Bottomline is most humans don't care about other humans that they don't know. United will live on. I for one, wanted United to go out of business when they took away my 4 yr old daughter's OPENED yogurt container (that she was eating out of) on an international flight after realizing that we forgot to order kid's meal for her and that they had given one to her by mistake.
Remove United from your flight results
141–150 of 293 posts
Re: Remove United from your flight results
#142Earlier 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.
After the third or fourth attempt which does not reflect well on him.
Re: Remove United from your flight results
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what algorithm they used to select him. But united does have a procedure based on ticket class, time of check-in and other parameters.
The algorithm probably tries to select a passenger who is unlikely to be flying again soon, to minimize future lost business. Might be someone who flies rarely, or has never flown that route before, etc.
The big one is lacking any frequent flyer membership, which indicates a traveler with no reason to fly United in particular on a future flight.
Re: Remove United from your flight results
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was United who called in the cops. I'm not saying they weren't contractually able to, but they had to choose to do it.
This is the point that seems to get missed a lot. yes, the police did the brutalizing, but all of the decisions that lead to that confrontation were UA's. It's akin to arguing we shouldn't lock up people who pay for assassins, only the assassins themselves. And I'm not trying to compare an assassination to what UA did, only point out that the law doesn't give you a pass because you weren't the one who physically did…
But you can't be prosecuted because you called the police and the police beat someone up. Unless the police officer was conspiring with you to do something criminal, their illegal acts are not your responsibility.
If I call the police because there is someone suspicious in my neighborhood and they show up and end up shooting an innocent person, I am not responsible for the shooting.
The only exception I can imagine is in the case of a false report. If one were to call and say he saw someone with a gun walking down the street and waving it around threatening people, and that was false - I suppose he could be responsible for injury that resulted from a confrontation with police. But it would require a criminal act on the part of the person who calls the police to have lied to the police.
If United is legally held responsible for the action of the authorities, I would have to expect that it could only be if they made a false claim to the police about his behavior prior to their arrival. I have a hard time believing they would be responsible just for misinterpreting the FAA boarding rules, even IF they did it knowingly.
Re: Remove United from your flight results
#145Re: Remove United from your flight results
#146The 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…
The worst part of the story was United's campain to smear the victim and to paint him as a sex offender.
Re: Remove United from your flight results
#147Incidents 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…
More than once my plane has been late on southwest and every time my connecting flight waited for me to arrive before departing. What a nice way to end a trip.
Between the two clauses I honestly can't tell if you're complimenting or criticizing the airline. In any case, I love the no-hassles baggage policy (checking in bags is far more comfortable assuming they don't get misplaced) and seat selection (especially when traveling alone). The easy to understand frequent flyer program and relatively friendly staff help as well.
Re: Remove United from your flight results
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
What actually happened: United: "This man is trespassing on private property." Chicago PD: "We'll be right over." United breaking their agreement isn't illegal, but remaining on private property after you've been asked to leave by the people in charge is illegal.
Bad example because in this case United and passenger entered an agreement for the passenger to be on United's property. That's like saying you leased your house to a tenant for a year but then six months in you find another tenant that you want so you call the cops on the first tenant. Doesn't work like that (well at least where I live). A contract is a contract and nobody is tresassing here.
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Re: Remove United from your flight results
#149I'm a little bit surprised that nobody addressed overbooking in this particular situation. It's not just United, it's all airlines that overbook their flights and it's hard for me to believe that it's a completely legal practice.
Re: Remove United from your flight results
#150Earlier 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…
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 ou…
This is the best summary of the issue I have seen to date, and really gets to the root of United's situation. Especially this quote:
"I really don’t think the upper management at United has any clue about the nuts and bolts, day to day, inner workings of the company. Post-merger United is too big to fail, too big to manage and far too Balkanized to govern. I fully expect the ugliness to continue at United."