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Remove United from your flight results

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Re: Remove United from your flight results

#121

Post by colmvp »

rpmcmurphy wrote: post #75

I hate to be the one to point this out, but this is a case where people vote with their wallets for the absolute cheapest product, and then are angry to get what they paid for. They buy discounted non-refundable inflexible strings-attached fares, and then are shocked to discover than when push comes to shove, strings are attached (such as lowest priority on rebooking). If you absolutely need to get there on time, or…

I'm unclear how a procedure that might be illegal is related to buying a cheap ticket. We're talking about a man who bought a ticket, legally boarded a plane, and then was forcefully removed AFTER boarding.

The CEO remarked: The man was removed because employees were following the “involuntary denial of boarding process.” How do you deny boarding to someone who is already boarded?

United says its denial of boarding provisions only apply in the event of an “oversold flight." United defines oversold flights as:

> A flight where there are more Passengers holding valid confirmed Tickets that check-in for the flight within the prescribed check-in time than there are available seats.

Employees are not considered "passengers holding valid confirmed tickets that check-in for the flight within the prescribed check-in time." To reinforce this reality, the CEO admitted that the flight was not oversold.

But most importantly, there are different laws for customers pre-board and after you've board the plane. There's a very specific set of rules that allow United to kick a boarded passenger off a plane(Rule 21 Refusal of Transport), but there's overwhelming evidence that none of it applied to Dr. Dao.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#122

Post by perseusprime11 »

Mithaldu wrote: post #27
sitepodmatt wrote: post #10

United screwed up by not having a decent incentive system in place to avoid deplaning people. People have presented many options, including taking a ballpark figure on checkin, or whilst on the airplance a speaker announcement anyone to travel later for $800, wait a minute, $1000, $1200, okay great thanks folks.. That was extremely badly handled and shocking that no process was in place for this - as last minute crew…

United acted illegally from the very get-go. Via https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/64m8lg/why_is_... and more: > Lawyer here. This myth that passengers don't have rights needs to go away, ASAP. You are dead wrong when saying that United legally kicked him off the plane. > 1. First of all, it's airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is a…

This is probably the reason United is going after the passenger's personal life. Their PR team is overworking on creating a different narrative instead of feeling remorseful.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#123

Post by johnfn »

wehere1 wrote: post #113
johnfn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then, the inevitable outrage led to past stories resurfacing, with a pattern of absurd insensitivity (abused dogs, broken guitars, sexist clothing policies, etc). You don't think you'd be able to dredge up similarly bad stories for any other airline? Look, what United did on that flight was pretty awful. But the rest of this to me smacks of the typical rumor mill that spins up when a company has bad PR, which surfa…

huh? of course not all employees of the company will think alike. but when an employee does something fucked up like they did in this case, a reasonable company should condemn it and support the affected customer

Which is exactly what Oscar Munoz has done.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#124

Post by cloudwizard »

My story about United was when I was flying from Vancouver to SFO. For some reason, we could not land at SFO so we ended up in Oakland. I said fine. Let me off and I will catch a cab.

They said that the plane was too big for Oakland. We sat on the runway for 2 hours then flew back to Vancouver with nothing put warm coke. By the time we got to Vancouver, it was late so so all airport and hotel food was closed. We had vouchers but nothing available to spend it on.

Of course they lied about the plane being too large, another airline flew the same plane to Oakland regularly. i had to spam fax their customer support line to get vouchers.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#125

Post by mvpu »

Incidents like this are a wake up call to process driven cultures. If the flight crew really cared about the passenger, they would have handled it differently. If the CEO really cared, he would have personally apologized to the passenger and taken care of him by now. No amount of process and regulation can build a brand as much as culture does. That's why I'm a loyal Southwest customer. They've never let me down when it comes to common sense and empathy.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#126

Post by larsiusprime »

mc32 wrote: post #66
ceautery wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He's looking for a payout. [Citation needed] Edit: OK, then.

I don't think one is wont to hire these types[1] if one is not looking for a payout: "The 69-year-old medical professional has hired corporate law specialist Stephen Golan and personal injury specialist Thomas Demetrio". [1] http://perezhilton.com/2017-04-12-united-airlines-david-dao-...

Gee, perhaps it was because he was personally injured.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#127

Post by px1999 »

sfilargi wrote: post #3

I understand the sentiment, but if I would stop using every corp that fucked somebody up, I would probably have to move somewhere where there is no civilization.

Massive retaliation is an effective deterrence strategy, and probably one of the only options that a weak group like consumers have against an oligopoly like airlines.

It's not even about punishing United, it's about showing other players that if they behave in the same way, _they_ might randomly be subjected to this sort of punishment. People are not going to stop using airlines, but we might stop using yours for just long enough to make it hurt.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#128

Post by jedharris »

johnfn wrote: post #103
rm999 wrote: post #69

The comments in here are oddly fatalist about the whole thing. We put a lot of trust in airlines; and not just in safety or to get us somewhere, but we also give them an unusual number of legal protections once we're in their care. When the drama first started I kind of wrote it off: "this must have been a misunderstanding compounded by a single employee's stupidity". But when I found that it was not only condoned, b…

> Then, the inevitable outrage led to past stories resurfacing, with a pattern of absurd insensitivity (abused dogs, broken guitars, sexist clothing policies, etc). You don't think you'd be able to dredge up similarly bad stories for any other airline? Look, what United did on that flight was pretty awful. But the rest of this to me smacks of the typical rumor mill that spins up when a company has bad PR, which surfa…

The well-informed discussion on Naked Capital (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-remo...) strongly supports the claim that the removal was illegal. It also provides interesting evidence that the decisions were traceable to United's attempt to reduce costs by using third party contractors and affiliates (the flight was operated by Republic, an affiliate).

This quote is telling: "When I was a outsourced regional jet captain operating United Express flights between 2010 and 2014 the gate agents in charge of the regional (out-sourced) flights at United hub, Washington-Dulles, were third-party contractors. They were horribly trained and frequently surly. The gates were always crowded, everyone there was angry, nothing worked, it was utter chaos and misery. I absolutely dreaded flying there and did my best to avoid it, Chicago was only a little better."

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#129

Post by macintux »

johnfn wrote: post #123
wehere1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh? of course not all employees of the company will think alike. but when an employee does something fucked up like they did in this case, a reasonable company should condemn it and support the affected customer

Which is exactly what Oscar Munoz has done.

...belatedly, after tremendous uproar and a tremendously lukewarm non-apology apology at first.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#130

Post by petermcnister25 »

btgeekboy wrote: post #85
tootie wrote: post #11

Why is United taking more blame than the Chicago PD?

I've been wondering this myself. Yes, it sucked that 4 people were required by United to deplane. This was awful planning on United's part. But 3 passengers deplaned without the situation escalating to this catastrophe. Then we have the 4th passenger who decides he wants to potentially add resisting arrest to his trespassing and interfering with a crewmember, and a set of sworn police officers who couldn't properly d…

> "Resisting arrest"

What? They were not arresting him as far as it has been shown. Resisting arrest is a grave crime AFAIK, so don't mix terms (or don't complain of other people mixing things!).

> "trespassing"

Again, read more about it, he was not trespassing at all. He was legally allowed to stay in the flight (even though the crew members said otherwise).

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