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United Passenger “Removal”: A Reporting and Management Failure

206 points by heisenbit 10y ago

jpollock 10y ago
Even if it wasn't a passenger overbooking, it was overbooking in that they failed to properly account for the likelihood of having to ship crews around their network. If their occupancy ratio was lower, then there wouldn't have been a problem, they could have fit the crew in. If they reserved 4 seats for crew on every flight, again there wouldn't have been a problem. If they had even reserved 2 seats and run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time there wouldn't have been a problem. If they had brought crew in from two different starting points - it would have been fine. It's still overbooking, just not oversold tickets. The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price. Much like an ISP having all their IP traffic going down one pipe, and not having enough room to send out the customer invoices because everyone is watching Netflix.
- huebnerob 10y ago
  In this case, semantics matter. Overbooking is a legally protected practice, but what you're trying to wedge into the definition of 'overbooking' is not.
  - churn1 10y ago
    If terms and definitions matter, the legal term you are looking for is actually "oversales", not overbooking which is a colloquial term
    - eridius 10y ago
      Overbooking is generally used as a synonym of oversales. Trying to redefine overbooking right now to mean something else is just going to cause confusion.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        There's a rhetorical difference where "overbooking" puts the onus on the customer, and "oversales" puts it where it should be: on the airline who sold the extra tickets. And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.
        eridius 10y ago
        How can "overbooking" possibly put the onus on the customer? Overbooking is entirely within the control of the airline, and the customer doesn't have the capacity to overbook, or even the knowledge as to whether overbooking could possibly occur. > And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity. Well yes, that's the whole point of this discussion, that calling it "overbooking" or "oversales" is wrong.
        manigandham 10y ago
        Yes, overbooking/oversales are effectively synonyms, but that's not the issue at all here. Overbooking is purchased and reserved seating over capacity. The plane was fully booked and boarded at capacity, and then 4 more seats were cleared by physically removing passengers. Collapsing these events by saying it's an overbooking issue overlooks the very important timeline in between the plane being booked/boarded and then initiating a removal of said passengers, instead of denying them in the first place. The request for 4 seats should've arrived before the boarding process (or at least before it ended), that's the problem.
        eridius 10y ago
        I don't know why you're trying to make this argument with me, since it's unrelated to the actual discussion taking place in this subthread.
        rhizome 10y ago
        Overbooking: People bought too many tickets Oversales: The airline sold too many tickets It's a thin distinction to be sure, but it reads with rhetorical significance to me.
- LeoNatan25 10y ago
  Even if that is the case, there are much better methods of dealing with a situation like this than calling a police officer. It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force. The man is lucky they didn't taze him. The crew should have known that. It's good that this policy is about to change, but it is too little too late.
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    I assume you meant "taze", as in incapacitated him with a Taser electroshock weapon. It's an unfortunate typo, because he seemed quite thorougly distressed, disheveled and without composure - fazed.
    - LeoNatan25 10y ago
      Yes, thank you for the correction!
  - dionidium 10y ago
    It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force My understanding is that there was a lengthy conversation that took place before the outrage-inducing video starts. They did attempt to resolve the situation peacefully. At some point there is an impasse. Police are making a request and he's ignoring it. There are two ways that can go: 1) Police shrug their shoulders, leave, and let the man have his way; 2) He's going to be forcefully removed. That is, as far as I can tell, the actual reality of the situation. And anybody advocating for outcome #1 probably has some thinking to do about what it actually means to have a police force at all.
    - daenney 10y ago
      > 2) He's going to be forcefully removed. Yet why does the forceful removal of that passenger justify knocking him down and dragging him off the plane? There's plenty of ways to forcefully remove someone from something without doing what they did. Police is allowed to apply force, but that doesn't immediately give them the right to go loco.
- ahoy 10y ago
  > The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price. I would argue that the unconscious paying customer with a bloody head paid the price.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Well, United stock went down, IIRC, $830 million dollars. That's paying a bit of a price. They may pay for it in lost sales and lawsuits, as well. The cop got suspended. That's paying a price, too. And it may not be the end of the price he pays.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      UAL is still up for the week. This is a normal fluctuation in the grand scheme of things, it isn't "payback" by any means.
      - jldugger 10y ago
        Well yea, man. If UAL is so popular they have to drag people off the plane, they must be selling crazy tickets, right? And they probably have more room to raise prices than anticipated.
        seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        No. I only mean UAL hasn't been hit yet in pocket book about this. I agree that they should be.
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      The article says 1.6 billion. I suppose it matters when you take the measurement.
- droithomme 10y ago
  You make good points. Airplanes used to have jump seats, fold down seats, specifically for accommodating these sorts of crew transfers, so that they wouldn't interfere with normal passenger seating. I wonder if the jump seats were removed at some point in order to increase normal seating.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    They still have those, but jump seat travel isn't considered safe by FAA regulations.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      If you look in the /r/aviation threads you'll see various people who are airline crew claiming they can fly jumpseat but it's beneath them and they want their regular-seat privileges enforced at basically any cost.
      - ashark 10y ago
