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United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

538 points by 4ad 10y ago

4ad 10y ago
Original title is "United passenger threatened with handcuffs to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler", but it's too long for HN so I had to shorten it.
4ad 10y ago
Note: this is a different guy. After just a few days after the previous fuckup, they pull the exact same shit AGAIN. Unbelievable...
- corin_ 10y ago
  Although the article doesn't give a specific date, it seems this incident actually happened first, but is only now making it to press. > He had to fly to Hawaii last week
  - 4ad 10y ago
    Yeah, looks like it. Still only a few days apart.
Belphemur 10y ago
What a lack of professionalism. The customer even paid premium price to be in first class and instead of being notified at the gate, like any respectable airline would do, he's asked to give his seat to somebody "more important" than him when already seated. It doesn't make any sense, if that "more important person" came later, he should be the one getting compensated by the airline especially when the problem occurred because United needed to change the plane for a smaller one. You don't kick customer, you compensate them.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Also, we know now that it's illegal to remove customers after boarding, unless they do something illegal. Saying no isn't illegal.
  - kevinthew 10y ago
    qsaAssadseesacasqdqsadwaqsss
  - rbcgerard 10y ago
    Apparently united position is that you haven't "boarded" until the door has closed and plane has left the gate
    - shimon_e 10y ago
      That works both ways. If you are on a flexible ticket you can get a refund up until the door is closed. All these rules work 2 ways.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        I'd like to see you try?
        shimon_e 10y ago
        I have multiple times deboarded a plane before take off. Due to change in business plans, flight delays, etc. In one case a passenger was sick on board and I asked to deboard as I didn't want to risk getting their cold. This was all on Asian airlines. My few experiences on United have been terrible. So in this case I'd say the regulations guiding airlines is fair. United's execution of these regulations is the problem. There are a million things United could have done in the chain of events to have avoided facing a PR backlash. As this is HN, I'd give a simple technical solution that would have avoided this whole problem: The computer could have deboarded 8 passangers at random from order of lowest priority. United could have explained that if their employees don't catch this flight another flight with XXX passengers will be delayed / cancelled. This would allow the supervisor to use their own discretion to allow 4 of the 8 passengers to reboard. Making the practice of "overselling" illegal is not the solution. There are times where problem could be cause by equipment swaps changing seat numbers. If we stop the airlines from overselling then travelling will become a lot more expensive.
jsemrau 10y ago
Time for regulating the oligopoly of the airline industry. Obviously the safety of passengers can not be ensured anymore. https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/united-airlines-should-go-out-of-business-325e9983e51f https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/united-airlines-should-go...
- hueving 10y ago
  >Obviously the safety of passengers can not be ensured anymore. Let's not be dramatic. Actual airline safety issues that lead to horrific deaths are not being discussed here. This is just piss poor customer service that could be encountered on any property (e.g. hotels that have overbooked, etc).
  - macintux 10y ago
    Trying to remember the last news story about someone being dragged out of a hotel room they've already checked into.
    - fixermark 10y ago
      Trying to remember the last news story about someone being asked to leave their hotel room, refusing to do so, having police called, and continuing to refuse to do so. People being kicked out of hotel rooms because of scheduling errors does happen. It's pretty rare.
      - macintux 10y ago
        I'd be surprised were it legal to have the police drag someone out of a room they've paid for and been checked into, merely because another guest wants that room. Sure, you can ask, but on what legal basis do you have to apply violence?
        laretluval 10y ago
        The hotel is private property. If the owners of the property ask you to leave and you don't, you are trespassing.
adekok 10y ago
Can someone read this: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag... and explain where it allows them to refuse transport to a well-behaved passenger after boarding? Rule 21 seems to apply, but nothing there looks like "United can refuse to transport you 'just cause'". I've seen lots of people claim this behavior is legal, all without a shred of evidence to back them up.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  It has someting to do with FAA regulations. Basically, they own you when you step on that plane.
