Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

resistancereport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 274 posts

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#51

Post by DamnYuppie »

tdb7893 wrote: post #9
SteveNuts wrote: post #2

Airlines are the worst.

What most people (and the news) don't seem to realise is that airlines are the worst because of market forces. There is very little brand loyalty in general for airlines so small changes in prices have a large difference and they've found the there just isn't a large market for a better airline with significantly higher cost.

For recreational travelers I am inclined to agree with you. Yet for business travels, which are the backbone of most airlines, they are very brand loyal. They will contort their schedule and deaden their pain threshold to no ends to fly their preferred airline. Also price isn't a key driving decision for them, if one airline is $100 less on a given flight but the more expensive flight is still "in policy" they will go with the more expense flight on their preferred carrier.

I am a weekly business travel as are all my peers so this is purely my observations from 15+ years of frequent business travel.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#52

Post by arkis22 »

openmosix wrote: post #14
arkis22 wrote: post #10

Rough. I can see where he's coming from though. This was a private email to employees, and in that context he definitely needs to be a cheerleader for them. Overbookings are industry standard, and they called security for someone who wouldn't leave. "Correct" protocol. I think what most likely happened is the security guard that has been placed on leave did his job very poorly. As soon as he hit the passenger his cow…

If you are the CEO of a public company, you know anything you write at all@ is, most likely, public record. "They were just following protocol" is the new "Befehl ist Befehl" - also known as Nurember defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders The fact that a defenceless man has left a plane covered in blood should give everyone pause. They followed orders is a very poor response.

My comment was not meant to suggest that what happened was right.

My comment was meant to suggest that anger at the CEO for supporting his employees, who only called security, and didn't beat the guy up themselves, is misplaced. UA screwed up, but the email wasn't what went wrong.

The UA employees followed protocol by calling security. Protocols are generally in place for a reason, and they can be reworked. I don't think comparing overbooking to German soldiers entering a plea against war crimes is a good analogy.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#53

Post by cm2187 »

scosman wrote: post #44
cube00 wrote: post #4

If they had just increased the compensation passengers would have voluntarily given up their seat, everyone has their price. It didn't even need to be money, free flights, upgrades, it costs them next to nothing, especially when you consider this is still running in the media days later. Everyone hates to hear they overbook flights so you'd think when they get bitten United would take some of the savings made overboo…

Exactly! United overbooked as an optimization for profits, fine. However, they should have to pay up when it backfires. They gave up at $800 and just started forcing people off. If it's free market when I'm buying my ticket, it should be free market for United buying it back.

It's even worse than that. They were disembarking passengers to make room for their own staff who were not even planned on this trip.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#55

Post by tyingq »

antisthenes wrote: post #49
tyingq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jimmy Kimmel pointed out the main reason why they get away with this. “The next time we book a flight, it doesn’t matter if it’s United or Delta or American, if one of those flights is a dollar less than the other one, that’s the one we’ll pick. They know this. That’s why we’re stuck with them.” I don't understand the dynamics of how it ended up this way. Air travel used to be a luxury, and had fairly high margins. T…

Isn't that what most of HN is so frantically behind? Free markets at work, deregulated to the point of making little to no economic profit, no consumer protections, and what you call a "race to the bottom" is actually what occurs under perfectly competitive markets. Thinking you can have the good parts of competition without the bad parts and being surprised when something happens according to basic economic theory i…

>Thinking you can have the good parts of competition without the bad parts

Er, okay. There are other products and services with heavy competition that aren't a terrible experience. There's more going on here than just generic capitalism.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#56

Post by oe »

_wmd wrote: post #11

I think the video of this incident is frankly disgusting, but it's not clear without more context why the situation escalated to the degree it did. For example, UA fly another plane 3 hours 20 minutes later to the same destination (which is to say, a very reasonable and perfectly expectable delay in any situation involving air travel), why did the doc need to be on exactly that plane, and why did the UA staff also ha…

I don't think most of the criticism on the case is about whether it was legal or not. Judgement is relatively easy as anyone can come up with ways how this could have been avoided. For example offering more money and maybe to anyone else than the doctor who needed to be on the plane. If the flight crew was not able to offer more money for the bump that's still United policy's fault. I don't think the points matter in this case :)

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#57

Post by protomyth »

Can someone explain how this was an "oversales" situation since the plane was actually fully booked and not over sold, and with that how United's action didn't violate the law.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-250

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?packageI...

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#58

Post by benji-york »

I honestly don't understand the outrage. A person was legally required to do something he didn't want to do, he refused to relent and escalated the situation. The passenger is the only person I see as having done anything wrong here.

I don't claim that there aren't better ways to handle the situation, but I also don't see any wrongdoing in how this shook out.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#59

Post by askafriend »

cube00 wrote: post #4

If they had just increased the compensation passengers would have voluntarily given up their seat, everyone has their price. It didn't even need to be money, free flights, upgrades, it costs them next to nothing, especially when you consider this is still running in the media days later. Everyone hates to hear they overbook flights so you'd think when they get bitten United would take some of the savings made overboo…

Apparently someone on the plane offered to give up their seat for $1600 and the manager laughed in their face.

Here's an account from someone who was actually on that plane: https://twitter.com/flsurfr/status/851556475013038080

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#60

Post by valuearb »

tyingq wrote: post #43
cortesoft wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative to commercial airlines for someone who isn't crazy rich?

High speed rail would kill off a lot of shorter routes, but it just doesn't work in the US for some reason. When I was in the UK, I took the Virgin Rail from London to Manchester. The additional room and ability to walk around made it so much better than a flight. I would have paid more. The time difference was negligible once you count all the extra screening time for airports.

It doesn't work because it's crazy expensive to build tracks, and not cost effective unless you have massive density.

Airlines are better, not just because planes are faster, but because of flexibility. You can find a space somewhere and build a new airport, or add a new runway to an existing airport and use less than one thousandth the land the rail line will require. The planes you fly to one destination can suddenly be switched to fly to almost any another destination, in a day.

Yea, the comfort of trains is better, but thats about it.

Post reply on HN