Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by soVeryTired » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #178

soVeryTired wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't compare this to the civil rights movement. Police brutality is not a good thing, but the injustices that started that movement were orders of magnitude greater.

Have you been paying attention to how muslims (including US citizens) are being treated on planes and in airports? What about the security apparatus that underpins the no fly list and is feeding this comment into your "is this a terrorist" machine learning profile? What about the idea that corporations (like private prisons) sometimes have the right to completely ignore due process? Please stop acting like everything…

This isn't a case of a man being refused the right to fly because he is muslim. The guy was chosen at random. There are plenty of recent incidents that could reasonably be compared to rosa parks refusing to move from the front of the bus, but this isn't one of them.

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

#192

Post by cmurf » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:26 PM UTC

scurvy wrote: post #125

ropiku wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United should've planned ahead for their staff to get to where they need without forcing somebody off the plane. They already knew how many tickets were sold, how many checked in and how many boarded (they were already on the plane).

People get sick. Stuff happens. Every airline does this. It sucks, but if you think your distributed system in the cloud is complicated, running an airline every day would blow your mind.

Nope. They needed to have their house in order before boarding. They have the contractual right to deny boarding for overbooking, but this was not strictly an overbooking. They wanted to replace paying customers with non-paying non-customer crew, i.e. not overbooked. But even if you word smith this into overbooking, once the plane is boarded, the contract has a list of reasons for removing a passenger and not a single one of those reasons applies to this case.

The airline needed to raise the compensation price until someone volunteered, and if still no one volunteered, then tough noogies. They still do not get to shift from a civilized situation to a violent one by dragging state police power into what is strictly a monetary dispute.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

mavelikara wrote: post #82

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…

I believe this is capped at a maximum of $1300. From [1]: If it’s more than two hours (four hours for international flights), or if the airline does not offer alternate flights, the compensation is 400 percent of your one-way fare, with a $1300 maximum. [1] http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2014-09-04/bumped-due-to-o...

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by true_religion » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #172

true_religion wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually think so. Prioritising employees may very well be essential to the continued or optimal operation of your airline. For example, getting person A to a city so they can crew in place of a sick employee, where otherwise we would have a plane with no pilot.

> Prioritising employees may very well be essential to the continued or optimal operation of your airline But that doesn't seem to be legal. It wasn't an oversold flight and the rule is "In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily." The airline didn't do that because ens…

Their claim is that rules for what happens to passengers in the case of an oversold flight shouldn't apply, because this flight wasn't oversold and incorrectly boarded.

Instead, employees never count towards overselling in the flight, but if their aren't enough employee-only seats, they'll take a customer seat instead.

Regardless, this is all a civil matter, and in civil matters you do not have the right to physically fight with staff or the police because you aren't getting your way. Instead, you go to court.

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

#195

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #69

valuearb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got up to $800 and had no takers. Not sure why they didn't go higher, wondering if United doesn't allow employees to offer more compensation than that. Which is a problem if so.

If there is a lawsuit, I bet the settlement will be several order of magnitudes that. Particularly given that the guy was a physician.

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

#196

Post by M_Grey » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #46

M_Grey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That entire way of policing has been normalized and legalized over the decades now. For example, originally "Less Lethal" options were intended to be used in a situation an officer would otherwise have to use their firearm. Now, they're just used as compliance "come-alongs"; these kinds of things start in our prisons and then come to our streets. Now you have police tasering streakers just to stop them, or swabbing s…

Well, the only response police have to non-compliance has always been violence. It's always been against the law not to comply with their orders. And it seems obvious that they will choose the sort that's less risky to the officer (taser, pepper spray), because each and every one of them knows the stories of the officers who got hurt. So yeah, if the police tell you to do something, you should expect to do it. It's n…

Who was being arrested? "Resisting" isn't some magic phrase that turns a simple encounter into a mugging by the state, sorry. As for risk, if you're a police officer you've chosen to protect and serve the public, which is a sacrifice; if you can't potentially take the risks to make that sacrifice... find a new damned job, we don't need or want you.