        Don't the jumpseats have more legroom? I thought the ones I'd seen did, just by not being part of the ordinary aisles and being smaller (slimmer back especially). I'd take a milking stool over the regular seats if it meant not having my knees jammed most of an inch into the seat in front of me (and I'm not even that tall).
        seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        Where is the cabin crew supposed to sit during take off and landing if the jump seats are occupied by others? Also, this wasn't a 737, but a smaller plane.
      - ItsDeathball 10y ago
        This sounds plausible, and fits with the incident if basically no one trusts the airline to negotiate in good faith. Employees assume that if they don't make a fuss about getting a seat, then they'll have to fly jump-seat or standing-room-only from then on out. Likewise, passengers don't trust the airline offer of $800 and the next flight out for giving up their seat. I would have taken that offer if I could be assured it was legit, but I'd have a strong suspicion they'd deduct the cost of the flight and the hotel and give me what's left in the form of Chili's gift cards or something. With trust that low it was probably only a matter of time before a dispute escalated into unnecessary use of force.
- mason55 10y ago
  > run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time Many (some? most? warning, weasel words) airports operate at capacity so just adding more flights might not have been possible even if they wanted to See, for example, the fights going on at Love Field over gate space
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  If they had recognized that they needed 4 seats for crew before the passengers scanned their tickets and walked down the jetway as is usually done they wouldn't have had a problem. They could have started the process before the flight booked, asking for volunteers before they got seated and attached to the idea of being on that flight. If they had no volunteers, they could probably have randomly selected passengers to deny boarding, and rejected them at the gate. While I am offended by them violently dragging the man out of his seat and off the plane, if the ticket scanner doesn't blink green the passenger likely won't force his way onto the plane, and if he was injured by security while doing so, public opinion would not be so united against the airline.
  - differentView 10y ago
    Exactly! This wasn't the last chopper out of Saigon. Someone would have given up their seat in exchange for more money.
  - qubex 10y ago
    ...so united against United. ;)
- hueving 10y ago
  >The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, they just didn't follow through with the correct way to free up seats, which is increasing the bid. Some family cleared something like $13,000 in amex gift cards during the delta debacle last week by volunteering their seats multiple times. If you keep increasing the bid, you will find a price at which someone will give up their seat.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Compared to the 1.6 billion that came off the stock price, anything looks cheap.
    - cmurf 10y ago
      The current price is the same as it was 5 days ago. There's no meaningful impact to the stock price, it was a temporary retreat.
      - ProAm 10y ago
        We dont know that yet. Lets see how this quarter and next quarter and the lawsuit turn out.
- xenadu02 10y ago
  Federal law governs contract of carriage. United was legally prohibited from removing anyone from that flight to make room for crew. Period. They broke federal law by breaking their contract of carriage. I don't know what is so difficult to understand about that.
ikeboy 10y ago
So how many people will get fired over this?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- AlexandrB 10y ago
  My guess is it will be like the Wells Fargo fiasco. Some low-level employees - probably the staff that worked that flight - will lose their jobs while those that actually created the policies that led to this will be just fine.
  - dguo 10y ago
    In the Wells Fargo case, the CEO actually did resign (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/12/497729371/wells-fargo-ceo-john-stumpf-resigns-amid-scandal http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/12/497729371/...). Though he was replaced by the COO.
  - rconti 10y ago
    Just announced yesterday: Wells Fargo clawing back $75M in comp from the 2 execs. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-whole-foods-fed.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/dealbook/wells-f...
jph 10y ago
This is a new kind of UI/UX dark pattern. The United app lets customers pay for seats, and any reasonable person thinks that's the whole of it. But the fine print says that's not true, and says you can be forcibly removed if the flight is oversold. https://darkpatterns.org/ https://darkpatterns.org/ "When you use the web, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another."
- tunesmith 10y ago
  But that is explicitly not true, that is what the article is about. You cannot be forcibly removed if the flight is oversold. That's the whole point.
- Vivtek 10y ago
  No. The fine print does not say that. The fine print says they can deny you boarding, not remove you once already boarded. Your point about the dark pattern is all too true, but United still behaved entirely illegally here.
  - scrumper 10y ago
    It's still denied boarding, and would be so until the doors were closed, so he wasn't technically boarded at the time he was removed. (And they can remove you for all sorts of reasons even after you've boarded.) United behaved despicably, but not illegally.
    - CyberDildonics 10y ago
      So someone with their luggage checked, their carry on stowed, and already in their seat is not boarded? Do you have a source that says this?
ryanmarsh 10y ago
I've been saying for years that the only thing holding back massive disruption in the airline industry is the FAA. American and United are two of the most poorly run mega-corps in the US. Customers hate them, but need to fly. Warren Buffet thinks they're notoriously bad investments. Why?
- TerminalJunkie 10y ago
  Isn't Berkshire Hathaway UAL's largest shareholder? http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-big-bet-on-united-airlines-could-be-costing-him-millions-2017-04-11 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-big-bet-on-...
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    You managed to google for Warren Buffet's investment in UAL but didn't manage to find any of his statements of how bad the airlines are? This still doesn't refute my primary argument.
- yladiz 10y ago
  There are a lot of regulations for airlines like American, but considering, for example, that there's nothing you can do at 35,000 feet in a giant metal machine if there's a mechanical failure, I'm much happier that there are a lot of regulations than not enough, in this case. There are a lot of things that suck about air travel in the states, but the FAA isn't one of them. As far as the companies being bad investments, it's most likely due to their extremely low margins and ROI.
