17 ms·
A man wouldn’t leave an overbooked United flight, so he was dragged off
- adekok 10y agoLegalities and contracts aside, I don't see why an airline would allow someone to board, and then remove them. That just can't end well.
- problems 10y agoSounds like it wasn't the normal overbooking procedure - it was overfull because of united employees.
- lamby 10y agoPerhaps, but why let too many people past the final boarding gate check?
- jessaustin 10y agoThe plane was full before all the United employees showed up? Yeah they should have gotten there sooner, but in previous situations when I knew the plane would wait on me I've been the last to board...
- mintplant 10y agoI don't think that answers lamby's question. Surely they know how many of their own employees will be flying ahead of time?
- jessaustin 10y agoDo uniformed airline employees get tickets? I've seen them board without producing tickets. They don't have to wait in line either. United might just have decided that it's easier to trust the discretion of its employees than to figure out ahead of time who's going where, when, especially since that could change constantly based on numerous factors.
- tyingq 10y agoThere's a structured system and documents for any employee flying. They have a variety of statuses ranging from "space available" to "must ride".
- tyingq 10y ago>Surely they know how many of their own employees will be flying ahead of time? They don't always. Crews call in sick, flights get cancelled, weather changes schedules, incoming flight being late delays connecting flight, etc. One aircraft type gets swapped for another (not all crews are qualified on all aircraft). Last minute crew moves will always exist. It's also not 100% clear that these employees were essential crew, or that they couldn't have taken a different flight. There's usually a range of employees flying, not all classed as "must ride", and often some that shouldn't be classified as "must ride". Of course, how you choose to open up seats is up to you.
- gdilla 10y agothey're not allowed to take off unless every passenger with a checked bag is on board. That's the law. Often they end up removing the bags and taking off without them.
- ww520 10y agoUnited employees taking passenger's seats? That's not overbooked. That's robbery.
- oh_sigh 10y agoNo, it's robbery if United doesn't compensate you for denying your boarding.
- rhino369 10y agoNot like united employees going on vacation or to a meeting. But a flight crew going to where they need to be. It's part and parcel of an airline service. If they can't get to where they need to be a flight will have to be delayed or canceled.
- djsumdog 10y agoIt comes down to the balance I guess. We can kick four people off and offer them each shitty compensation (usually a first class ticket for the next flight and worthless $200 vouchers for the same shitty airline that expire in less than 6 months) or cancel the flight this crew is for and lose an entire plane load worth of income. I understand the economics, but it's still bullshit. Those customers want to get home and they're boarded. I think everyone should do what this guy did in this situation. He paid for a flight. He didn't read through the 10 pages of bullshit EULA (no one does) and then they assaulted him to remove him from a flight. The whole plane looked angry. Now United has a PR nightmare .. that will last 3 days before everyone forgets. People keep flying United and nothing really happens.
- problems 10y agoYou have to understand why they overbook - jetfuel is extremely expensive and produces a massive amount of carbon pollution - most of the airlines barely operate at margin as it is. Cargo is cheaper to fly than passengers and many of them are converting more and more towards cargo for that reason. You don't want to be flying around in jets which aren't at capacity, it's an enormous waste of money and fuel - your tickets would cost significantly more and they'd have to run more flights resulting in more pollution. Their estimates are pretty good even - your odds of being overbooked - even on United, one of the worst offenders here - are about 1/1000. From what I've heard, you can sort of bargain with them from what I've heard, free food and drink, hotel accommodations, a partial refund even are commonly obtainable if you get delayed - though that kind of thing may depend on the airline. According to https://lifehacker.com/if-your-flight-is-overbooked-dont-volunteer-to-get-bum-1722036179 https://lifehacker.com/if-your-flight-is-overbooked-dont-vol... you can actually get 2-4x the ticket price if you deny getting bumped. I'd take that kind of cash in many situations. This was severely mishandled - the big mistake here was boarding the passengers before knowing the final count with the employees. It caused them not be able to bargain with individual customers to find someone who was willing to give up their seat for some perks or cash.
- mnm1 10y agoThen they should have figured that out before boarding everyone. This is a colossal fuckup. The airline assaulted its own customers beating them till they had to be carried out on a stretcher. And yet people still defend them.
- passivepinetree 10y agoObviously United was in the wrong here, but you might be going a little far. The main purpose of the stretcher might have been for restraining the man. It's wise to avoid making such inflammatory statements until we know more.