- tiatia 10y ago
  I have not used United in many years after a major cluster f.. on a trip. Things like this were supposed to happen sooner or later. This airline hast a total "FU" attitude regarding customers. It is the only airline that I insist of not using. Regarding the boarding, this was posted by a lawyer: [Edit: This is about the recent incident, not this HN post] 1. First of all, it’s airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about “OVERSELLING”, which is specifically defined as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to deny boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply. 2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it’s clear that what they did was illegal– they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a. 3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you’ve boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn’t have been targeted. He’s going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco.
paulgb 10y ago
He and the doctor may have a solid legal case: http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-illegally-de-boarding-passenger/ http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-... I hope for United's sake these are anomalies and not a pattern of behavior.
- mpweiher 10y ago
  > ...not a pattern of behavior. It's actually far worse than just a "pattern of behavior", it is how United and other airlines (mostly US, but rest of the world is catching on) have deliberately structured their enterprise and the entire customer experience. Everything revolves around "privilege". Even 20 years ago, this used to be bad. On most European airlines' flights, you just waited at the gate until your flight was called, then got in line (with some minor prioritization) then flew. Whenever I had the misfortune of flying United (an ever rarer occasion as I wizened up to the situation and later to "codeshare" flights), half the gate was at the counter, jockeying for perks and arguing status and privilege. This has apparently now been codified with (last I checked) 6 separate cattle lanes for boarding. Also, when I was booked on United business (a mistake), the flight attendants apparently had to try to find certain "special" elite passengers and suck up to them, in order to get little "stars" on their cards. How utterly demeaning! Again, the US has been on the frontier of this deplorable trend, but the rest of the world is catching up, with Heathrow being the first airport I've seen with separate security lines for first class passengers. Munich caught up a little later. To me, it looks like the airlines in general (and it looks like United in particular) are so embedded in this completely artificial conception of segregating their passengers by privilege, that results like the ones we are seeing are not anomalies and not even outliers, but the logical and maybe even unescapable consequences. Dear Airlines: I just want to get from A to B. I don't care the slightest bit about your weird privilege system, and your efforts of forcing me to care by making "non-privileged" travel hellish just make me consider alternatives including not flying, but certainly not flying with your airline. Oh, and it doesn't have to be that way. Quite a few years ago I was on a multi-legged Star Alliance trip, with several legs across the US getting me from Maui to a Lufthansa flight out of JFK. The penultimate stopover was Chicago, but the United flight coming in to Chicago was late and the United flight leaving didn't wait for me. I tried the United counter, but for the longest time there was simply no-one there, and when someone showed up they told me it wasn't their problem. ?? Desperate, I searched a bit and found a Lufthansa hotline. After I told my sob-story, the operator said "Oh, you're in Chicago, why do you need to go to JFK? We have a flight leaving Chicago in 3 hours, let me just rebook you on that" Said, done. It was a normal economy ticket. Service. Update: Check out https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/top-perks-united-global-services/ https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/top-perks-united-global-ser... This is a thing?!?
h1d 10y ago
This is just golden... "placing him in the middle seat between a married couple who were in the midst of a nasty fight and refused to be seated next to each other." Crews don't even try to move them to be seated next to each others.
- ambulancechaser 10y ago
  You're advocating for the flight crew to instruct a passenger to relinquish their seat after they have already sat in it so that a first class customer could have it? I think it's safe to say that that should be an action of last recourse...
hocpoc 10y ago
I had to re-check (twice) if the news in the satire column. I literally cannot believe you would kick someone paying your company $1000
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tici_88 10y ago
Travelling in the US or with US airlines is not looking very good right now. Not just the United incident(s) but also TSA, Trump travel restrictions, flights constantly overbooked, massively late etc. I wonder if it will start impacting traveller and tourism numbers at some point. I think anyone who doesn't really need to be in the US and/or is planning travelling with kids is likely to have some second thoughts at this point. Recently Canada's girl guides cancelled all trips to the US: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/14/canadian-girl-guides-cancel-trips-us-fears-trump-travel-restrictions/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/14/canadian-girl-gui.... I wonder if this is a first step of a large trend yet to develop.
