7 ms·

This e-mail illustrates the complete imbalance of the "contract" of carriage between passenger and airline, which is compounded by the Federal Aviation Regulati

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, the airline can change its language as it sees fit, to achieve its desired business objective and the customer has no recourse. I'm an aviation enthusiast but I don't fly commercial airlines any more for this reason amongst others. [0] Because when there's no safety risk they can just escalate until the customer becomes aggravated, and then there's a safety risk.

Shivetya 10y ago
I take issue with the idea it was over booked when it was the airline wanting to transport its own people in place of booked customers. If anything we shall get to witness if the power of social media can overcome such abuse, It has helped turn the tables a bit with policing but usually only when it occurs in a public setting. People do need to take note that this actually is another case of police abuse just at the behest of a private company.
- valuearb 10y ago
  So United should not have tried to board their flight personnel so that another plane full of passengers could sit on the tarmac for hours in Louisville with no crew?
  - cmurf 10y ago
    This is not the fault of any passenger. The airline ceased to be civil when they shifted from an auction, to inviting police power on board. It was morally wrong for them to do this, and it was even worse for the police to agree to it. There's no ethical, legal, or contractual argument for what the airline did; or the power they claim to have in this letter. They do not have the power to deplane people for the reason stated, their contract lists out numerous reasons for passenger removal but this is not one of them.
    - ntsplnkv3 10y ago
      They should've done a number of things before resorting to forcing people off. They should've increased the value far more before this occurred. And on top of all that, there is no transparency at all on how they kick people off. And they have the audacity to talk nonchalantly about this man who had obligations refused to get off so he needed to be bloodied when they could've done so much more. Sorry, it's not this man's fault someone got sick and a flight crew needs to be in Louisville. Hire more people or save 4 seats on every plane in the future. We shouldn't be responsible for a company's mistakes.
  - macintux 10y ago
    United should have kept raising the offered compensation.
  - tomaha 10y ago
    They should make sure they have the seats for their personnel and not sell them to customers. In every other business if you sell the same thing to two people I would call it fraud.
    - bronco21016 10y ago
      It's really not that simple at all. A multitude of things could have happened in SDF (Louisville) causing the crew there to be unable to fly. Since it was a whole crew I would guess they hit up against FAA mandated rest requirements. In the interest of making sure that flight in SDF still went out the airline scrambled to get a reserve (flight crew members that are on-call) crew down to SDF. These things often happen at the last minute with no warning. Not at all am I defending what happened on this flight. Just want to point out that last second adds of flight crew members is a VERY common occurrence and without it the number of cancels would skyrocket astronomically.
      - ntsplnkv3 10y ago
        > Since it was a whole crew I would guess they hit up against FAA mandated rest requirements. Gee, I wonder if they could, I don't know, hire more people so that these situations don't happen as often? Heaven forbid they lose a little bit of profit a year... You simply delay the other flight. You don't force someone off of a flight they've already boarded.
        bronco21016 10y ago
        It's really hard to describe how all of this works without going into extremely detailed scenarios and edge cases. Simply put though hiring more people doesn't do anything. Those extra people still would have to be sitting on call somewhere. Once they receive the call they're sent to where they're needed which still results in this situation. It's simply unreasonable to think they would have spare flight crews in every single possible destination. Unless you want about 1,000% increase in ticket prices of course. I'm sure the other flight was delayed. Not getting a crew there on this last flight out for the night though would have likely meant cancelling the flight in Louisville or delaying it at least 24 hours. Stranding a plane in a city like Louisville would cause major ripple effects down the line resulting in probably another 10-15 flights being delayed. If they cancelled rather than delay now you have a plane full of passengers that need to be re-routed on multiple other planes that are likely already full. Re-location of flight crews is simply a necessary option for the airlines at this point of time. Maybe down the road we can remotely pilot airliners and then situations like this won't arise.
  - ropiku 10y ago
    United should've planned ahead for their staff to get to where they need without forcing somebody off the plane. They already knew how many tickets were sold, how many checked in and how many boarded (they were already on the plane).
    - scurvy 10y ago
      People get sick. Stuff happens. Every airline does this. It sucks, but if you think your distributed system in the cloud is complicated, running an airline every day would blow your mind.
      - cmurf 10y ago