- mnm1 10y agoWhether he was beaten to the point he couldn't walk or restrained on a stretcher doesn't substantially change the colossal fuckup that is this situation nor the fact that they assaulted at least one passenger.
- passivepinetree 10y agoI totally agree with you, but the parent said "The airline assaulted its own customers beating them till they had to be carried out on a stretcher" when a) the police department assaulted the customer, not United staff (although they did call the PD in the first place) b) "beating them till they had to be carried out on a stretcher" obviously implies he was beaten until he couldn't walk, which is an allegation that hasn't been substantiated at this point. I totally agree that United colossally fucked up here, but the statement the parent made that I quoted earlier is patently false. I'm all for being righteously outraged, but can we please stick to factual statements while we're doing it?
- Doxin 10y agoThe main purpose of the stretcher was most definitely because the man was severely injured. Go hang around people with a confused mental state for a while and you'll recognise the behaviour the man shows when het gets back on the plane. He isn't just being a stubborn ass there.
- douche 10y agoVery little that airlines do appears logical, looking from the outside in. Especially United. I've never had so much as a mediocre experience flying with them - it's always been notably terrible.
- stagger87 10y agoWhat exactly makes the experience terrible? Are you exaggerating? There is nothing to it, you buy your ticket, and sit in a seat. It's the same boring routine.
- lavezzi 10y agoOn United you can get bumped from Economy if there's a high status flyer who needs your seat. I think United takes the crown with being shitty to general passengers.
- maxerickson 10y agoMaybe the excess boarding arose from some kind of unanticipated situation or oversight, a "mistake" if you will.
- Twirrim 10y agoToday must be a fun day to be on United's PR team.
- TallGuyShort 10y agoTough day for them, but now tomorrow I'm sure customers will be a lot more compliant and willing to take arbitrary orders to save the airline money, and that will make everyone's job easier. #WorthIt
- jessaustin 10y agoSadly, you're probably right. One suspects there have been several memos from corporate directing gate agents to reduce voucher spending by any means necessary. It isn't shocking that the obvious solution to this gate agent was to beat up a random Chinese guy.
- TallGuyShort 10y agoAnd if people doubt this, I'd refer them to the written apology issued by the CEO. He's very sorry that the passenger made them do this.
- ksrm 10y agoThe system works!
- exhilaration 10y agoThey just released this non-statement: https://twitter.com/united/status/851471781827420160 https://twitter.com/united/status/851471781827420160
- drcode 10y ago"So sorry we had to reaccommodate your forehead by concussing it against an armrest"
- 10y ago
- manacit 10y agoSomeone on a different message board put this situation very well: By the letter of the law, United was correct - morally, they were not. Their 'contract of carriage' allows them to IDB (Involuntary Deny Boarding) to passengers due to overselling, and bump people off at-will. Depending on how delayed the passenger would be to their final destination, they would owe compensation (up to a max of $1350) for the trouble. Unfortunately, the way this played out was pretty terrible. My hope would be that events like this could move United (and other airlines) to having more transparent overbooking policies and compensating people fairly, but that's not likely.
- whitepoplar 10y agoThe problem is that what's legal and what's ethical have diverged into two wholly different things. "The law" is now often used to aid in unethical activity, not to prevent it.
- striking 10y agoYou mean to say it hasn't always been that way?
- treehau5 10y agoThe other problem is what society views as ethical or moral is now subjective to each on a variety of different factors in this post post-modern society. There was once puritanical values, however despised they are by certain factions, which unified the "ethos" of the nation on what is and is not ethical. The civil rights movement came along and augmented that ethos for the better. Now we have groups who place abandoning a cat on the same level as abandoning a child, as an example. It's going to be very difficult on agreeing what is "ethical" when in the "me" society it translates to "what is ethical for me, right now, based on my current views of some form of science/philosophy/religion/spirituality/etc and what happened to me personally when I was growing up"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- someone1222 10y agoEveryone should have left the plane and stopped flying United in the future. These things could be so simple and self-correcting if everyone acted instead of screaming oh my god.
- nojvek 10y agoI think its a classic case of herd behaviour. If no one is standing up and stopping it why should I? Just needed one person to stand up and fight the stupidy. Then the entire flight would have gone into a resistance.