- shimon_e 10y ago
  This is actually a really good thing if numbers are greatly hit. It'll hopefully lead to the entire US travel industry to focus on becoming the most travel friendly place it can be. But the hit needs to be big enough for shareholders to care.
  - bigtimeidiot 10y ago
    >But the hit needs to be big enough for shareholders to care. Also time. Something like a fundamental travel industry shakeup could take decades. Here's hoping. As a Canadian, crossing that border is getting less and less appealing.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  Anecdotally I've noticed that for like 5 years now my friends and family have a pretty severe aversion to flying anywhere for anything. From needing to show up hours before the flight, to the invasive screenings, the insane restrictions on what you can and cannot bring, the sentiment that if you check any baggage it's basically as good as gone, the ever increasing cost, the delays, and even things like the worry about if your ticket will actually get you on the damn plane! If I have to choose between a 3 hour flight, and a 12 hour drive, the 12 hour drive is what I pick almost every time now. Ignoring "disasters" (massive accident, theft, etc...) I'm going to have all my stuff, I know i'm not going to waste hundreds of dollars on a ticket that will get "rejected" at the last second, i'll have a car when I get to my destination, i can bring whatever the fuck I want, and it's a fraction of the cost.
jeswin 10y ago
I'm appalled by how this frontal assault on human dignity is shielded by law. What many of us learned this week is that it seems to be perfectly legal to bump off poorer or less privileged people specifically from a plane. This is boat allocation on Titanic all over again.
- mirimir 10y ago
  No, it's not legal. Edit: See lawyer quote from tiatia.
  - michaelt 10y ago
    In a way, there are two questions at work here. The first question is whether you can have rent-a-cops throw a passenger off a plane after they have taken their seat. As I understand it, that is not legal. The second question is about over-booking more broadly. After all, though there's a legal distinction between a passenger a second before boarding and a second after, from a customer service standpoint they're still denied the seat they were promised. Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, that is legal. But should it be?
    - mirimir 10y ago
      Maybe not. But IANAL. However, why can't they bid for passengers to fly later. After boarding, they'd probably just need to pay more.
    - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
      Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, that is legal. But should it be? I assume there are weasel words in the contract(airline ToS) to allow this.
      - briandear 10y ago
olodus 10y ago
>Instead, the service rep offered to refund Fearns the difference between his first-class ticket and an economy ticket So he paid the cost of first class but flied economy and when they get called out on it they think all they need to do is compensate for the difference? With the way he was treated?! How can you call yourself "Customer care specialist" and think that is a way to treat customers?
- jamiethompson 10y ago
  Not only that, if you're downgraded and the policy is to refund the difference then you as a customer shouldn't have to ask for a refund, it should just happen. As a business, you literally could not get away with this kind of behaviour in Europe.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  He contacted the CEO and got the CCS instead, so I imagine what happened was the CEO handed this off to Customer Care and said give them the difference in price and be done with it.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
If I paid full-fare and I'm already seated, who could possibly be more important than me?
- URSpider94 10y ago
  on United -- it was almost certainly a Global Services passenger. Those folks get whatever they want.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Then the airline needs to leave a seat unsold to allow them to do this. I hope they get sued within a cent of their ability to continue operating.
    - URSpider94 10y ago
      So, let's just say for a moment that this applied to 100 flights per day, and meant that United foregoes $1,000 in revenue per seat that they don't sell. They would be giving up $100,000 per day, or $1 million every 10 days, or roughly $35 million per year, by leaving a first-class seat empty on every flight. Weighing that against the risk of pissing off one or two first-class passengers a month for those times when everyone shows up for their flight and a VIP suddenly wants to claim a seat, just doesn't make good business sense.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        >just doesn't make good business sense. // I didn't say it did. They have to tell their top paying customer "no" or charge enough to make this possible. Humanity/morality should come in to the equation at some point too. An alternative of course is to run an auction to be bought out of the seat, but they can't absolutely guarantee a seat that way. If they want to guarantee a seat, they must keep one; nothing else is a guarantee of a seat, only a promise to try and give one.