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    Safety and Regulation are two partially overlapping sets. The FAA regulates an immense amount of things that are trivial and those regulations are very hard to update. The FAA issues the vast majority of regulations[0]. [0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%5Bagencies%5D%5B%5D=federal-aviation-administration https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%...
zeteo 10y ago
The subtext here is that customers don't have any actual rights when dealing with a large corporation. The terms of service have become so lengthy and obscure that it's virtually certain for a corporate lawyer to find some justification somewhere for almost anything. The corporate employees and the police both operate on this assumption. As a customer, your only recourse is to meekly accept whatever treatment is coming your way.
- heisenbit 10y ago
  Yes, passengers don't know their rights but pilots and other administrators should. So United personal should have known they are in a legal grey area when removing a passenger who had boarded. I found the argument interesting that United should have lied and just invented a plane swap with a smaller body. Would have left the affected passengers is a weak position. There is so much wrong on all levels including the reaction of the CEO. This will be a case study for long time.
  - eridius 10y ago
    > So United personal should have known they are in a legal grey area when removing a passenger who had boarded. From what I've read, they weren't in a grey area, they were doing something that was specifically illegal. A grey area is when it may or may not be illegal. This wasn't grey.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Any of those explain why force majeure would not apply? (I'm not implying it would, I'm curious to read an analysis that covers it)
      - eridius 10y ago
        I am not even remotely a lawyer or qualified to actually answer this, but my guess is the situation here didn't actually prevent United from fulfilling their contracts. They just chose to ignore their contracts because they thought they could get away with it.
jazzyk 10y ago
No, the real failure (and the source of this and many other issues in the airline industry) is the lack of competition in the US domestic market. Pure and simple. The huge, 350-million US domestic market is served by 4-5 major airlines, while the EU with 500 million people is served by tens of airlines. I recently flew from Barcelona to Nice for 30 euros, round-trip (with seat assignment). Where are the (potentially Mexican or Canadian-based) low cost airlines? That's right, none to be seen. Let's hope this bust-up brings some legislative measures to introduce more competitive practices in the airline industry. Otherwise we will soon be paying for the right to pee in-flight really soon.
- yladiz 10y ago
  Why would what happened to United being more competitive practices? I don't see the connection.
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    The airlines can set up any rules they wish (with the FAA being complicit), because they know consumers (passengers) don't have much choice - they need to fly, driving is usually not an option in the US.
    - yladiz 10y ago
      > driving is usually not an option in the US If you mean by distance, sure, but you can drive anywhere in the US, and there are a lot of people that do choose to drive semi-long distances (10-12 hours) over flying when fuel is cheap because they enjoy driving. It's less of an option when the distance is something like 30-40 hours, i.e. from LA to NYC.
- slantedview 10y ago
  Who are you saying no to? From the article: > the lousy economics of airlines combined with their oligopoly status in the US says they will be extremely reluctant to make anything beyond bare minimum changes It sounds like you agree with the author.
drfuchs 10y ago
Why didn't they just keep doubling the offer for volunteers? Surely by $1600 or $3200 someone would bite. Then everyone is happy, it all gets finished quickly, and there's no chance of this sort of PR disaster (even docile removees can end up in the news if they then, say, miss the death of a hospitalized family member due to the delay).
- LeoNatan25 10y ago
  Because handbook says a certain amount is the maximum they can offer, and likely the crew offering more would risk their job. Following this fiasco, Munoz said they will expand the handbook. We'll see.
  - strictnein 10y ago
    Also, I think there's actually a government regulation which caps it at $1300 or so.
    - differentView 10y ago
      The cap is the maximum of what passengers are legally entitled to. The airlines can offer more if they want.
      - menssen 10y ago
        I've been wondering: does this mean that a valid response to this situation would be "I will leave the plane if given my legally entitled $1350"? As in, among other reasons, is United in the wrong here because the maximum they offered for volunteers was $800, not the regulated $1350?
        differentView 10y ago
        The way I understand it is that they can offer any amount they want to get volunteers. But if they want to involuntarily bump someone, they have to pay at least four times the one-way fare that passenger paid, up to $1,350. So bumping the person that paid the least for their ticket would mean they have to pay them the least.
rargulati 10y ago
On overbooking, this is a solved problem: hold an auction where the max payoff is the risk in dollars X, distributed amongst Y passengers (the number of seats you need to free up). Start at some low anchor point ("$300 to get off the plane") and increment up until you have takers. If the total value exceeds X, write it off - you messed up. I believe other airlines implement this in some capacity.
- strictnein 10y ago
  United does too. They just stopped at $800 and then went the random route. They could have gone higher.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    Yeah, there's also video from just prior to this incident where multiple people say "We'll get off for $1500" and the purser literally laughs and says "Yeah, that's not going to happen. People are going to need to leave the plane or it won't take off."
- robbiemitchell 10y ago
  Yes, but to be clear: it wasn't overbooked.
cmurf 10y ago