- rhino369 10y agoThe outrage mob is pushing this pretty hard. Booting people off a plane is pretty shitty behavior for an airline. It's bad customer service and they should dealt with it earlier than after boarding. But if they have to do it, the passenger shouldn't be allowed to just refuse. This guy did. And he had to get dragged off the plane. I don't really see an alternative other than just letting anyone willing to scream to stay and then boot off another customer with dignity. This is shitty service by united escalated unreasonably by the passenger.
- whitepoplar 10y agoI think you're wrong. They should have upped their monetary incentive until someone left voluntarily. It was their business fuckup, not the passenger's, and they should pay for it.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoYeah, the mistake was United's. But the passenger also acted unreasonably. If you act like a two-year-old - even in a situation that, initially, totally isn't your fault - then you may get treated like a two-year-old. And if you act like a two-year-old after the cops start telling you to leave, they're typically going to make you leave - using whatever level of force is required to do so. So, yes, the initial fault is United's. But there's blame enough to go around.
- denom 10y agoBut if he had the right to his seat, then why should he leave?
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoOnce the cops show up and tell him to? Because the cops told him to, that's why. Note well: I am not saying that the cops are always right. I am not saying that we should all be good little citizens and obey whatever the authority figures tell us to do. I am saying that, in the actual world we live in, disobeying police orders will often involve painful physical consequences, almost immediately. You can argue about whether that should be. Fine. I'm saying that it is that way, though, and you'd better plan on it being that way in your situation before you decide to ignore what the cops tell you to do.
- huangc10 10y agoThis is just a guess...United needed to get a couple of pilots on the flight from Chicago to Louisville or else another flight would be delayed/canceled. Only reason I can think of an employee would take precedence over passenger.
- panzagl 10y agoWhy didn't they figure this out before boarding everyone? It's much easier to deny boarding than to pull someone off of a plane.
- huangc10 10y agoI don't know. Last minute logistical changes based on timetables, planes, weather, etc. The reason why I guessed this is because my brother is a pilot.
- misingnoglic 10y agoThey should have offered a ton more than $800 for that then.
- pbiggar 10y agoBuried at the bottom: > "The airline eventually cleared everyone from the plane, Bridges said, and did not let them back on until the man was removed a second time — in a stretcher." My reading is they beat him so badly they had to put him in a stretcher. Is that right?
- helipad 10y agoI would imagine it was a form of restraining him.
- eximius 10y agoHave you seen the video? It isn't clear to me if he's unconscious or just limp.
- walterbell 10y agoOne article claimed that a stun gun was used, hence the need to drag him out. Edit: it was a tweet quoted by Vanity Fair, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/united-airlines-passenger-dragged-off-flight http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/united-airlines-passe...
- pbiggar 10y agoI'm extremely skeptical. They had a stretcher to hand but no handcuffs?
- dudul 10y agoWell, the good thing is that they may not have to worry about overbooking for a while now :)
- bello 10y agoThey messed up and overbooked the flight, sure. But why on earth would they forcefully drag people out of the plane, while they could just find volunteers? They could offer cash/miles to whoever volunteered, increasing the offer until someone accepted. I've seen other airlines do this on several occasions. They couldn't have handled it worse than they did.
- panzagl 10y agoThey did, they went up to $800 and nobody volunteered. They were too cheap to offer any more.
- jessaustin 10y agoThis is the problem here. If they would have offered $5000 they would have had four seats immediately. They're going to pay a lot more than $20,000 for this disaster.
- ryandrake 10y agoWhy offer $5000 when you can just beat people's faces in and drag them away?
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoWhat are they legally required to offer before they can just pick people?
- cozzyd 10y agoUnited could have had someone drive the passengers in a van or something at least...
- pfortuny 10y agoThe fact is that you agree to lots of things when boarding a plane (buying a ticket). Not knowing the law is not an excuse. So... It is annoying and terrible but it is ehat it is.
- ed_balls 10y agoWhy not use the jump seats?
- rtkwe 10y agoThen the flight attendants wouldn't have had seats in the case of an emergency which I'm willing to bet isn't allowed.
- ed_balls 10y agoA friend that works for Emirates managed to get this way to home on Christmas. There are usually 2 spare jump seats. You put 2 pilots there and 2 where the couple was. The flight is quite short.
- rtkwe 10y agoHmm, maybe the plane they were flying has fewer spares or they'd already filled any spares with other crew they were shuffling around?
- tdb7893 10y agoAirlines operate in very uncertain and variable environments (weather isn't always what it is predicted, mechanical issues are pretty common, and pilots can get sick and other stuff) and having planes or pilots on call everywhere is prohibitive expensive so it's really not surprising that they have to do stuff like this sometimes. Airlines need to be more up front about their policies but there doesn't seem to be a good way to fix it without increasing prices, which they can't really do because people flying are generally so price sensitive.