Zigurd 10y ago
While this might or might not be technically legal, what shocks me is the response you'll see on online fora, that passengers should just shut up and comply, and that failure to do so is childish. These posts are often at great length, and laden with appeals to authority. Some might be trolls. But others appear to be by people who genuinely value an environment where the lowliest airline employee, no matter how poor their judgement, no matter how absent their discretion, is more right than any customer. Munoz's email to employees, of which I've not seen a retraction, takes this line wholeheartedly. It's a trait that suffuses the industry. Who the hell ARE these people?
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  FWIW this attitude is the one taught by primary school teachers in the UK "do what the teacher tells you straight away without question" and it's evil. I can see how such an attitude gets then reinforced and survives in adults, "that's what 'good' pupils do".
  - user15672 10y ago
    This is taught so that small kids don't carry on doing things that might be dangerous (kids don't know the difference between dangerous and annoying, so a blanket rule is more sensible here). It's not evil, it's damn sensible. Please feel free to critisise the continuation of this teaching to older kids who can think critically about what they're doing, but don't ask for primary school kids to not do what the accountable adult is telling them.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      No, demanding doing things without question is truly an insidious evil. Even a 5 year old has faculty enough to question some blanket commands. T: "everyone sit down now, please" P: "my chair has wet paint on it Sir, do I have to sit down too?" Should the teacher say "always do as I say first time" next or should they acknowledge they were operating on imperfect knowledge of the situation and modify the command? This is only slightly contrived, some pupils will sit in the paint through fear of the teacher (some, occasionally, through over-bearing desire to please the teacher). Always allowing a command to be questioned develops critical thinking and encourages creativity whilst demanding pupils use good communications. It's harder to handle with a group, for sure, but worth it IMO. Questioning a command in order to get a reason for complying does not equate to "not doing what an accountable adult says". "Because I say so" should be the last fallback, not the first and only reason available. It requires humility. Being corrected by a 7yo, say, in front of a group can feel humiliating; but it's more important to do what is right than it is to instill a misplaced sense of obedience as being the highest virtue. This allows for the fallibility of the accountable adult and respects - and develops - the faculty of the child(ren).
stuaxo 10y ago
Browsing that on firefox on mobile was terrible, about part way down the page a fullscreen video overlay appears that I couldn't work out how to close.
- Markoff 10y ago
  ublock origin?
agumonkey 10y ago
Incredible how loss of temper is reaching any space of society these days. Feels like a worldwide fever.
golergka 10y ago
So, this is a guy who apparently wasn't VIP enough: > Fearns, 59, is president of TriPacific Capital Advisors, an Irvine investment firm that handles more than half a billion dollars in real estate holdings on behalf of public pension funds.
marcosscriven 10y ago
The crux of the article, for me, is this: "What United and all companies need to do is to train and empower workers to deal with specific issues as they arise,” she said. “Don’t just follow whatever is written in your policies." Unfortunately that's so often the case - one may as well be conversing with a robot in many customer service situations. I can only imagine it's just as frustrating for the disempowered service reps.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Empowering local service reps often leads to worse things. The cases where a Muslim passenger or whatever was forced to leave because another passenger complained wasn't written into any policy, it was the result of local crew exercising their discretion.
ptero 10y ago
At the moment I wish United gets beaten up well for forced passenger removal earlier this week. However, IMO this article just tries to pile onto the "United stinks" meme and is poorly written (more emotions than facts). Some things missing (for me): 1. When did this happen? The article makes it look like this just happened, but does not mention a date. I suspect the omission is on purpose (if so, boo!; if not, sorry, but please add event date). 2. The fact that the guy bumped off is rich is irrelevant (and going on and on about it dulls the message). 3. The fact that the seat the guy was downgraded was noisy (people arguing on both sides) is irrelevant. IMO the main point is valid -- the person was first to the seat and in general whoever gets into the seat first keeps it in case of a seat collision or a duplicate ticket. He should not have been asked to free it to another passenger (who should have been downgraded instead and compensated somehow). But conflating this with unrelated issue to get on a "United stinks" meme is a cheap trick. My 2c.