I definitely agree with the criticism that the media has focused on the video, as "shockertainment" rather than educating their viewers. The awareness of the law and skepticism in media is lacking, they pretty much disseminated incorrect relevant details. Many would decry a 46 page contract of carriage, but then also not aid the viewer in navigating that complex document. At the very least, a journalist should ask the airline and the police: -has a crime been committed? -has a civil contract been committed? -what breach of law or contract has been committed and can you cite this exactly? -do you often threaten passengers with removal? -how often are you asked to do non-criminal passenger extractions on behalf of the airline? which airlines? Either the passenger committed a crime to cause forced removal, and it seems clear he didn't commit a crime (nor was in breach of the contract of carriage); or the police committed the crime of assault, an unlawful use of force. There's a crime here either way, and that outcome I think is interesting. But no less interesting is that United appears to have a track record of using threats of violence to get passengers to do things that are not at all required by law, regulations, or their own contract of carriage. http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united-low-priority-passenger-20170412-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united... That passenger decided to acquiesce to the threats, and ended up having no real meaningful recourse, i.e. even for this reasonably affluent person, it wasn't worth it to sue. Basically the contract is next to meaningless. This is might makes right. And if you won't stand your ground, aren't willing to get wrongfully arrested, and then sue at your own expense, the airline's threats will work and they'll get what they want.
hysan 10y ago
If the information in this article is true, which seems to be the case after reading most of the linked sources, then a lot of the news articles that were cited are reporting false information. Now that immediately made me curious to see if Google Fact Check would flag these news articles as false or possibly false. Doing a quick search shows no Fact Check under any of the search results, so seems like the answer is no. If Fact Check really becomes a thing, I hope that Google will be able to use current events like this as a bar for how fast Fact Check needs to respond to an event to make it useful. If they could find and source well researched information and immediately flag misreported news articles while a topic is at the forefront of the news, then it would immensely help educate people. For example: My parents have not stopped talking about this since it happened and are still looking at and reading news about it. There was some misreported information that I had to clear up for them. If Fact Check worked, then it definitely would have prevented misinformation spreading to them and probably many others.
colmvp 10y ago
> This seems to reflect the deep internalization in America of deference to authority in the post 9/11 world, as well as reporters who appear to be insufficiently inquisitive. And there also seems to be a widespread perception that because it’s United’s plane, it can do what it sees fit. In fact, airlines are regulated and United is also bound to honor its own agreements. I'm extremely pro-journalism (donate to various organizations, listen to podcasts hosted by journalists) but I'm completely baffled by how very few if any journalists dived into the details on what happened here in the very video, specifically the legalities and technicalities, compared to Redditors (who happen to be laywers) and bloggers. Going forward, readers who happen to be consumers and passengers could easily be adopting misinformation spread by trusted media sources and have the wrong frame of reference to view what happened.
jksmith 10y ago
Seems to me that what is most unfortunate is that surrounding passengers didn't support the passenger dragged off the plane. 4 or 5 people standing up and threatening something along the lines of "Why don't you take my seat too jackass; I don't want it anymore" would have been far more effective at righting this situation than proper media reporting or crying about passenger contracts.
- CharlesW 10y ago
  Maybe in those few minutes, but in the long run a high-publicized international incident will be a million times more effective in creating conditions for improvements.
- Ductapemaster 10y ago
  While that sounds like a nice thing to do on a personal level, it distracts from the real issue at hand - poor service and handling of a situation that was bad from the start. I strongly disagree that the passengers should have stepped up and taken the fall for poor practices from United. People don't need to be better humans - companies need to be held accountable for their actions and act better towards their customers.
  - jksmith 10y ago
    >>companies need to be held accountable for their actions and act better towards their customers. Exactly.
throw7 10y ago
There really isn't clarity here. The article argues that the flight wasn't overbooked, therefore UA couldn't kick anyone off. I agree if it wasn't overbooked, but it's not clear that that's evidently true. It's certainly gonna be contentious and probably up to a judge or jury to decide if it actually gets that far. I doubt it. The more pressing matter is what do you do as a passenger when YOU are involuntarily denied boarding due to overbooking? Are you gonna sit in place, say, "I don't believe you." and wait for the stasi to take you away for a beating?
speby 10y ago
Has everyone watched the video? There is a point in the video where "things went wrong" and it happens right before the officer makes the decision to physically touch the passenger and begin to assault him in order to remove him. Immediately before that point, there are a multitude of things that could have been done or done differently. The choice was made by that one individual to physically take hold of the passenger who was ultimately, peacefully, declining to deplane. For example ... the officers could have: 1. Explained to the passenger and everyone around him about how he is single-handedly delaying everyone else's arrival home right now. 2. Gave several warnings, spaced out appropriately over time, that increased levels of escalation will be involved, up to and including the point of physical removal. In other words, telling him he will be forcefully removed against his will for not obeying the law. ... and so on with certainly more creative approaches that I wouldn't necessarily expect a typical police officer to think of and/or employ.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  The officers should've told the flight staff they're outside their legal rights.
gspetr 10y ago
I believe this is exactly the kind of thing that will be resolved by the tools the market provides. If they wanted volunteers to fly the next flight instead of this, they should have offered more than $400. Kind of like an auction: $500, $600, etc. and eventually enough people would have been incentivized to take the deal. The company failed at that and now their competitors will get their business and increase their market shares at United's expense. IANAL, but they might even be facing a very expensive lawsuit and will have to settle. The market will ultimately work things out, I don't think the FAA should intervene much.