- djsumdog 10y agoOr they can just take the hit. In this case, they decided to comp four people so they didn't have to cancel a plane load. Seems like good economics, but no one wanted to give up their seats. I mean why would you. It's bad enough you have to get molested by the TSA once. Twice? Fuck that. I want to go home. No I don't want a voucher for $200 of my next flight with the same shitty airline that will expire before I can use it. They should have just realized they can get a crew to that plane and canceled that flight; take the hit. Those passengers haven't boarded yet and would be easier to deal with.
- tedmiston 10y agoYou are legally entitled to cash compensation over an airline voucher -- you just have to ask for it and a lot of people either don't know that or just don't do it. Also the rebooking is not necessarily on the same airline if they don't have a similar flight available that day but others do.
- tarlinian 10y agoThis is only true if you are involuntarily kicked off...if you volunteer you get whatever they agreed to give you.
- tedmiston 10y agoYeah, good point that cash must be explicitly requested in advance for voluntary denied boarding vs involuntary. The Points Guy has a pretty good guide for VDB. https://thepointsguy.com/2010/08/points-guy-pointer-anatomy-of-an-airline-bump-and-tips-for-success/ https://thepointsguy.com/2010/08/points-guy-pointer-anatomy-...
- ArtDev 10y agoI hope he sues the pants off them. There is a racist angle here too. Why target the Chinese guy?
- WillyOnWheels 10y agoA Computer randomly selected 4 passengers for removal.
- strictnein 10y agoAnd probably eliminates everyone flying with multiple people on the same reservation.
- metasean 10y agoThe article mentions the first two people asked to leave were a couple flying together.
- strictnein 10y agoOh, interesting. I just kept picturing them requesting a child to leave on their own, or some other insanity.
- Macha 10y agoA couple were asked to leave first. Maybe for reservations of >4?
- phil21 10y agoIs it random? I imagine they are not kicking a Global Services passenger off because they got RNG'ed. Most likely the lowest fare ticket on the plane, since compensation is capped at 4x the cost of the segment.
- gerbilly 10y agoThey never said random, they said a computer chose who to bump, probably like this: select name from passengers order by ticket_price desc limit 4;
- smdz 10y agoLaw is intended to, at a fundamental level, reflect and enforce the moral and ethical standards of a civilised society. But when law becomes a reason to induce immoral and/or unethical (but legal) behavior - the civilization collapses. Good luck to us all!
- aaln 10y ago"An unjust law is no law at all"
- nbanks 10y agoFrom the doctor's perspective, refusing to leave was probably the best way to publicize United's bad customer service. It reminds me of the country singer who wrote "United Breaks Guitars" seven years ago: youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo
- username223 10y agoWhat really gets me is the PR flack smirking and waving his middle finger: > [Charlie] Hobart said in the statement. "We apologize for the overbook situation." In other words, "sorry about selling more seats than there were on the plane, but yeah, we had that guy beaten and dragged off. Deal with it."
- Oras 10y agoI think the best reaction should come from consumers to boycott United airlines for a while and this will teach it a good lesson in customer service and behaviour.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vwcx 10y agoThe real thing to fear here is the normalization of violence. Good perspective in the WP comments: "The truly shocking thing here is that violence - with the real possibility of serious injury - was viewed as appropriate in a situation that was purely logistical. The airline wanted seats for its own employees. This was not an emergency - such as a terrorist attack or a drunk passenger endangering people. The lack of judgment is stunning. There is no way that violence was justified."
- maxerickson 10y agoBah! Our society is less violent today than even recent history and continued reductions are more likely than not. Which I don't mean we shouldn't be concerned about unnecessary use of force, I mean that it requires very careful measurement to say that violence is being normalized (Rather than rejected).
- 67726e 10y agoSo what do you do when someone refuses to leave? I'm on the doctor's side, United should not overbook a plane and bump a customer to get their own people on board, but when someone refuses to leave what other options do you have? Taze him and drag him off? You'll have to use force to remove someone.
- crooked-v 10y agoPick them up and carry them out. If necessary, bring in more people so that you can pick them up and carry them out without hurting them.
- gizmodo59 10y agoWhy should he leave in the first place?
- KaoruAoiShiho 10y agoRaise the offer from $800, which is a low amount for an airline overbooking.
