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

251–260 of 274 posts

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

#251

Post by M_Grey »

Natsu wrote: post #250
soVeryTired wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is in the rate of escalation. In the US, non-compliance can lead to violence really, really quickly.

On average, the people being arrested are more likely to attack the cops. If, on average, people went quietly with the police and fought this in the court system, things would change for the better.

>On average, the people being arrested are more likely to attack the cops.

Compared to... people with no contact with the police? You cant actually be saying that the average arrest is resisted, can you?

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

#252

Post by dogma1138 »

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.

UK rail isn't high speed and probably the worse in Europe outside of the old com block countries.

London to Manchester is somewhat still OK but London to Newcastle takes longer and costs more than London to Brussels via the Eurostar.

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

#253

Post by tyingq »

dogma1138 wrote: post #252
tyingq wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

UK rail isn't high speed and probably the worse in Europe outside of the old com block countries. London to Manchester is somewhat still OK but London to Newcastle takes longer and costs more than London to Brussels via the Eurostar.

The Virgin train was definitely faster than a normal train . I'm not 100% clear on the semantics of what counts as high speed rail. I believe they are 100-120mph or so.

The thing that mattered to me is that it was 2 hours, because a 1 hour flight isn't really a 1 hour flight after you deal with the airport.

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

#254

Post by dagw »

askafriend wrote: post #223
wdr1 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that's $1,600 in United credits that expire .

That's how it always is right? It's always a voucher, not actual cash.

When it happened to me in London a few years ago I was offered a choice between X in vouchers or 0.7X in cash.

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

#255

Post by pdelbarba »

cortesoft wrote: post #248
pdelbarba wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PPL ASEL will cost you about $8k (doable if you really want it) and a 172@$105/hr wet to travel around in at 110kts. Take two fearless friends and you have yourself a private airline.

Yeah, that isn't going to work very well for getting me from California to my family in New York.

Assuming you have no fear of death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ

Surprisingly economical too, 2000mi on ~$200 in fuel. Probably around $60k to build right now (depending on avionics)

Edit: 100LL (aviation gasoline) is around $4/gal right now, hence the $200 for 52gal

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

#256

Post by zeroer »

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…

One issue is that the $800 that keeps getting quoted as the offered compensation was not cash. It was $800 in vouchers for more United flights that have redemption restrictions and a 1-year time limit. I guess it's worth something to some people, but it's really easy to see why no one chomped at the bit. United might have gotten someone to volunteer if it was just $500 of real cash.

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

#257

Post by true_religion »

devy wrote: post #215
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.

From the cost perspective in retrospect, it's going to save them at least hundreds of millions from the tarnished branding, stock market lost and future lawsuits if their employees were to take a taxi / coach bus / or even private charter flights to commute.

They have booted people from planes before. I don't​ know they could have predicted this market reaction in the past.

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

#258

Post by bronco21016 »

ntsplnkv3 wrote: post #226
bronco21016 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really hard to describe how all of this works without going into extremely detailed scenarios and edge cases. Simply put though hiring more people doesn't do anything. Those extra people still would have to be sitting on call somewhere. Once they receive the call they're sent to where they're needed which still results in this situation. It's simply unreasonable to think they would have spare flight crews in eve…

See, for some reason people will go to lengths to somehow absolve corporations of their responsibility in this country. It's really sad. Sure, there may be issues that can't be planned for, and you can't hire for every case and solve every issue. But that is still not this customer's fault, and he was punished for it, arbitrarily. Frankly I don't care how difficult it is for United to prevent this from happening agai…

I'm not absolving them of anything. What happened was wrong, no doubt about it. I'm making a best effort to explain why it's unreasonable to think that flights will never end up in this "oversold" situation.

By your logic they better go ahead and just block of 20 seats. You know, just in case they need to re-position a B747 crew. Wonder what tickets will cost when they can only sell 30 seats on those 50 seaters.

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

#259

Post by scurvy »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #228
cmurf wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 singl…

Also their right to deny boarding ends once a passenger is boarded

Not true. Boarding basically means haven't left the gate. If you get to your seat, sit, then they realize that your seat belt is broken, they can deny you "boarding" instead of dispatching a tech to fix the belt. You were seated on the plane, now you're not. Boarding is an overly broad term, but that's how it is written.

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

#260

Post by scurvy »

cmurf wrote: post #192
scurvy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 singl…

United didn't drag anyone off the plane. ORD PD did.

Also, boarding is any time up until gate departure.

Post reply on HN