206 points by heisenbit 10y ago

Even if it wasn't a passenger overbooking, it was overbooking in that they failed to properly account for the likelihood of having to ship crews around their network. If their occupancy ratio was lower, then there wouldn't have been a problem, they could have fit the crew in. If they reserved 4 seats for crew on every flight, again there wouldn't have been a problem. If they had even reserved 2 seats and run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time there wouldn't have been a problem. If they had brought crew in from two different starting points - it would have been fine. It's still overbooking, just not oversold tickets. The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price. Much like an ISP having all their IP traffic going down one pipe, and not having enough room to send out the customer invoices because everyone is watching Netflix.

huebnerob 10y ago
In this case, semantics matter. Overbooking is a legally protected practice, but what you're trying to wedge into the definition of 'overbooking' is not.
- churn1 10y ago
  If terms and definitions matter, the legal term you are looking for is actually "oversales", not overbooking which is a colloquial term
  - eridius 10y ago
    Overbooking is generally used as a synonym of oversales. Trying to redefine overbooking right now to mean something else is just going to cause confusion.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      There's a rhetorical difference where "overbooking" puts the onus on the customer, and "oversales" puts it where it should be: on the airline who sold the extra tickets. And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.
      - eridius 10y ago
        How can "overbooking" possibly put the onus on the customer? Overbooking is entirely within the control of the airline, and the customer doesn't have the capacity to overbook, or even the knowledge as to whether overbooking could possibly occur. > And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity. Well yes, that's the whole point of this discussion, that calling it "overbooking" or "oversales" is wrong.
        manigandham 10y ago
        Yes, overbooking/oversales are effectively synonyms, but that's not the issue at all here. Overbooking is purchased and reserved seating over capacity. The plane was fully booked and boarded at capacity, and then 4 more seats were cleared by physically removing passengers. Collapsing these events by saying it's an overbooking issue overlooks the very important timeline in between the plane being booked/boarded and then initiating a removal of said passengers, instead of denying them in the first place. The request for 4 seats should've arrived before the boarding process (or at least before it ended), that's the problem.
        eridius 10y ago
        I don't know why you're trying to make this argument with me, since it's unrelated to the actual discussion taking place in this subthread.
        rhizome 10y ago
        Overbooking: People bought too many tickets Oversales: The airline sold too many tickets It's a thin distinction to be sure, but it reads with rhetorical significance to me.
LeoNatan25 10y ago
Even if that is the case, there are much better methods of dealing with a situation like this than calling a police officer. It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force. The man is lucky they didn't taze him. The crew should have known that. It's good that this policy is about to change, but it is too little too late.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  I assume you meant "taze", as in incapacitated him with a Taser electroshock weapon. It's an unfortunate typo, because he seemed quite thorougly distressed, disheveled and without composure - fazed.
  - LeoNatan25 10y ago
    Yes, thank you for the correction!
- dionidium 10y ago
  It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force My understanding is that there was a lengthy conversation that took place before the outrage-inducing video starts. They did attempt to resolve the situation peacefully. At some point there is an impasse. Police are making a request and he's ignoring it. There are two ways that can go: 1) Police shrug their shoulders, leave, and let the man have his way; 2) He's going to be forcefully removed. That is, as far as I can tell, the actual reality of the situation. And anybody advocating for outcome #1 probably has some thinking to do about what it actually means to have a police force at all.
  - daenney 10y ago
    > 2) He's going to be forcefully removed. Yet why does the forceful removal of that passenger justify knocking him down and dragging him off the plane? There's plenty of ways to forcefully remove someone from something without doing what they did. Police is allowed to apply force, but that doesn't immediately give them the right to go loco.
ahoy 10y ago
> The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price. I would argue that the unconscious paying customer with a bloody head paid the price.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Well, United stock went down, IIRC, $830 million dollars. That's paying a bit of a price. They may pay for it in lost sales and lawsuits, as well. The cop got suspended. That's paying a price, too. And it may not be the end of the price he pays.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    UAL is still up for the week. This is a normal fluctuation in the grand scheme of things, it isn't "payback" by any means.
    - jldugger 10y ago
      Well yea, man. If UAL is so popular they have to drag people off the plane, they must be selling crazy tickets, right? And they probably have more room to raise prices than anticipated.
      - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        No. I only mean UAL hasn't been hit yet in pocket book about this. I agree that they should be.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    The article says 1.6 billion. I suppose it matters when you take the measurement.
droithomme 10y ago
You make good points. Airplanes used to have jump seats, fold down seats, specifically for accommodating these sorts of crew transfers, so that they wouldn't interfere with normal passenger seating. I wonder if the jump seats were removed at some point in order to increase normal seating.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  They still have those, but jump seat travel isn't considered safe by FAA regulations.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    If you look in the /r/aviation threads you'll see various people who are airline crew claiming they can fly jumpseat but it's beneath them and they want their regular-seat privileges enforced at basically any cost.
    - ashark 10y ago
      Don't the jumpseats have more legroom? I thought the ones I'd seen did, just by not being part of the ordinary aisles and being smaller (slimmer back especially). I'd take a milking stool over the regular seats if it meant not having my knees jammed most of an inch into the seat in front of me (and I'm not even that tall).
      - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        Where is the cabin crew supposed to sit during take off and landing if the jump seats are occupied by others? Also, this wasn't a 737, but a smaller plane.
    - ItsDeathball 10y ago
      This sounds plausible, and fits with the incident if basically no one trusts the airline to negotiate in good faith. Employees assume that if they don't make a fuss about getting a seat, then they'll have to fly jump-seat or standing-room-only from then on out. Likewise, passengers don't trust the airline offer of $800 and the next flight out for giving up their seat. I would have taken that offer if I could be assured it was legit, but I'd have a strong suspicion they'd deduct the cost of the flight and the hotel and give me what's left in the form of Chili's gift cards or something. With trust that low it was probably only a matter of time before a dispute escalated into unnecessary use of force.
mason55 10y ago
> run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time Many (some? most? warning, weasel words) airports operate at capacity so just adding more flights might not have been possible even if they wanted to See, for example, the fights going on at Love Field over gate space
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
If they had recognized that they needed 4 seats for crew before the passengers scanned their tickets and walked down the jetway as is usually done they wouldn't have had a problem. They could have started the process before the flight booked, asking for volunteers before they got seated and attached to the idea of being on that flight. If they had no volunteers, they could probably have randomly selected passengers to deny boarding, and rejected them at the gate. While I am offended by them violently dragging the man out of his seat and off the plane, if the ticket scanner doesn't blink green the passenger likely won't force his way onto the plane, and if he was injured by security while doing so, public opinion would not be so united against the airline.
- differentView 10y ago
  Exactly! This wasn't the last chopper out of Saigon. Someone would have given up their seat in exchange for more money.
- qubex 10y ago
  ...so united against United. ;)
hueving 10y ago
>The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, they just didn't follow through with the correct way to free up seats, which is increasing the bid. Some family cleared something like $13,000 in amex gift cards during the delta debacle last week by volunteering their seats multiple times. If you keep increasing the bid, you will find a price at which someone will give up their seat.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Compared to the 1.6 billion that came off the stock price, anything looks cheap.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    The current price is the same as it was 5 days ago. There's no meaningful impact to the stock price, it was a temporary retreat.
    - ProAm 10y ago
      We dont know that yet. Lets see how this quarter and next quarter and the lawsuit turn out.
xenadu02 10y ago
Federal law governs contract of carriage. United was legally prohibited from removing anyone from that flight to make room for crew. Period. They broke federal law by breaking their contract of carriage. I don't know what is so difficult to understand about that.