        Nope. They needed to have their house in order before boarding. They have the contractual right to deny boarding for overbooking, but this was not strictly an overbooking. They wanted to replace paying customers with non-paying non-customer crew, i.e. not overbooked. But even if you word smith this into overbooking, once the plane is boarded, the contract has a list of reasons for removing a passenger and not a single one of those reasons applies to this case. The airline needed to raise the compensation price until someone volunteered, and if still no one volunteered, then tough noogies. They still do not get to shift from a civilized situation to a violent one by dragging state police power into what is strictly a monetary dispute.
        LoSboccacc 10y ago
        Also their right to deny boarding ends once a passenger is boarded
        scurvy 10y ago
        Not true. Boarding basically means haven't left the gate. If you get to your seat, sit, then they realize that your seat belt is broken, they can deny you "boarding" instead of dispatching a tech to fix the belt. You were seated on the plane, now you're not. Boarding is an overly broad term, but that's how it is written.
  - tehwebguy 10y ago
    What? No, they should have kept upping the offer. It wasn't worth a penny more than $800 + hotel and rebooking x 4 to United so they called the police to enforce their profit margin rather than pay the market cost of doing business.
    - Dagwoodie 10y ago
      Couldn't agree more. A law requiring the airline to keep doubling the offer for volunteers every x minutes until y number take it will solve this problem 100% of the time.
  - joelrunyon 10y ago
    They have inter-airline relationships that they can put people on Southwest/Delta/American flights for a discounted rate. Easily avoiding this type of situation.
    - SkyMarshal 10y ago
      Or a Netjet. Plenty of options.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    The crew members needed to be in the destination the next day, surely there was other flights or connecting flights the crew could have taken? Maybe setup some seats in the baggage storage area in the belly for crew if it is such an emergency?
    - gol706 10y ago
      Some larger aircraft actually have that for routes that require crew changes. http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-airplane-bedrooms-2015-7/#the-beds-which-are-generally-around-six-feet-long-and-two-and-a-half-feet-wide-are-partitioned-by-heavy-curtains-meant-to-muffle-noise-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-airplane-bedrooms-2015...
  - unprepare 10y ago
    is your logic that a plane full of passengers sitting on the tarmac is worse than a man being assaulted and dragged off a plane? Because if not, the answer to your question is a very obvious yes - they should be made to wait. I would happily wait on a plane if i knew it was to prevent someone being assaulted.... (though if the crew wasnt there, they wouldnt board the plane anyways, the other flight would've been cancelled or delayed, which happens all the time)
    - LoSboccacc 10y ago
      So by your logic if I don't want to upend my side of the deal I can just call muscle and smash a man face?
cortesoft 10y ago
What is the alternative to commercial airlines for someone who isn't crazy rich?
- tyingq 10y ago
  High speed rail would kill off a lot of shorter routes, but it just doesn't work in the US for some reason. When I was in the UK, I took the Virgin Rail from London to Manchester. The additional room and ability to walk around made it so much better than a flight. I would have paid more. The time difference was negligible once you count all the extra screening time for airports.
  - valuearb 10y ago
    It doesn't work because it's crazy expensive to build tracks, and not cost effective unless you have massive density. Airlines are better, not just because planes are faster, but because of flexibility. You can find a space somewhere and build a new airport, or add a new runway to an existing airport and use less than one thousandth the land the rail line will require. The planes you fly to one destination can suddenly be switched to fly to almost any another destination, in a day. Yea, the comfort of trains is better, but thats about it.
    - cm2187 10y ago
      It's not just about the comfort of seating in a train. It's about not having to queue for 1h at security, being abused by TLA officers, queue again, getting checked, queue again, getting checked, etc. Flying today feels like going to jail.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - govg 10y ago
        If you have as much commercial pressure in trains as you do in flights, then I'm sure you will be asked to do the same sort of checks, and standing in queues. This happens because flights are an easy target (due to high costs, visibility and more favored view in the public eye). If we had someone attacking train lines because they carried a lot of people, you would have correspondingly sever safety regulations too.
pdelbarba 10y ago
One has to be very careful challenging the final authority of the crew. In the times where this was not the case, you could just tell your pilots to be on time no matter what and end up with crashes due to flying into weather, running out of fuel, etc. At the end of the day, the PIC needs final authority since it's their ass on the line as well. As an aside, the flight deck crew don't really pay much attention to whats happening in the back and have to rely on the FAs to manage the passengers. If the FA complains about someone to the flight deck, the PIC will generally follow their recommendation without pause.

