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Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

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Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#61

Post by NotSammyHagar »

IIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #57
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #3

This is a great article, worth a read. Plus the guy has an awesome cartoon avatar. The summary is: United on their smaller flights has lots of people pretending to be united employees but they aren't, and they aren't as well trained as united employees. The police in airports often aren't regular police forces, but are special airport police who might or might not be on a regular police force. To me, that says there'…

> and they aren't as well trained as united employees I'm really getting (maybe needlessly) a bit irate over the endless stream of "they didn't have the training" comments each and every time some employee attacks someone. For this incident too but also for many previous ones, in a lot of forums from reddit to local newspaper websites I found this line of reasoning or explanation. I may get flak for this, but as a Ge…

I agree, training shouldn't be necessary to tell people not to beat up passengers. But training can help people to learn to deescalate situations, and help people learn to sometimes take a second to think about it.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#62

Post by mike-cardwell »

IIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #57
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #3

This is a great article, worth a read. Plus the guy has an awesome cartoon avatar. The summary is: United on their smaller flights has lots of people pretending to be united employees but they aren't, and they aren't as well trained as united employees. The police in airports often aren't regular police forces, but are special airport police who might or might not be on a regular police force. To me, that says there'…

> and they aren't as well trained as united employees I'm really getting (maybe needlessly) a bit irate over the endless stream of "they didn't have the training" comments each and every time some employee attacks someone. For this incident too but also for many previous ones, in a lot of forums from reddit to local newspaper websites I found this line of reasoning or explanation. I may get flak for this, but as a Ge…

Presumably, the "the lack of training" is related to how to resolve situations without resorting to force.

When people say that they lack training, it's not about being trained not to attack somebody, it's about being trained (and more importantly empowered) to resolve situations before they get to that point.

Because when there are no options left, you only have force.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#63

Post by rurban »

dagw wrote: post #55
logicallee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>discreetly accepting blame Have you seen the news and social media lately? United has been the butt of the blame "discreetly" the way James Bond making his way from point A to point B in a city while blowing up, crashing, and destroying everything in his path is "discreet". Can you honestly name or a remember a PR disaster as bad as this one about any company in the past two years? I would phrase it as "loudly and p…

Can you honestly name or a remember a PR disaster as bad as this one about any company in the past two years? Volkswagen was probably just as bad at the time. Now of course most people have kind of forgotten or at least moved on and VW just posted strong Q1 results, handily beating estimates.

Glad you brought that up. VW has even less to do with the dieselgate scandal than UA has with this O'Hare incident. VW uses engines and engine software parametrization from Audi. Audi uses engine software and esp. the cheating device from Bosch. Everyone else also uses it. But VW being the biggest of them all is getting the blame and has to pay the fine.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#64

Post by briandear »

smcl wrote: post #41
rdtsc wrote: post #35

> , but it was a Republic Airlines flight operated by Republic Airlines pilots and flight attendants and under the operational control of Republic Airlines management. What's the point of mentioning that? They are wearing United Uniforms even. However United wants to distribute its routes, how it hires its contractors, flight attendants etc is its business. It seems like a way to divert blame. (United is great, it's…

If you keep reading it becomes apparent why this is actually quite shady and not a clean dodge for united. It's an attempt to use lower-wage non-union workers, made more interesting by the fact that Republic are going through bankruptcy (and therefore aren't themselves being sued by the passengers, since there's some sort of limit on the compensation they could get) and that United are semi-OK with taking the blame t…

Why does Lufthansa use Cityline and/or Germanwings or any number of similarly positioned companies to do their bidding on lower density routes?

Nearly every major airline in the world that serves feeder routes does this.

Remember that Republic also does the American Eagle flights.

If these contracting arrangements weren't possible, then you'd see many major airlines dropping the routes.

The typical plane for the route in question holds 76 passengers. With margins around 1% or less, that flight is making a tiny profit. Let's say, just for the sake of argument that the average ticket price was $200. That's $15200 in revenue for the plane (excluding cargo.) That airplane typically has two flight attendants, two pilots and an assortment of ground crew. Also remember that close to 50% of ticket revenues are actually taxes and fees that don't go to the airline but to government. So that $15k is now closer to $9k -- that's revenue, not profit. This if for a nearly 1 hour flight.

Do you know the operating costs of your average Embraer 175? Landing fees? Gate slot fees?

My point is that United/American definitely don't want to pay higher union wages for routes that are operating on razor thin margins as it is. If they raise ticket prices, planes will be less full, crushing the margins even more, if they pay more, that also crushes the margins. Either way, even a slight increase in costs somewhere in the system destroys the profitability of the route.

Perhaps we should be complaining about government taking such a huge proportion of taxes and fees rather than United trying to minimize costs. For a business making literally 1% margins on most flights, we certainly have a lot of opinions about how bad they are when they try to keep costs down.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#65

Post by ak39 »

Naritai wrote: post #44
dragonwriter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Republic is contracting for United, United is probably liable under vicarious liability principles anyway, so conspiracy theories about why they don't try to deflect blame aren't really needed.