ikeboy 10y ago

So how many people will get fired over this?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
AlexandrB 10y ago
My guess is it will be like the Wells Fargo fiasco. Some low-level employees - probably the staff that worked that flight - will lose their jobs while those that actually created the policies that led to this will be just fine.
- dguo 10y ago
  In the Wells Fargo case, the CEO actually did resign (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/12/497729371/wells-fargo-ceo-john-stumpf-resigns-amid-scandal http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/12/497729371/...). Though he was replaced by the COO.
- rconti 10y ago
  Just announced yesterday: Wells Fargo clawing back $75M in comp from the 2 execs. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-whole-foods-fed.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/dealbook/wells-f...

jph 10y ago

This is a new kind of UI/UX dark pattern. The United app lets customers pay for seats, and any reasonable person thinks that's the whole of it. But the fine print says that's not true, and says you can be forcibly removed if the flight is oversold. https://darkpatterns.org/ https://darkpatterns.org/ "When you use the web, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another."

tunesmith 10y ago
But that is explicitly not true, that is what the article is about. You cannot be forcibly removed if the flight is oversold. That's the whole point.
Vivtek 10y ago
No. The fine print does not say that. The fine print says they can deny you boarding, not remove you once already boarded. Your point about the dark pattern is all too true, but United still behaved entirely illegally here.
- scrumper 10y ago
  It's still denied boarding, and would be so until the doors were closed, so he wasn't technically boarded at the time he was removed. (And they can remove you for all sorts of reasons even after you've boarded.) United behaved despicably, but not illegally.
  - CyberDildonics 10y ago
    So someone with their luggage checked, their carry on stowed, and already in their seat is not boarded? Do you have a source that says this?

ryanmarsh 10y ago

I've been saying for years that the only thing holding back massive disruption in the airline industry is the FAA. American and United are two of the most poorly run mega-corps in the US. Customers hate them, but need to fly. Warren Buffet thinks they're notoriously bad investments. Why?

