaustin »

problems wrote: post #385
mthoms wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. You're spreading very outdated information. Airlines are currently making record profits: "2017 is expected to be the eighth year in a row of aggregate airline profitability" "These three years are the best performance in the industry’s history" From: http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-12-08-01.aspx

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that more because air traffic is up rather than their margins having gone up? Maybe oil prices of the day play a role too... but I wouldn't count on that to be true for long. Even in this report though, you'll note that the fares are down 63% since 1995 - the competition is pretty fierce here. The absolute profit is only around measured 5% even today. I wouldn't exactly call that a…

The absolute profit is only around measured 5% even today. I wouldn't exactly call that a great margin.

You would if you were a grocer. Deregulated airlines have low margins; that's a fact of life. They pay fuel bills, they pay interest, the executives steal what they can, and the unions take everything else. When they miscalculate and pay the unions so much they can't cover their bonds, they reorganize through bankruptcy.

None of this is new, and none of this justifies racist violence.

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