Conversely, it's common for contracting firms to include a clause requiring the subcontracting firm to indemnify the contractor. So United would be able to push it back onto Republic.

That clause is unlikely to hold against litigation on grounds that the paying customer was given the deliberate impression that he/she was entering into a contract agreement with United.

Unless of course the ticket contract with paying customers makes it a clause that United isn't responsible.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#66

Post by rurban »

tajen wrote: post #59
smcl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read about this before - US pilots getting shockingly low wages. The Explanation given previously was that the senior pilots get insanely well remunerated and you're expected to work for peanuts until you hit this point (or switch to a European or Emirati airline)

I remember an Air Crash Investigation where the investigators were surprised to hear that the two pilots sounded completely drunk on the black box. It wasn't alcohol, it was the lack of sleep – the guys had just flown halfway across the USA on a jump seat to start their shift in NYC and slept in an 8-bunk-bed subrental in a suburb. So, yes, pilot's low wages in USA's regional airlines is an endemic problem that has k…

But nowadays drinking and drugs are a bigger problem than hours. Remember the movie "Flight"? Thanksfully those planes fly fully automatic, but still some weather decisions have to be made from time to time.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#67

Post by IIIIIIIIIIII »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #62
IIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and they aren't as well trained as united employees I'm really getting (maybe needlessly) a bit irate over the endless stream of "they didn't have the training" comments each and every time some employee attacks someone. For this incident too but also for many previous ones, in a lot of forums from reddit to local newspaper websites I found this line of reasoning or explanation. I may get flak for this, but as a Ge…

Presumably, the "the lack of training" is related to how to resolve situations without resorting to force. When people say that they lack training, it's not about being trained not to attack somebody, it's about being trained (and more importantly empowered) to resolve situations before they get to that point. Because when there are no options left, you only have force.

That does not change anything I wrote.

> Because when there are no options left, you only have force.

It actually makes it worse that you try to justify it. You used your brainpower to find a justification for what is. But there is none. This is a non sequitur - there is no reason to use force even when people don't cooperate! Also, the vast majority of such instances require no special level of competence to deescalate, only common sense and decency, including a lot of police incidents I had to read about (I myself never had an issue with US police, even though I encountered them a lot when in my youth I crossed the US sleeping in an old car that I had bought).

The entire "deescalation" that was required in this particular case was to just let it be. What training do you need? Not even the next step of offering just a tad more money needs any special training. You make it sound as if we are talking about hostage negotiation or something requiring skills.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#68

Post by briandear »

engx wrote: post #37
fatbird wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than blame the goon squad, you should blame the king for ordering them into action. Or, in this case, the subcontracting sheriff's deputy. I think the more serious error here is the error you display: "people are asked/told to get off planes every day." That may be true, and maybe in most cases results in only a grumpy exit, but this situation seems to have exposed that it is not a legal requirement, and that…

Aren't cops supposed to be a neutral party? Shouldn't they have inquired what was happening and tried to find all possible ways to communicate without force? Cops in the US seem way too ready to snap into a confrontation. They could have spent 30 minutes discussing with the guy and it would had caused less disruption and delay to the other passengers. This concept of a comply or die mentality is a real problem.

Do we not know how much discussion happened before the video was taken? The man was already asked to deplane multiple times and he aggressively refused.

Would a pretty please have really helped?

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#69

Post by rurban »

dba7dba wrote: post #58
tuna-piano wrote: post #24

I see this whole event kind of like the Rosa Parks situation. I'm not comparing the magnitude of injustice, just that (a)There was an unjust system and (b)It took an individual to stick up for the just result, even though it was breaking the rules. Also, the author is wrong in this passage: From the article: "The gate agents offered offered $800 in airline scrip to anyone willing to deplane, which from past observati…

> Carriers can negotiate with their passengers for mutually acceptable compensation." How do you negotiate with an entity that has the ability to call in the goons on you but you cannot?

They don't have this ability. It violates FAA regulations. And in this case also violated the cited trespassing rule.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#70

Post by hueving »

dba7dba wrote: post #58
tuna-piano wrote: post #24

I see this whole event kind of like the Rosa Parks situation. I'm not comparing the magnitude of injustice, just that (a)There was an unjust system and (b)It took an individual to stick up for the just result, even though it was breaking the rules. Also, the author is wrong in this passage: From the article: "The gate agents offered offered $800 in airline scrip to anyone willing to deplane, which from past observati…

> Carriers can negotiate with their passengers for mutually acceptable compensation." How do you negotiate with an entity that has the ability to call in the goons on you but you cannot?

If you fly with any frequency, you witness this very often. Any time you hear them asking for volunteers at the gate and offering money. It's an auction system used hundreds of times a day by airlines all over the US.
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