- DiabloD3 10y agoSome versions of this story state the man that was beaten was a doctor (a specialist) that needed to be somewhere to see patients in an emergency situation. So, yeah, I'd hate to be United's CEO at the moment, this is now too big to sweep under the rug and blindly quote IDB and other such laws.
- Myrmornis 10y agoSo many American police officers are violent thugs under a very thin veneer.
- nojvek 10y agoWell no one polices the police and there is no repercussion. Its not like the public has any choice. Its a monopoly and will get paid with tax money anyway.
- Myrmornis 10y agoYou wouldn't see police acting like that in, say, Germany. So it's not just the structural situation that you describe because that obtains in any country. You would see a scene like that in, say, America, or the Philippines, or many "non-Western" countries.
- blizkreeg 10y agoThe depraved part here is that none of United's employees (flight attendants and/or pilots) on board the aircraft stopped law enforcement or whoever it was from forcibly ejecting this guy. The law may be on United's side but United's employees on board could have been more human about it and not let this happen once the passenger refused to be booted off the plane. Since when is use of force the norm?
- SamBam 10y agoOnce they called the cops, they had every expectation that force may result. It was their decision to escalate to that point.
- ryandrake 10y agoMy predictions: 1. There will be no personal consequences for any of the belligerents involved in this, including the airline employees and police officers. Nobody is going to get fired. 2. The victim will receive no compensation for his injuries, instead will be further victimized in the courts. 3. There will be no business cost to United. They are already known as one of the most awful airlines in the world, and people still voluntarily choose to do business with them. People will continue to fly with them despite them now having earned the "Beats Its Customers" badge.
- r00fus 10y agoI think you're wrong about #3. Quantized at the micro-level (individuals may not choose differently), it's certainly unlikely that people will suddenly change their patterns in large droves immediately. However that might also still result in people deciding not to fly or switch loyalties where they are flexible (ie, someone having lots of miles in several air programs without any restriction to use UA flights). Stochastically speaking, this event will likely have an impact if anyone at UA cares to look for it months from now.
- tracker1 10y agoMay be an opportunity for another airline to offer up "conversion points" for people to switch over, with a promise, not to have you forcibly removed from a plane after boarding for overbooking (or in this case, similar reasons).
- shamas 10y agoI wasn't aware of how terrible they were and I won't be flying with them anymore, and I will be flying in the USA a lot in the next 12 months. But every airline I've tried here has been impossibly terrible, so...
- milesf 10y agoThis was such a simple problem to fix for United. They offered vouchers for people to volunteer. No one accepted. So keep raising the offer until 4 people accepted. Problem solved. Instead they chose violence. I will never fly United Airlines again.
- colmvp 10y agoI'm honestly flabbergasted by how idiotic United was in this situation. Was a few hundred/thousand dollars in savings worth the negative PR they got out of this whole ordeal? Every consumer knows how shitty economy flying is, especially on United, and would easily sympathize with the consumer who bought their ticket fair and square.
- Myrmornis 10y agoDid they arrest him before removing him? Surely that would be the right thing to do. If they do not have a reason for arresting him then they can't just beat people up to act as "security" for the airline. If they had arrested him and read him his rights I'm sure he'd have understood that the gravity of the situation was such that he really had to stand up and leave.
- tyingq 10y agoBetting this doesn't end well for United. It's not 100% clear that they exhausted other reasonable options. They don't say if the 4 employees were a flight crew that NEEDED to be somewhere. There's no indication if there were other employees (not in uniform) that could have been deplaned first. There are other flights, on Sundays, that leave after this one (one at 9pm). The judgement to go with violence after offering $400, then $800 is odd as well. Surely someone would give up a seat after the next one or two bumps in the offer. The onus is on United, since they didn't identify the issue until after passengers were boarded.
- panzagl 10y agoSo the questions I still have- What's the legal difference between 'Denying Boarding' and kicking someone off? Can you legally kick someone off an airplane 'just because' (i.e. not oversold/security/safety)? Who did the removing- law enforcement or United employees? What's the legality of private employees assaulting someone? This is all about level of outrage though- whether the guy should sue for civil damages or should file criminal complaints.
- tedmiston 10y ago> Can you legally kick someone off an airplane 'just because' (i.e. not oversold/security/safety)? Yes, see Rule 21 in https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx?Mobile=1#sec21 https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag.... One of the subpoints is that they can remove you for noncompliance with crew requests, and also, "disorderly conduct". They can even remove you just for smelling bad (H-16).