TerminalJunkie 10y ago
Isn't Berkshire Hathaway UAL's largest shareholder? http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-big-bet-on-united-airlines-could-be-costing-him-millions-2017-04-11 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-big-bet-on-...
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  You managed to google for Warren Buffet's investment in UAL but didn't manage to find any of his statements of how bad the airlines are? This still doesn't refute my primary argument.
yladiz 10y ago
There are a lot of regulations for airlines like American, but considering, for example, that there's nothing you can do at 35,000 feet in a giant metal machine if there's a mechanical failure, I'm much happier that there are a lot of regulations than not enough, in this case. There are a lot of things that suck about air travel in the states, but the FAA isn't one of them. As far as the companies being bad investments, it's most likely due to their extremely low margins and ROI.
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  Safety and Regulation are two partially overlapping sets. The FAA regulates an immense amount of things that are trivial and those regulations are very hard to update. The FAA issues the vast majority of regulations[0]. [0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%5Bagencies%5D%5B%5D=federal-aviation-administration https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%...

zeteo 10y ago

The subtext here is that customers don't have any actual rights when dealing with a large corporation. The terms of service have become so lengthy and obscure that it's virtually certain for a corporate lawyer to find some justification somewhere for almost anything. The corporate employees and the police both operate on this assumption. As a customer, your only recourse is to meekly accept whatever treatment is coming your way.

heisenbit 10y ago
Yes, passengers don't know their rights but pilots and other administrators should. So United personal should have known they are in a legal grey area when removing a passenger who had boarded. I found the argument interesting that United should have lied and just invented a plane swap with a smaller body. Would have left the affected passengers is a weak position. There is so much wrong on all levels including the reaction of the CEO. This will be a case study for long time.
- eridius 10y ago
  > So United personal should have known they are in a legal grey area when removing a passenger who had boarded. From what I've read, they weren't in a grey area, they were doing something that was specifically illegal. A grey area is when it may or may not be illegal. This wasn't grey.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Any of those explain why force majeure would not apply? (I'm not implying it would, I'm curious to read an analysis that covers it)
    - eridius 10y ago
      I am not even remotely a lawyer or qualified to actually answer this, but my guess is the situation here didn't actually prevent United from fulfilling their contracts. They just chose to ignore their contracts because they thought they could get away with it.

jazzyk 10y ago

No, the real failure (and the source of this and many other issues in the airline industry) is the lack of competition in the US domestic market. Pure and simple. The huge, 350-million US domestic market is served by 4-5 major airlines, while the EU with 500 million people is served by tens of airlines. I recently flew from Barcelona to Nice for 30 euros, round-trip (with seat assignment). Where are the (potentially Mexican or Canadian-based) low cost airlines? That's right, none to be seen. Let's hope this bust-up brings some legislative measures to introduce more competitive practices in the airline industry. Otherwise we will soon be paying for the right to pee in-flight really soon.

yladiz 10y ago
Why would what happened to United being more competitive practices? I don't see the connection.
- jazzyk 10y ago
  The airlines can set up any rules they wish (with the FAA being complicit), because they know consumers (passengers) don't have much choice - they need to fly, driving is usually not an option in the US.
  - yladiz 10y ago
    > driving is usually not an option in the US If you mean by distance, sure, but you can drive anywhere in the US, and there are a lot of people that do choose to drive semi-long distances (10-12 hours) over flying when fuel is cheap because they enjoy driving. It's less of an option when the distance is something like 30-40 hours, i.e. from LA to NYC.
slantedview 10y ago
Who are you saying no to? From the article: > the lousy economics of airlines combined with their oligopoly status in the US says they will be extremely reluctant to make anything beyond bare minimum changes It sounds like you agree with the author.

drfuchs 10y ago

Why didn't they just keep doubling the offer for volunteers? Surely by $1600 or $3200 someone would bite. Then everyone is happy, it all gets finished quickly, and there's no chance of this sort of PR disaster (even docile removees can end up in the news if they then, say, miss the death of a hospitalized family member due to the delay).

LeoNatan25 10y ago
Because handbook says a certain amount is the maximum they can offer, and likely the crew offering more would risk their job. Following this fiasco, Munoz said they will expand the handbook. We'll see.
- strictnein 10y ago
  Also, I think there's actually a government regulation which caps it at $1300 or so.
  - differentView 10y ago
    The cap is the maximum of what passengers are legally entitled to. The airlines can offer more if they want.
    - menssen 10y ago
      I've been wondering: does this mean that a valid response to this situation would be "I will leave the plane if given my legally entitled $1350"? As in, among other reasons, is United in the wrong here because the maximum they offered for volunteers was $800, not the regulated $1350?
      - differentView 10y ago
        The way I understand it is that they can offer any amount they want to get volunteers. But if they want to involuntarily bump someone, they have to pay at least four times the one-way fare that passenger paid, up to $1,350. So bumping the person that paid the least for their ticket would mean they have to pay them the least.

rargulati 10y ago

On overbooking, this is a solved problem: hold an auction where the max payoff is the risk in dollars X, distributed amongst Y passengers (the number of seats you need to free up). Start at some low anchor point ("$300 to get off the plane") and increment up until you have takers. If the total value exceeds X, write it off - you messed up. I believe other airlines implement this in some capacity.

strictnein 10y ago
United does too. They just stopped at $800 and then went the random route. They could have gone higher.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Yeah, there's also video from just prior to this incident where multiple people say "We'll get off for $1500" and the purser literally laughs and says "Yeah, that's not going to happen. People are going to need to leave the plane or it won't take off."
robbiemitchell 10y ago
Yes, but to be clear: it wasn't overbooked.