What is needed is extensive revamping of legislation to curb both police powers, and equipment, starting with an end to the war on drugs and associated weaponry/vehicles/agencies.

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

#197

Post by true_religion » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:36 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #181

true_religion wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and in order to exercise his legal rights in this entirely civil case, he ought to have left the plane called his lawyer then gone before a judge. This whole act of struggling with the police is never going to get a good outcome. It will only escalate things from a civil matter to a criminal one.

Given that either the police were acting illegally or United must have falsely asserted facts that made the removal legal, it seems to me that it must have become criminal, either on the part of the police or, more likely, United's false police report, before any struggle.

I think it's still up in the air as to if he had any kind of right to his seat.

United asserts, they prioritise their employees gaining seats on the flight because their employees are actually necessary to the operation of this flight and others.

It makes business sense, and its logical.

There's no law on any book that will force someone to serve you, whether it be transportation wise or by letting you have use of their mobile property (land/residences are a special case). United can pick random people at any time to get off the flight, for any reason, and at worst it will be a contractural breach or a violation of a civil statue (like the overbooking clause).

Once he was told to get off, he should have gotten off.

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

#198

Post by cmurf » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

ambulancechaser wrote: post #154

mikhailt wrote: post #92

This is what happens when you normalize violence, you focus on the blaming and legal stuff instead and you get people like this CEO but no one is reacting to the fact that a human being has been knocked out, dragged out like an animal for something he didn't have to give up. He had a legitimate reason not to give up his seat, he had patients he needed to see the next day. The airline CANNOT act like the computer is r…

> He had a legitimate reason not to give up his seat This is true until an officer of the law asked him to get off the plane. Argument time happens before that, and after that in court. But at that point, you're being ordered off a plane by a law enforcement officer. When you don't comply there's only one way for it to proceed at that point. > The airline CANNOT act like the computer is right all the time It was the…

Nope. An officer of the law can be ignored when they give unlawful orders or requests. The police had no business being involved in this situation, there was no crime being committed, and the passenger was not obligated to give up their seat once they were boarded and not in breach of the contract of carriage, which they weren't in any way.

Using your logic, if an officer of the law orders you to murder someone, when you don't comply there is only one way for it to proceed.

It's basically shitty logic, you should stop doing that. Hurts your brain and others' too.

The police overstepped their authority.

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

#199

Post by jehoshaphat » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #40

jbmorgado wrote: post #8

I seriously can't understand what kind of mental gymnastics this airline management is doing in order to justify in their heads that this is just fine. Even if the law is on their side, they still overbooked the plane by themselves, they still let everyone check in, they still let everyone in onboard and they still forcibly removed some random paying passenger just because someone on their staff wanted/needed (anyone…

They should have increased compensation. I'm wondering if they have a company limit of $800. The reason this happened is they had another crew that missed their flight and needed to get to Lousville in time or another plane load of passengers would be stuck on the tarmac.

I've read somewhere (can't find the link now) that the subject aircrew was from an associate airline (United Express--different operator than United who also operates regional jets for American and others, so not even technically their own employee. Other plane would not have been stuck on the tarmac. The crew had to get to Louisville that night to meet crew rest requirements. So that flight could have been cancelled/delayed hours in advance if no crew was available to fly it. The owners of that crew had other methods available to get that crew to Louisville, UA did not have to accommodate them on a fully booked flight, and in fact could not legally do so. I personally think there must have been some hanky-panky going on between members of the two flight crews. I can't think of any other reason UA would bend over backwards to fuck this up so badly.

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

#200

Post by yongjik » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #86

cm2187 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You understand their staff needed to be on this flight so that another plane full of passengers in Louisville wouldn't be delayed by not having a flight crew?

> He is allegedly a doctor, not a demigod. Someone else can cover his shift. - You, elsewhere in this thread

So you're saying, unlike doctors, flight staff are demigods and must be given priority because they are irreplaceable?

(The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure United will view their flight crew more as cogs than demigods.)