- woogiewonka 10y agoI knew there was a reason I've been avoiding United like the plague.
- duglauk 10y agolawsuit is waiting for you united
- jbeales 10y agoFor comparison, Delta had a huge number of overbooked flights over the weekend due to weather cancellations. They handled it by raising the compensation for giving up your seat until they had the right number of passengers for the flights. As a result they got some great press on a weekend when they might have had horrible press: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2017/04/09/why-delta-air-lines-paid-me-11000-not-to-fly-to-florida-this-weekend/#17504f7b4de1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2017/04/09/why...
- jschulenklopper 10y agoHappened to me, flying with Delta last Saturday. During online check in, so almost 24 hours before I was at JFK for my flight, the web application offered a choice between four levels of compensation I'd be willing to trade my ticket for, like $100, $200, $300 and $500.
- HenryBemis 10y agoUnited sucks! I've been lucky/unlucky in my life to fly with them ONCE and they are THE-WORSE!! I prefer flying some shady cheap company, at least then they "meet my expectations" while I've never heard anyone ever saying a good thing about United. I know my input offers nothing to anyone here, apart the "poor" United employee that will have to go through all our "hate" and think "oops this is a forum for people with brains and skills and they are trashing us big time.. now HERE is a pack of skilled people that would never fly with us OR work for us!!"
- heifetz 10y agoMilitarization of our society. Airports are like warzones, with warzone like police and military and security process. Whenever there is a security issue at the airport or the plane, it's taken to the extreme. Where is the common sense in this case? Has the airliners lost their minds? If something like this happens again in the future, I hope other passengers would rise up and prevent security from doing this.
- AngeloAnolin 10y agoIt has been mentioned a lot in the comments that United was correct as per their Contract of Carriage - Involuntary Deny Boarding. But what's being missed here is that, the person who was dragged wasn't denied to board the plane in the first place. He was already seated, a seat number assigned to him, he is on the plane and by all means and precedents, he has already boarded. You cannot anymore deny boarding for someone whom you have already allowed passage inside the plane and seated. I assume this will be a feast day for the lawyers of the person removed forcibly, as they have all the angles working certainly in their favor.
- tedmiston 10y agoTheir technical definition of boarding may include everything up to until taxing for takeoff. They definitely are able to remove people between boarding and takeoff, whether through IDB or another clause.
- AngeloAnolin 10y agoThat technical definition should be explicitly stated on their contract, otherwise, it does not and would not hold up in any court of law. Ambiguity on contract clauses becomes the burden on those who wrote and enforces it, and that by itself is a concern because United cannot simply state that their supposed clause also magically enforces such other circumstances. They can definitely remove any person from a flight, but the context here is that they made an error from the get go all the way to how they handled the situation.
- tedmiston 10y agoThe part of the CoC I read this morning (linked in another comment), after making the above comment, sounds like the rules for removing a passenger are independent of boarding.
- AngeloAnolin 10y agoMaybe you were referring to this: 2. Boarding Priorities - If a flight is Oversold, no one may be denied boarding against his/her will until UA or other carrier personnel first ask for volunteers who will give up their reservations WILLINGLY in exchange for compensation as determined by UA. If there are not enough volunteers, other Passengers may be denied boarding involuntarily in accordance with UA’s boarding priority: + Passengers who are Qualified Individuals with Disabilities, unaccompanied minors under the age of 18 years, or minors between the ages of 5 to 15 years who use the unaccompanied minor service, will be the last to be involuntarily denied boarding if it is determined by UA that such denial would constitute a hardship. + The priority of all other confirmed passengers may be determined based on a passenger’s fare class, itinerary, status of frequent flyer program membership, and the time in which the passenger presents him/herself for check-in without advanced seat assignment. Some relevant points: >> no one may be denied boarding against his/her will until UA or other carrier personnel first ask for volunteers who will give up their reservations WILLINGLY in exchange for compensation as determined by UA >> If there are not enough volunteers, other Passengers may be denied boarding involuntarily in accordance with UA’s boarding priority Note that after the phrase UA's boarding priority, it explicitly stated that: the time in which the passenger presents him/herself for check-in without advanced seat assignment. This is very clear that their IDB clause is solely focused on a person not yet physically inside the plane, with a seat allocated to him/her. Again, contracts and clauses are always open to different (mis)interpretations and the bias goes down to which entity one would want it favorable to. Update: Capitalized the word Willingly as it is implied in this contract.
