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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

#251

Post by TorKlingberg »

mikeash wrote: post #216
masondixon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (a) There was an unjust system and There was a legislated racist system. The bumping laws are not discriminatory and are good for everyone. Airlines can stay more competitive (offer passengers cheaper seats) by being able to bump passengers and fill as many seats as possible for every flight. The compensation is set at a price point to disincentivise bumping. Its a completely free market approach. (b) It took an in…

"A completely free market approach" would not allow airlines to involuntarily remove passengers who have already paid for and used a ticket. A free market approach would involve offering greater and greater compensation for voluntary removal until enough people took it.

No, it would involve whatever the contract between the passenger and the airline says. Which is very likely to favor the airline as they wrote it.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#252

Post by masondixon »

mikeash wrote: post #238
masondixon wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If done involuntarily, both are effectively theft. You sign a contract when you buy a ticket. You willingly agree to the terms. Can you make a contract that someone can steal from you? No. > When denying boarding or removing a passenger who has done nothing wrong, the airline should be required to secure their consent. Then the question of "drag people off planes" would never even come up. That, and the subsequent…

Why does "we go through the courts" not also apply to removing passengers? Based on what you're advocating, it seems like the airlines should let him stay and then sue him, rather than having him forcibly removed. I think I understand the principles you're espousing, but you seem to be applying them only to one side.

> but you seem to be applying them only to one side.

I guess the principle I am arguing for is when one side is prepared to use physical force (which they believe is justified) to remove someone from their private property, then the "trespasser" should abide by that (for the time-being), and seek legal remedy.

I see this as the only option to remaining civil. I don't see how society can function without violence without this being adhered to.

Also, when someone is charge with private security or as law enforcement, they should be respected where they physically enforce something. Again, once they have made up their mind to enforce something physically, I don't see a way to maintain civility in any other way than respecting their wishes.

In this case it was the airline's private property, and they felt justified to physically remove someone.

Now whether or not this is justified, is a matter for the courts to decide.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#253

Post by bdhess »

FireBeyond wrote: post #225
bb611 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears you're confused by the use of variations on volunteer in different The facts of the situation were this: 1. United offered vouchers up to $800 - this is the volunteer phase. 2. They received no volunteers. 3. Moving on from the volunteer phase, they selected 4 passengers to be removed from the flight. 4. They informed those passengers they needed to get off the flight (so now they're covered by the DoT min…

In your point 5, the word "voluntarily" is a misnomer, is the point. "5. Mr Dao refused to leave his seat." Refusing to voluntarily leave implies he ever had an option to reject the request, which he did not.

I think that question is likely to be the basis of much of the litigation here, and from everything I read it's not exactly a settled matter.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#254

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

dalbasal wrote: post #239
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…

I'm not American, so I guess it's a bit out of place for me to comment . That said, my reading of this incident is naked corporatism. Laws, industry regulations, corporate policies and police enforcement are jumbled together, collaborating in a corporatist manner. (A) The airline has policies and business practices such as overbooking & "must fly." These save money, get staff to their required destinations, whatever.…

There's plenty of naked corporatism at play in this incident, and police forces acting as de-facto corporate goons is a big problem in America. But I think in this case the individual cops who said "OK, I guess that's our job" were probably not at all supported by the law or even their own departmental policy - I think this is part of the reason the incident made such waves, because the police actions were so beyond the pale in enforcing a trespassing claim.

There's also the x-factor of societal attitudes towards air travel post 9/11 (with additional post Trump anxieties added in). For all we know, the police might not have been told that Dao had been randomly selected for removal - they might have just been told that he was a disruptive passenger that needed to be removed. In either case, just by being on an airplane, the police will be primed to think of all the bad things bad people can and have done on airplanes. Laws and public attitudes have changed and it's gotten a lot easier to prevent people from flying since 9/11, so the police probably didn't think much of it from a consumer/civil rights standpoint (not that they necessarily do in any context), and just went into autopilot mode of applying force to resolve the problem in front of them. None of which is to excuse them, just to explicate that I don't think the incident was strictly caused by naked corporatism.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#255

Post by masondixon »

FireBeyond wrote: post #240
masondixon wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abuse of the "deny boarding" part of the contract of carriage to keep their expenses down If they keep their expenses down is does benefit customers in paying less for tickets. > They offered $800 vouchers, which are limited flying coupons. Legally they're required to offer cash up to $1350. Legally, they can negotiate with customer. If they refused to offer cash that is illegal. But they can offer whatever they li…

> "negotiate" A negotiation with an entity that "can" (for varying definitions), and will, have you trespassed or otherwise forcibly removed is not a particularly fair "meeting of the minds". It's somewhat what happened here. Passengers _were_ negotiating. Someone offered to leave for $1500, then $1300, on video, and the gate agent responded. "Not happening. Someone's getting off or the plane's going nowhere", and lo…

> Passengers _were_ negotiating

I mean after involuntary bumping which is allowed after making an offer for voluntary bumping which is not required to be negotiated.

By "negotiation" it means they can offer free flights or vouchers.

This is very common place. The final mandated offer is subject to many conditions as outlined here: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights which would be specific to each customer.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#256

Post by Diederich »

joshcrawford wrote: post #245

Statements like this need to be backed up with something of substance "victim of 'minor' but routine Chicago police torture who still feels the pain of my police-inflicted injury occasionally, more than 35 years later."

Did you check the rest of his blog?