cmurf 10y ago

I definitely agree with the criticism that the media has focused on the video, as "shockertainment" rather than educating their viewers. The awareness of the law and skepticism in media is lacking, they pretty much disseminated incorrect relevant details. Many would decry a 46 page contract of carriage, but then also not aid the viewer in navigating that complex document. At the very least, a journalist should ask the airline and the police: -has a crime been committed? -has a civil contract been committed? -what breach of law or contract has been committed and can you cite this exactly? -do you often threaten passengers with removal? -how often are you asked to do non-criminal passenger extractions on behalf of the airline? which airlines? Either the passenger committed a crime to cause forced removal, and it seems clear he didn't commit a crime (nor was in breach of the contract of carriage); or the police committed the crime of assault, an unlawful use of force. There's a crime here either way, and that outcome I think is interesting. But no less interesting is that United appears to have a track record of using threats of violence to get passengers to do things that are not at all required by law, regulations, or their own contract of carriage. http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united-low-priority-passenger-20170412-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united... That passenger decided to acquiesce to the threats, and ended up having no real meaningful recourse, i.e. even for this reasonably affluent person, it wasn't worth it to sue. Basically the contract is next to meaningless. This is might makes right. And if you won't stand your ground, aren't willing to get wrongfully arrested, and then sue at your own expense, the airline's threats will work and they'll get what they want.

hysan 10y ago

If the information in this article is true, which seems to be the case after reading most of the linked sources, then a lot of the news articles that were cited are reporting false information. Now that immediately made me curious to see if Google Fact Check would flag these news articles as false or possibly false. Doing a quick search shows no Fact Check under any of the search results, so seems like the answer is no. If Fact Check really becomes a thing, I hope that Google will be able to use current events like this as a bar for how fast Fact Check needs to respond to an event to make it useful. If they could find and source well researched information and immediately flag misreported news articles while a topic is at the forefront of the news, then it would immensely help educate people. For example: My parents have not stopped talking about this since it happened and are still looking at and reading news about it. There was some misreported information that I had to clear up for them. If Fact Check worked, then it definitely would have prevented misinformation spreading to them and probably many others.

colmvp 10y ago

> This seems to reflect the deep internalization in America of deference to authority in the post 9/11 world, as well as reporters who appear to be insufficiently inquisitive. And there also seems to be a widespread perception that because it’s United’s plane, it can do what it sees fit. In fact, airlines are regulated and United is also bound to honor its own agreements. I'm extremely pro-journalism (donate to various organizations, listen to podcasts hosted by journalists) but I'm completely baffled by how very few if any journalists dived into the details on what happened here in the very video, specifically the legalities and technicalities, compared to Redditors (who happen to be laywers) and bloggers. Going forward, readers who happen to be consumers and passengers could easily be adopting misinformation spread by trusted media sources and have the wrong frame of reference to view what happened.

jksmith 10y ago

Seems to me that what is most unfortunate is that surrounding passengers didn't support the passenger dragged off the plane. 4 or 5 people standing up and threatening something along the lines of "Why don't you take my seat too jackass; I don't want it anymore" would have been far more effective at righting this situation than proper media reporting or crying about passenger contracts.

CharlesW 10y ago
Maybe in those few minutes, but in the long run a high-publicized international incident will be a million times more effective in creating conditions for improvements.
Ductapemaster 10y ago
While that sounds like a nice thing to do on a personal level, it distracts from the real issue at hand - poor service and handling of a situation that was bad from the start. I strongly disagree that the passengers should have stepped up and taken the fall for poor practices from United. People don't need to be better humans - companies need to be held accountable for their actions and act better towards their customers.
- jksmith 10y ago
  >>companies need to be held accountable for their actions and act better towards their customers. Exactly.

throw7 10y ago

There really isn't clarity here. The article argues that the flight wasn't overbooked, therefore UA couldn't kick anyone off. I agree if it wasn't overbooked, but it's not clear that that's evidently true. It's certainly gonna be contentious and probably up to a judge or jury to decide if it actually gets that far. I doubt it. The more pressing matter is what do you do as a passenger when YOU are involuntarily denied boarding due to overbooking? Are you gonna sit in place, say, "I don't believe you." and wait for the stasi to take you away for a beating?

speby 10y ago

Has everyone watched the video? There is a point in the video where "things went wrong" and it happens right before the officer makes the decision to physically touch the passenger and begin to assault him in order to remove him. Immediately before that point, there are a multitude of things that could have been done or done differently. The choice was made by that one individual to physically take hold of the passenger who was ultimately, peacefully, declining to deplane. For example ... the officers could have: 1. Explained to the passenger and everyone around him about how he is single-handedly delaying everyone else's arrival home right now. 2. Gave several warnings, spaced out appropriately over time, that increased levels of escalation will be involved, up to and including the point of physical removal. In other words, telling him he will be forcefully removed against his will for not obeying the law. ... and so on with certainly more creative approaches that I wouldn't necessarily expect a typical police officer to think of and/or employ.

Mithaldu 10y ago
The officers should've told the flight staff they're outside their legal rights.

gspetr 10y ago

I believe this is exactly the kind of thing that will be resolved by the tools the market provides. If they wanted volunteers to fly the next flight instead of this, they should have offered more than $400. Kind of like an auction: $500, $600, etc. and eventually enough people would have been incentivized to take the deal. The company failed at that and now their competitors will get their business and increase their market shares at United's expense. IANAL, but they might even be facing a very expensive lawsuit and will have to settle. The market will ultimately work things out, I don't think the FAA should intervene much.