- mattsfrey 10y agoSure it was a dumb/unethical thing to do on behalf of the airline and should have been handled differently etc. I'm wondering why nobody is commenting on the absurd behavior of the passenger however - insisting on forcing police to physically drag him from the plane. Once it was decided and the guys in uniforms with guns show up, what sane person is honestly going to do that? The decision to remove the passenger we can all rightly agree was wrong, but the graphic nature of how events unfolded at that point is really on the passenger.
- Mithaldu 10y agoIf the doc ain't with his patients the next day, maybe he figured he'd at least make it as expensive for UA as possible.
- colmvp 10y agoPersonally, I don't consider his behavior to be absurd. His form of non-violent protest to this situation helped bring to light some rather absurd policies. And as a customer who has been on some awful United flights, alongside the experience of waiting in airports and commuting for hours, I absolutely sympathize with his position. Why should this man be forced off the plane when he bought a ticket, passed all the security check points, segmented a portion of his day for this trip, and was mostly a compliant customer? The fault of this is squarely on United who had many options available to them and opted to escalate it into the situation that it became. This isn't a situation where only one seat was available on a plane and the only solution was to bump this one person off so that someone more important could take it. This is a situation where United could've easily upped the compensation to look for someone among dozens of passengers to give up their seat. Honestly, most consumers are not going to look at this story and sympathize with United.
- ksrm 10y agoThe airline should never have let it get to that point. That is precisely what is unethical about it.
- cmurf 10y agoI think this is milquetoast logic. You acknowledge the airlines' mistakes, and then with exactly zero logic you shift the burden of consequence entirely to the victim. Shit airline policy, shit airline decision making prior to boarding to avoid an altercation, shit airline decision making after the boarding process by being too cheap to bribe literally anyone off the plane, shit airline decision to have a "random" person forcibly removed. Yeah that's all bad but in the end it was the passengers fault for what happened? Ummm, yeah, that's shit logic. How did you just get from Exhibits A, B, C, D, and E to conclusion Z with no dots connected? I also call bullshit on "the computer" picking someone randomly to be removed. I will eat my hat if the computer really has a random function for this purpose, rather than one based on seniority (miles status) or yet another shit decision on part of the airline shifting a personal choice to that of the computer, i.e. lying. I'm glad this guy stuck to his decision. Even better there's video for his future lawsuit. The only thing they understand is money. And he should take as much of their money as his lawyer can possibly extract out of the airline. It's the only way airline employes who made bad decisions at literally every step along this sequence will make adjustments. Had he merely complied, it would have secured the policies as just and reasonable in the eyes of the airline, even though they aren't just or reasonable.
- losteverything 10y ago" I had lasagna" Sometimes you want news to be fake news.
- grizzles 10y agoOh man. If I was United's competition, I'd be looking to do a major ad buy right now. I'd never let them live this down. First ad: A United plane filled with Punching Bags instead of passengers.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tty7 10y agoI think its interesting this has been completely removed from the front page
- huac 10y agoAbout half of the comments blame the victim!
- FabHK 10y agoOr perpetrator, depending on how you look at it. It's not a clear-cut case.
- grzm 10y agoLikely because of the volume and rate of comments. There's a "overheated discussion detector" algorithm that can push down a story. There may be some user flags as well (though not enough to display the [flagged] tag), which can further lower it's ranking.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThis should never happen; regardless of how you feel about the practice of overbooking or bumping passengers for staff, if there aren't seats available, a pre-sold ticket shouldn't be convertible into a boarding pass, and the passenger should never have been able to get onto the plane or even into the secured area of the airport (and doing this is the only sane and efficient thing to do if airlines are going to allow checked baggage at all, given positive bag matching rules.)
- justin66 10y agoFrom a purely customer service conflict resolution standpoint, the fact that the guy claimed to be a doctor gave whoever was handling the situation for United a very easy out and a way to move on to the next person. I wonder why they didn't take it.
- vijayr 10y agoWhy does it matter if the person is a doctor or a janitor? He had a valid ticket, was assigned a seat and was already on the plane. They could've simply offered more money and there would've been takers, instead of all this nastiness
- justin66 10y ago> Why does it matter if the person is a doctor or a janitor? If I were in a customer service position where policy dictated I kick the guy off the plane, and he did not cooperate, I'd honestly look for any way to avoid the whole police ejection bullshit. The passenger being a doctor gave those customer service people a pretty good out, in case they needed to defend their actions (to defend skipping over the guy who refused to get up and leave, specifically) to either their management or to the next person in the crowd to be picked to give up a seat. I am surprised they didn't take it. I wasn't commenting on the wisdom of the policy.