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#257

Post by bonzini »

masondixon wrote: post #244
bonzini wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at least up to $1,350. They can offer _as little as_ $1,350 even if the ticket costs more than $1,350/4 = $337.50, but there's no upper limit. Apparently their policy is to never go above 4x the cost of the ticket (they said it's $800 in this case, your computation in another message said $1030, but airline fares are really complex). That's a valid policy. But they should definitely have offered cash instead…

> But they should definitely have offered cash instead of vouchers. They are allowed to offer vouchers or free flights. https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights Should the law be different. Maybe. But the law is the law.

Yes, but only for voluntary bumping. Involuntary bumping requires the airline to pay cash if the passenger insists on that. It seems reasonable to offer cash before moving to involuntary bumping. Anyone who can read would request cash rather than vouchers worth the same $$$ (a $2000 voucher might be different, but they didn't offer that, either).

And even if they didn't, they could have drawn say 10 passengers instead of 4, and given them "a written statement describing their rights and explaining how the carrier decides who gets on an oversold flight and who doesn't" as mentioned in the page you linked, They might very well have found 4 people who would have refused a voucher but would have accepted a $800 check.

Or skip the stupid lottery and go with involuntary bumping of the 4 people who checked in last. Well, pretty much anything but what they did.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#258

Post by FireBeyond »

masondixon wrote: post #244
bonzini wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at least up to $1,350. They can offer _as little as_ $1,350 even if the ticket costs more than $1,350/4 = $337.50, but there's no upper limit. Apparently their policy is to never go above 4x the cost of the ticket (they said it's $800 in this case, your computation in another message said $1030, but airline fares are really complex). That's a valid policy. But they should definitely have offered cash instead…

> But they should definitely have offered cash instead of vouchers. They are allowed to offer vouchers or free flights. https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights Should the law be different. Maybe. But the law is the law.

"Those travelers who don't get to fly are frequently entitled to denied boarding compensation in the form of a check or cash."

Eh. No. We're talking about the point at which this became Involuntary.

The same site you link to has no mention of vouchers when it's involuntary, which is also the subject of my initial calculation and quote.

As this article, and many others have stated, this is but one of the issues with the handling of this situation, that United (though not the only airline by any means) has been quite happy to perpetuate the myth that airlines "only" have to offer vouchers. They can choose to offer vouchers for voluntary denial.

They are REQUIRED to ONLY offer check or cash for IDB situations.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#259

Post by Berobero »

dalbasal wrote: post #239
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…

I'm not American, so I guess it's a bit out of place for me to comment . That said, my reading of this incident is naked corporatism. Laws, industry regulations, corporate policies and police enforcement are jumbled together, collaborating in a corporatist manner. (A) The airline has policies and business practices such as overbooking & "must fly." These save money, get staff to their required destinations, whatever.…

I feel it's important to detangle overbooking and involuntary debaording, here.

With overbooking itself, up until the point that someone is bumped against their will, the practice is purely a win-win for all; airlines save costs -- a boon for competition and prices -- and passengers volunteering for a later flight get compensation that they view as valuable enough for the inconvenience.

For involuntary deboarding, there are scenarios -- albeit presumably unlikely -- that can occur, regardless of overbooking, that necessitate its use. For example, as mentioned in the article, sudden weather changes forcing a reduction in weight, or simply a broken seat. Point being, there are possibly entirely legitimate issues of safety, generally outside the immediate control of the airline, that easily trump any one person's right to their seat, even after boarding.

While much blame should be placed on the police here in terms of how they handled the situation, I don't see why this isn't something to be handled, ultimately, by the DoT in further dictating passenger rights. For this specific case, if involuntary deboarding was only allowed, say, for cases affecting passenger safety, the airline would be left with the choice of either, one, living with the repercussions of not being able to transport their crew immediately, or two, upping the voluntary compensation until there was a taker (and there would be at some point).

That is to say, I don't see why this issue couldn't be handled more elegantly by creating a market where the airline gets forced to up the compensation until it is approximately equal to the expected costs of not being able to deboard someone. And if that creates too many scenarios where they simply don't get a taker for the deboarding, then clearly their actuaries need to be fired.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#260

Post by cookiecaper »

edsheeran wrote: post #49

They could have used common sense. Be polite. Raise the ante. Negotiate. There was a manager/person in charge who didn't use common sense and then it escalated to more parties without common sense. Low EQ who only know threat of force and escalation of force. Our loss of wisdom https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisd...

There are some counter-intuitive effects of the "common sense" approach. If people know that resisting longer will get them more, they will work to delay the process in an effort to maximize the airline's bid. This will impact schedules and ultimately lead to more hostile deplaning situations as people attempt to hold out for more.

Managers/overseers could intentionally place belligerent people on the plane who refuse to get up for less than $x000, use their authorization to grant the override, and then split the money with the passenger. In practice, the DoT minimum mandate could work as a soft ceiling, but managers may say that they negotiated past it to prevent a hostile situation with bad press like this one.

Consider that most passengers are paying +/- $125 for each flight (a direct round trip is 2 flights, connecting round trip 4 flights, a complete itinerary will usually be in the $300-$500 range depending on the details). Even at $200 the vouchers cost them money. It can have an impact if they start paying out $10k per flight in bumped passenger compensation.

You can argue that they shouldn't oversell, but then they're carrying empty seats from people who miss the flight, which is also a waste of money. Since they're already paying ~4x as much as the customer paid them with an $800 voucher, there's plenty of incentive to fine-tune the overselling algorithm just right and limit the necessity of passenger bumps.

I'm not necessarily saying this approach is worse than their current approach, but I just want to point out that it's not as simple as engaging in an open auction over the seats.

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