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United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

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Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#91

Post by devoply »

cmurf wrote: post #67
Animats wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subtext here is that customers don't have any actual rights when dealing with a large corporation. The problem is that people now believe that. In fact, lawsuits against big companies often are settled on very favorable terms for the customer. As the article points out, United violated their own contract of carriage and FAA regulations. This is going to cost them.

Only because the passenger peacefully resisted, and did not comply with the airline's request he depart the plane on his own volition. He didn't give into threats, and risked and received an assault, in order to arrive at the point where this is going to cost the airline.

He should totally bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit, it's a total cake walk as it'd be hard to find a jury that wouldn't sympathize and he and his grandkids would be millions of dollars richer. Not to mention all the dirt you can drag United through during the lawsuit in the media. Love to see some testimony from the dick CEO as well who tried even character assignation of the poor doctor they needlessly assaulted.

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#92

Post by menssen »

differentView wrote: post #66
strictnein wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I think there's actually a government regulation which caps it at $1300 or so.

The cap is the maximum of what passengers are legally entitled to. The airlines can offer more if they want.

I've been wondering: does this mean that a valid response to this situation would be "I will leave the plane if given my legally entitled $1350"?

As in, among other reasons, is United in the wrong here because the maximum they offered for volunteers was $800, not the regulated $1350?

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#93

Post by strictnein »

MichaelGG wrote: post #70
strictnein wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I think there's actually a government regulation which caps it at $1300 or so.

How could that possibly be true? The USG isn't going to limit what a company can voluntarily give to a customer.

There's a lot of nonsense regulations that different industries lobby to be put in place. I mistook the fact that there's a cap with what the airline is obligated to pay with what they are allowed to pay.

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#94

Post by ambulancechaser »

andmarios wrote: post #79
dionidium wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The central thesis of my argument is that the ins and outs of each side's claims can be litigated later on. At that moment, the cops probably don't (and likely in principle can't ) know exactly who is right and who is wrong and in fact this isn't at all the role we expect the police to fill .

If the police didn't know who was wrong then maybe instead of using force, they could asked the airline to cancel the flight and seek damages in a court. Then, and only then, they could remove anyone from the plane as it wasn't part of a contract anymore but just the airline's property. Instead they chose a side to favor by force.

> If the police didn't know who was wrong

The police won't arbitrate a civil matter.

> they could asked the airline to cancel the flight and seek damages in a court. Then, and only then, they could remove anyone from the plane as it wasn't part of a contract anymore but just the airline's property.

If they asked the airplane to cancel the flight they could then remove the man from the plane? You're arguing that if United cancelled the flight for everyone that would render the contract of carriage moot for all and then the person would no longer have a claim to a seat?

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#95

Post by martinald »

jazzyk wrote: post #25

No, the real failure (and the source of this and many other issues in the airline industry) is the lack of competition in the US domestic market. Pure and simple. The huge, 350-million US domestic market is served by 4-5 major airlines, while the EU with 500 million people is served by tens of airlines. I recently flew from Barcelona to Nice for 30 euros, round-trip (with seat assignment). Where are the (potentially…

I don't know if it's just airlines that have competition problems in the US. I actually think it's the airports that the problem.

In the EU, many (most?) airports are privately owned. In the US, they're almost always state owned. Furthermore, the Port Authority generally owns all the airports in the area.

In many EU areas, that's not the case. There's 6 airports in the London area and they all compete to offer the lowest landing fees to win airlines.

Ryanair capitalised on this and really injected all the competition in the market by only flying from 'secondary' airports.

I'm not sure the same thing could happen in the US. There isn't the same level of competition for airports, and without that I think it's hard for any airline to really make any difference.

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#96

Post by jldugger »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #9
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, United stock went down, IIRC, $830 million dollars. That's paying a bit of a price. They may pay for it in lost sales and lawsuits, as well. The cop got suspended. That's paying a price, too. And it may not be the end of the price he pays.

UAL is still up for the week. This is a normal fluctuation in the grand scheme of things, it isn't "payback" by any means.

Well yea, man. If UAL is so popular they have to drag people off the plane, they must be selling crazy tickets, right? And they probably have more room to raise prices than anticipated.

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#97

Post by [deleted] »

strictnein wrote: post #55
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because handbook says a certain amount is the maximum they can offer, and likely the crew offering more would risk their job. Following this fiasco, Munoz said they will expand the handbook. We'll see.

Also, I think there's actually a government regulation which caps it at $1300 or so.

[deleted]

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#98

Post by rhizome »

eridius wrote: post #65
churn1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If terms and definitions matter, the legal term you are looking for is actually "oversales", not overbooking which is a colloquial term

Overbooking is generally used as a synonym of oversales. Trying to redefine overbooking right now to mean something else is just going to cause confusion.

There's a rhetorical difference where "overbooking" puts the onus on the customer, and "oversales" puts it where it should be: on the airline who sold the extra tickets.

And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#99

Post by cmurf »

hsod wrote: post #56
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect the police to police, as in, maintain law and order. As I understand it, neither were broken at said impasse. Again, I have come to expect very little of American police. The crew should have known better than calling the police. I blame more the crew and probably their textbook for unleashing the dogs, rather than the dogs biting.

Edit: seems this doesn't apply because the doors hadn't been closed yet. See below I found this law which, from a layman's perspective and based on my understanding of the sequence of events, the passenger violated: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46504 "An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight a…

Your reading is flawed.

49 U.S. Code § 46501 - Definitions (1) “aircraft in flight” means an aircraft from the moment all external doors are closed following boarding— (2) “special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States” includes any of the following aircraft in flight:

And to preempt more of this nonsense, FAR 91.3 and 91.11 don't apply either, those are for operational safety purposes. This is a contract of carriage issue, and what the airline tried to do is not in that contract.

The passenger was within his right to peacefully refuse to cooperate, in this instance, as reported.

Re: United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

#100

Post by FireBeyond »

dionidium wrote: post #17
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that is the case, there are much better methods of dealing with a situation like this than calling a police officer. It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force. The man is lucky they didn't taze him. The crew should have known that. It's good that this policy is about to change, but it is too little too late.

It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force My understanding is that there was a lengthy conversation that took place before the outrage-inducing video starts. They did attempt to resolve the situation peacefully. At some point there is an impasse. Police are making a request and he's ignoring it. There are two ways that can go: 1) Police shr…

Given that the man was not handcuffed and indeed made his way back on to the plane, there are perhaps assumptions that can be made about how happy the officers were with the situation in general too (without resorting to any Nuremberg analogy).
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