Shivetya 10y ago

I take issue with the idea it was over booked when it was the airline wanting to transport its own people in place of booked customers. If anything we shall get to witness if the power of social media can overcome such abuse, It has helped turn the tables a bit with policing but usually only when it occurs in a public setting. People do need to take note that this actually is another case of police abuse just at the behest of a private company.

valuearb 10y ago
So United should not have tried to board their flight personnel so that another plane full of passengers could sit on the tarmac for hours in Louisville with no crew?
- cmurf 10y ago
  This is not the fault of any passenger. The airline ceased to be civil when they shifted from an auction, to inviting police power on board. It was morally wrong for them to do this, and it was even worse for the police to agree to it. There's no ethical, legal, or contractual argument for what the airline did; or the power they claim to have in this letter. They do not have the power to deplane people for the reason stated, their contract lists out numerous reasons for passenger removal but this is not one of them.
  - ntsplnkv3 10y ago
    They should've done a number of things before resorting to forcing people off. They should've increased the value far more before this occurred. And on top of all that, there is no transparency at all on how they kick people off. And they have the audacity to talk nonchalantly about this man who had obligations refused to get off so he needed to be bloodied when they could've done so much more. Sorry, it's not this man's fault someone got sick and a flight crew needs to be in Louisville. Hire more people or save 4 seats on every plane in the future. We shouldn't be responsible for a company's mistakes.
- macintux 10y ago
  United should have kept raising the offered compensation.
- tomaha 10y ago
  They should make sure they have the seats for their personnel and not sell them to customers. In every other business if you sell the same thing to two people I would call it fraud.
  - bronco21016 10y ago
    It's really not that simple at all. A multitude of things could have happened in SDF (Louisville) causing the crew there to be unable to fly. Since it was a whole crew I would guess they hit up against FAA mandated rest requirements. In the interest of making sure that flight in SDF still went out the airline scrambled to get a reserve (flight crew members that are on-call) crew down to SDF. These things often happen at the last minute with no warning. Not at all am I defending what happened on this flight. Just want to point out that last second adds of flight crew members is a VERY common occurrence and without it the number of cancels would skyrocket astronomically.
    - ntsplnkv3 10y ago
      > Since it was a whole crew I would guess they hit up against FAA mandated rest requirements. Gee, I wonder if they could, I don't know, hire more people so that these situations don't happen as often? Heaven forbid they lose a little bit of profit a year... You simply delay the other flight. You don't force someone off of a flight they've already boarded.
      - bronco21016 10y ago
        It's really hard to describe how all of this works without going into extremely detailed scenarios and edge cases. Simply put though hiring more people doesn't do anything. Those extra people still would have to be sitting on call somewhere. Once they receive the call they're sent to where they're needed which still results in this situation. It's simply unreasonable to think they would have spare flight crews in every single possible destination. Unless you want about 1,000% increase in ticket prices of course. I'm sure the other flight was delayed. Not getting a crew there on this last flight out for the night though would have likely meant cancelling the flight in Louisville or delaying it at least 24 hours. Stranding a plane in a city like Louisville would cause major ripple effects down the line resulting in probably another 10-15 flights being delayed. If they cancelled rather than delay now you have a plane full of passengers that need to be re-routed on multiple other planes that are likely already full. Re-location of flight crews is simply a necessary option for the airlines at this point of time. Maybe down the road we can remotely pilot airliners and then situations like this won't arise.
- ropiku 10y ago
  United should've planned ahead for their staff to get to where they need without forcing somebody off the plane. They already knew how many tickets were sold, how many checked in and how many boarded (they were already on the plane).
  - scurvy 10y ago
    People get sick. Stuff happens. Every airline does this. It sucks, but if you think your distributed system in the cloud is complicated, running an airline every day would blow your mind.
    - cmurf 10y ago
      Nope. They needed to have their house in order before boarding. They have the contractual right to deny boarding for overbooking, but this was not strictly an overbooking. They wanted to replace paying customers with non-paying non-customer crew, i.e. not overbooked. But even if you word smith this into overbooking, once the plane is boarded, the contract has a list of reasons for removing a passenger and not a single one of those reasons applies to this case. The airline needed to raise the compensation price until someone volunteered, and if still no one volunteered, then tough noogies. They still do not get to shift from a civilized situation to a violent one by dragging state police power into what is strictly a monetary dispute.
      - LoSboccacc 10y ago
        Also their right to deny boarding ends once a passenger is boarded
        scurvy 10y ago
        Not true. Boarding basically means haven't left the gate. If you get to your seat, sit, then they realize that your seat belt is broken, they can deny you "boarding" instead of dispatching a tech to fix the belt. You were seated on the plane, now you're not. Boarding is an overly broad term, but that's how it is written.
- tehwebguy 10y ago
  What? No, they should have kept upping the offer. It wasn't worth a penny more than $800 + hotel and rebooking x 4 to United so they called the police to enforce their profit margin rather than pay the market cost of doing business.
  - Dagwoodie 10y ago
    Couldn't agree more. A law requiring the airline to keep doubling the offer for volunteers every x minutes until y number take it will solve this problem 100% of the time.
- joelrunyon 10y ago
  They have inter-airline relationships that they can put people on Southwest/Delta/American flights for a discounted rate. Easily avoiding this type of situation.
  - SkyMarshal 10y ago
    Or a Netjet. Plenty of options.
- ProAm 10y ago
  The crew members needed to be in the destination the next day, surely there was other flights or connecting flights the crew could have taken? Maybe setup some seats in the baggage storage area in the belly for crew if it is such an emergency?
  - gol706 10y ago
    Some larger aircraft actually have that for routes that require crew changes. http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-airplane-bedrooms-2015-7/#the-beds-which-are-generally-around-six-feet-long-and-two-and-a-half-feet-wide-are-partitioned-by-heavy-curtains-meant-to-muffle-noise-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-airplane-bedrooms-2015...
- unprepare 10y ago
  is your logic that a plane full of passengers sitting on the tarmac is worse than a man being assaulted and dragged off a plane? Because if not, the answer to your question is a very obvious yes - they should be made to wait. I would happily wait on a plane if i knew it was to prevent someone being assaulted.... (though if the crew wasnt there, they wouldnt board the plane anyways, the other flight would've been cancelled or delayed, which happens all the time)
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    So by your logic if I don't want to upend my side of the deal I can just call muscle and smash a man face?

