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Remove United from your flight results

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Re: Remove United from your flight results

#151

Post by rbcgerard »

At the end of the day the problem is:

- the service provided has become essential (airlines, cell phones, home internet, etc)

- it's provided relatively cheaply to a large group of people

- there are few alternatives (and in many cases no alternatives)

- barriers to entry are high -but profit margins are low or cyclical, or you need scale to compete

All of this leads to customer dissatisfaction, we need the service, our particular business doesn't matter, competitors are unlikely to enter the space, and perversely since there are few to no alternatives as long as people are equally dissatisfied the few players just swap customers for no real net loss

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#152

Post by selectodude »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #73
terrestrial wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A law would not "fix" this. It's a workaround. Which law was this guy breaking to begin with? The problem is lack of scrutiny by the officers handling this. The process should have gone something like this: United: "Hey, we have this guy refusing the leave the airplane. Can you help us remove him?" Chicago PD: "Why won't he leave the airplane?" United: "He says he needs to catch this flight for something work-related…

It wasn't the Chicago PD in this case.

Somehow the CPD is a sympathetic character in this story for the first time in human history.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#153

Post by selectodude »

redler wrote: post #96
foxylad wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would renting a private jet have been a viable solution for United to get their four employees where they needed to go? I have no idea what it costs, but given they were in the hole for several thousand dollars in refunds, it might have saved them money as well as grief.

It would probably take a day to arrange, and then coat about $15,000 per flight hour. Not the quickest or most frugal option.

They're flying to Kentucky, not Tokyo. They're not using a Gulfstream G650. $5k/hr max.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#154

Post by ww520 »

cloudwizard wrote: post #124

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…

WTF. That's unbelievably moronic. Are there competent people in United?

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#155

Post by bigiain »

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-...

Surely you're not suggesting he hired a personal injury specialist law firm _before_ he bought his ticket and got on that plane?

Someone else _offered to get off this plane - for a few hundred or so bucks more than the on-site middle management was prepared to pay - so they chose to not only break his contract illegally, but physically assaulted him using hired goons to do so.

I'd bet reasonable money that Stephen Golan's people contacted Dao, and by "hired" they mean "The law form has offered to do this on a _very_ small commission, because they know just how much money United stands to lose here, and Stephen Golan plans on buying his own 747 with his 15% cut of the settlement figure".

And as much as I hate ambulance chasers - I'm cheering this one on here.

It's _possible_ I'll get o a United plane in future, but that'll require me knowing that this incident hurt them a lot - enough to ensure that nobody working at United now or in the future doesn't hear about it, and that it's blindingly obvious being part of letting a situation like this happen again will not only be an immediate firing offense, but also have United's lawyers chasing illegally acting staff for whatever they own to cover then next 8 figure damage payout.

For better or worse - this is how the justice system works against corporations - they can't choose to assault a person and put them in hospital - then just say "Oh sorry, here we'll cover your hospital bill. Now we're all good, right?" and have everybody involved just say "Company policy, soz!". Stephen Golan needs to take enough money out of United's coffers to guarantee that there's a top down message send inside United that this must _never ever_ happen again - no matter what the company policy says. (I'd also settle for United just covering Dao's expenses, and the entire chain of management from CEO down including the airport rent-a-cops as well being sentenced to whatever jail time they'd d=face if they're each personally committed this assault on Dao in public. But I'd be prepared to let Dao choose which of those outcomes he'd prefer...)

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#156

Post by mc32 »

larsiusprime wrote: post #126
mc32 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Lots of people get injured severely daily and very, very few hire high powered lawyers to litigate their case. It seems clear he wants to win "big". But you know, maybe that's what everyone one wrongfully injured does.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#157

Post by johnfn »

jedharris wrote: post #128
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…

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…

I'm not arguing the fact that United did a really bad thing. I definitely agree with that.

I'm only arguing the supposition that United is a uniquely bad company.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#158

Post by [deleted] »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #90

I do 100K miles a year on JAL. Rockstar airline. In the US go out of my way to fly Virgin even when I have top status on One World and could fly American. I took the American Tokyo-SF flight one as JAL was so booked. Never again. I will stay in another day. A co-work of mine just went to Japan for the first time and he has status on One World. I talked him into the JAL flight. He was amazed at the difference. America…

[deleted]

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#160

Post by abecedarius »

singlow wrote: post #144
braveo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

This might be like a false report, since it's questionable they had any right to remove him at all (according to other comments above). But I only meant to imply here that United deserves moral blame, and e.g. boycotts.
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