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Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

resistancereport.com

31–40 of 274 posts

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#31

I feel the current system of overbooking and how it is "regulated" is backwards, and airlines should rethink. Perhaps they could do some sort of an auction without a maximum. It is their problem after all, and a market mechanism seems a reasonable way to deal with this. Sometimes this would mean someone who does not care as much will gladly take $150 as compensation. Other cases might lead to much higher numbers. The…

The problem with your logic is giving private companies complete rights over your physical person once you enter their plane will (and does as shown by the incident) lead to abuse for profit. There was no security issue, there was no emergency, there was no legitimate reason to remove this person from the plane. The abuse and physical harm of a passenger was done entirely in the name of saving a few dollars by not se…

The plane couldn't leave until this person left. So there was a plane full of people who couldn't leave because of this jerk.

And he wasn't abused. He was told to leave multiple times by airline crew as well as security. He refused every time and forced security to drag him out. Whereupon he accidentally hit his face on an arm rest.

It's not abuse for profit. We all benefit from cheaper refundable fares from the overbooking system. We also benefit from having our flights not be canceled when the air crew isn't able to show up on time.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#32
post #6

The fact that the airline technically didn't do anything illegal here really speaks to the lack of consumer protection laws in this country.

Some people appear to think that what they did wasn't legal. See: http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/593329-usa-today-ua-forci...

This legal argument would explain both the CEO's twitter statements and the leaked letter.

If airline employees cannot legally contribute to "overbooking" and if a passenger has different rights once seated, then there will be a legal settlement. In that scenario, every communication by United would need to serve dual PR and legal objectives.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#33
post #25
post #15

Ignoring the physical assault, this sounds about par for United customer support... I've been avoiding United for years, but a few years ago, a few friends wanted to be picked up at the airport after United flights. Over 50% of them bought tickets for flights that didn't exist, and were instead consolidated onto other, later, flights. Airlines should have to pay large multiples of ticket prices (in cash) to passenger…

Jimmy Kimmel pointed out the main reason why they get away with this. “The next time we book a flight, it doesn’t matter if it’s United or Delta or American, if one of those flights is a dollar less than the other one, that’s the one we’ll pick. They know this. That’s why we’re stuck with them.” I don't understand the dynamics of how it ended up this way. Air travel used to be a luxury, and had fairly high margins. T…

One word: deregulation.

It's been a very sharp double-edged sword: on the one hand, it gave us effective competitors like Southwest and jetBlue forcing the "legacy" carriers to compete on price and routes, enabling far more people to be able to fly. On the other, it caused the legacy carriers compete on price, not service (the only thing they could really compete on before deregulation).

Personally, I fly Southwest and jetBlue when I'm in the US, but to get there, I end up on Delta/KLM/Air France. The prices are usually around what the legacy carriers are, but they have pretty much maintained the level of service they started with (Southwest famously never had meal service, only packets of peanuts). I think because they never got into the habit of cutting back a little bit each year, they haven't gotten into the same downward spiral the legacy carriers seem to have.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#34
post #4

If they had just increased the compensation passengers would have voluntarily given up their seat, everyone has their price. It didn't even need to be money, free flights, upgrades, it costs them next to nothing, especially when you consider this is still running in the media days later. Everyone hates to hear they overbook flights so you'd think when they get bitten United would take some of the savings made overboo…

They should do a live auction on the plane, "I need 4 people to get off for $100...$200..." The competitiveness to "win" would save airlines money, make the "winners" feel even better about getting booted, and the "losers" don't actually lose anything. Probably more efficient too.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#35
post #6

The fact that the airline technically didn't do anything illegal here really speaks to the lack of consumer protection laws in this country.

So it was stupid business not to offer more money for other people to leave the plane (or to find some other way to move the crew), there's nothing to argue about there. What did they do that should be illegal? Overselling each flight makes the tickets cheaper. People want cheaper tickets. So it isn't obvious to me that over selling is wrong. Is the problem that they failed to stop the people boarding before deciding…

An honest way to overbook would be to sell seats beyond capacity as standby.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#36
post #6

The fact that the airline technically didn't do anything illegal here really speaks to the lack of consumer protection laws in this country.

Airlines overbook because people don't show up for flights. Overbooking means airlines can offer passengers refundable tickets. Occasionally they get it wrong and have too many people show up. So they offer compensation to get people to voluntarily give up seats. If they can't get people to voluntarily give up seats they have the right to pick who to deny service to (but by law have to pay specific compensation to).…

Ask 10 people on the street how the compensation works today, maybe 2-3 will know. If you asked them 2 days ago, maybe 1.

Point is the compensation is obfuscated. If people demanded their $1350 or whatever when this happened, things may be better.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#37
post #21
post #11

I think the video of this incident is frankly disgusting, but it's not clear without more context why the situation escalated to the degree it did. For example, UA fly another plane 3 hours 20 minutes later to the same destination (which is to say, a very reasonable and perfectly expectable delay in any situation involving air travel), why did the doc need to be on exactly that plane, and why did the UA staff also ha…

He was a Dr. going to work

He is allegedly a doctor, not a demigod. Someone else can cover his shift.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#38

This e-mail illustrates the complete imbalance of the "contract" of carriage between passenger and airline, which is compounded by the Federal Aviation Regulations that give the crew ultimate power even when there's no safety risk[0]. The CEO states that the flight was 'fully boarded' and then later that it was decided to 'deny boarding' to four passengers. So was it fully boarded or not? It doesn't really matter, th…

What is the alternative to commercial airlines for someone who isn't crazy rich?

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#39
post #21
post #11

I think the video of this incident is frankly disgusting, but it's not clear without more context why the situation escalated to the degree it did. For example, UA fly another plane 3 hours 20 minutes later to the same destination (which is to say, a very reasonable and perfectly expectable delay in any situation involving air travel), why did the doc need to be on exactly that plane, and why did the UA staff also ha…

He was a Dr. going to work

The flight crew was going to work as well.

Re: Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal

#40

I seriously can't understand what kind of mental gymnastics this airline management is doing in order to justify in their heads that this is just fine. Even if the law is on their side, they still overbooked the plane by themselves, they still let everyone check in, they still let everyone in onboard and they still forcibly removed some random paying passenger just because someone on their staff wanted/needed (anyone…

They should have increased compensation. I'm wondering if they have a company limit of $800.

The reason this happened is they had another crew that missed their flight and needed to get to Lousville in time or another plane load of passengers would be stuck on the tarmac.

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