cortesoft 10y ago

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

tyingq 10y ago
High speed rail would kill off a lot of shorter routes, but it just doesn't work in the US for some reason. When I was in the UK, I took the Virgin Rail from London to Manchester. The additional room and ability to walk around made it so much better than a flight. I would have paid more. The time difference was negligible once you count all the extra screening time for airports.
- valuearb 10y ago
  It doesn't work because it's crazy expensive to build tracks, and not cost effective unless you have massive density. Airlines are better, not just because planes are faster, but because of flexibility. You can find a space somewhere and build a new airport, or add a new runway to an existing airport and use less than one thousandth the land the rail line will require. The planes you fly to one destination can suddenly be switched to fly to almost any another destination, in a day. Yea, the comfort of trains is better, but thats about it.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    It's not just about the comfort of seating in a train. It's about not having to queue for 1h at security, being abused by TLA officers, queue again, getting checked, queue again, getting checked, etc. Flying today feels like going to jail.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - govg 10y ago
      If you have as much commercial pressure in trains as you do in flights, then I'm sure you will be asked to do the same sort of checks, and standing in queues. This happens because flights are an easy target (due to high costs, visibility and more favored view in the public eye). If we had someone attacking train lines because they carried a lot of people, you would have correspondingly sever safety regulations too.

pdelbarba 10y ago

One has to be very careful challenging the final authority of the crew. In the times where this was not the case, you could just tell your pilots to be on time no matter what and end up with crashes due to flying into weather, running out of fuel, etc. At the end of the day, the PIC needs final authority since it's their ass on the line as well. As an aside, the flight deck crew don't really pay much attention to whats happening in the back and have to rely on the FAs to manage the passengers. If the FA complains about someone to the flight deck, the PIC will generally follow their recommendation without pause.