- PuffinBlue 10y agoI feel like this is going to make it into PR textbooks as a perfect example of how not to manage a developing situation. Right from the pre-boarding request for volunteers yielding no results, to then letting passengers board, to 'randomly' selecting 4 people to 'volunteer' after failing to increase the incentive bounty above $800, to calling in the cops, to patronising responses on Twitter, to refusing to comment when major news outlets get in touch and on to the CEO failing to apologise for the harm to the guy but instead for having to 're-accommodate these customers'. Nothing about this was handled well but you wouldn't expect it to be because it required a series of damaging institutional/cultural practices to be in place already to let the situation develop in the first place - so the response was always going to be sub-par.
- Jayakumark 10y agoIronically, this CEO is being awarded the best communicator of the year by PRNews tonight :-) http://newsroom.united.com/2017-03-17-United-Airlines-CEO-Oscar-Munoz-Named-PRWeeks-Communicator-of-the-Year http://newsroom.united.com/2017-03-17-United-Airlines-CEO-Os...
- jaredsohn 10y agoIt looks like that happened in March. (It says "Last night" and the date of the article is March 17.)
- abandonliberty 10y agoBased on my experience with United this is corporate culture, rather than 'one bad decision'. A culture that focuses on maximizing profits per transaction with little left for human dignity or compassion - let alone relationship building. On the bright side, "United breaks guitars" is a really catchy tune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
- tutufan 10y ago"The beatings will continue until morale improves." (since no one else has said it yet)
- yellowapple 10y agoIs there some reason why overbooking isn't classified as fraud?
- JohnLeTigre 10y agoSome observations - Surely there is a difference between overbooking and diminishing the number of available seats after the fact. - Also, I would like to see how their "random computer pick" complies with their legal obligation of having IDB priority criterions. - That was excessive force without any doubt. I mean, they had to clean up the blood afterwards. - The doctor had to meet patients the next day, he had to uphold his hypocratic oath, I'm not sure this constitutes a "refusal" to vacate the plane in the legal sense.
- talmand 10y ago"Your honor, the reason I committed trespass was because I had to meet patients then next day and I should be absolved of these charges." Yep, that should work.
- JohnLeTigre 10y agolol, good point I suspect it wasn't tresspass though, more like a bought-pass
- darth_mastah 10y agoHorrifying. Watching videos like that makes you think: "is it safe to go to the U.S. for holidays"?
- nojvek 10y agoTSA took 30 mins when I opted out to do a pat. Be prepared for a lot of time wasted on absolutely stupid things. Its like Americans pay so much tax that Govt has no idea what to do with it.
- darth_mastah 10y agoHorrifying. Watching videos like that makes you think: "is it safe to go to the U.S. for holidays"?
- darth_mastah 10y agoHorrifying. Watching videos like that makes you think: "is it safe to go to the U.S. for holidays"?
- fantasticsid 10y agoThis post has over 470 comments and was posted 14 hours ago, yet I wasn't able to find it on HN from the first 3 pages. On the third page I see lots of posts with lower number of comments and an earlier post time. I had to use the search at the bottom to find this story. Why?
- gargravarr 10y agoI feel the need to add my feeling of horror and revulsion at what United did here. I'm British and cannot think of a single justifiable reason to violently remove a passenger who has paid for the right to fly, and is obeying the rules. Purchasing a ticket creates a contract between the individual and the airline; so long as the passenger upholds their end, which from what I can tell this passenger did, the airline is violating their end of the contract, and worse is getting the police involved in what is essentially a contractual matter. This is dangerously totalitarian, getting officers who are employed to protect the population to enforce the whims of the corporation. I simply cannot believe anyone along the chain of communication here didn't stop and say, 'this is wrong'. The lack of humanity is simply astounding - I am at a loss for words. I sincerely hope he sues both the airline and the police for this, it's assault and breach of contract. I'll echo what others are saying, this is a dangerous situation to allow to quiet down. We need to keep pressure on United until the responsible parties are made to answer for their decisions.
- KyleBerezin 10y agoI can't view this article. It just tells me to subscribe to the Washington post. I thought it was taboo to put paid articles on hacker news.