- tyingq 10y ago
  The information is missing from the story, but is available on other write ups of the same story. It happened on April 1st. He was offered the difference in price between the first class seat and the economy seat. That seems like poor compensation since this is basically a form of denied boarding, which involves higher compensation. Perhaps technically, since he still had a seat, it's not denied boarding, but it's certainly worth more than the fare difference. The relevant part is that the United staff specifically said he would be put in handcuffs if he didn't comply. That's the part to me that makes this fair game to bootstrap some attention from the other incident.
  - briandear 10y ago
    Any verification that handcuffs were threatened? A guy saying it's so while also claiming he's considering a lawsuit doesn't lend much credibility -- he has a financial incentive to hyperbolize.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      There's not proof, but in his letter to United he asked only for a full refund. He did ask them to donate $25k to the charity of his choice, which seems an odd request if your goal is extortion. He doesn't appear to need the money: http://www.tripacificllc.com/team.html http://www.tripacificllc.com/team.html Edit: Also, he has a JD from Stanford. Lol...United picked the wrong guy.
nkkollaw 10y ago
This getting ridiculous. The removal was awful, and they did deserve all the bad press. This article however is just trying to ride the wave to get some clicks. There are millions of people who travel every day. Stuff like this must happen hundreds of times every day on pretty much every airline.
- Veen 10y ago
  > Stuff like this must happen hundreds of times every day I think that's the problem.
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    It's bound to happen. The percentage must be 0.something.
bedhead 10y ago
Jeff Bezos' annual letter, released yesterday, had a good line (one of many) that immediately made me think of this United situations and broadly the crazy rules we've created for air travel and the culture that surrounds it all: "It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second."
boomka 10y ago
By the way, in the case of Dr Dao it was also not overbooking that caused him to get bumped off, but airline's assignment of lower priority to him than someone else. Just like in the parent article. There were other misreportings as well, not to mention that some news outlets ran character assassination stories and almost nobody emphasised that Dr Dao was a senior. The best piece I've seen deconstructing this is http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-removal-reporting-management-fail.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-remo...
EtherOr 10y ago
I wonder if this is a staged attempt (on the part of United, if not also the passenger) to prove that the prior instance was not about race or class (e.g. economy vs. first). "See, we do it to everyone!" Could this latest behavior be used as defensive evidence in a court case alleging discrimination?
- gus_massa 10y ago
  Nah. Apparently this is a previous incident that was ignored because no one had a viral video with a blooding client. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a HUGE amount of stupidity.
- rkeene2 10y ago
  The events in the article happened before the more famous and serious event.
tech4all 10y ago
I don't develop games... But if I did I would create a game called "United flight agent". You would be standing in the aisle facing the rear of the plane. Each round you would have a goal number of passengers to forcibly remove. You would walk up and down the aisle and punch out selected passengers. Once you had suitably subdued a passenger you click a security badge and the "Airport Rental Security" guys come and drag the passenger off. The game timer would be a chart of United's share price. The round is over when the price hits zero. The price could rise and fall with certain events:. A passenger stumbling back on the plane for instance. The game would end immediately if you punched a baby - even United agents don't punch babies! Feel free to run with it!!
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  Will somebody please post the kickstarter/indiegogo link?
- cryodesign 10y ago
  These guys are already on it: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vr-game-voluntary-disembarkment#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vr-game-voluntary-disemba...
- antognini 10y ago
  I bet you could put a new skin over Papers, Please and it would work pretty well without having to change many of the game dynamics.
MayeulC 10y ago
People usually like to interact with other people for that "human touch", and even quote it as a reason why they won't lose their job to automation. I think I would rather interact with a robot than with a crew that has procedures so rigid (and dumb) that they are not allowed to have empathy. I think that's sadly representative of the corporate mindset brought to the extreme. The consumer is not king anymore, it's a product. When did this start? I wonder.
jccalhoun 10y ago
Flying always makes me wish workers of the world really would unite... That being said, the way this article is written makes me want to kick the author off of a plane while in flight. "Fearns requested a full refund for his flight from Kauai and asked for United to make a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice. This is how rich guys do it." This is how rich guys do it? Really? ugh.
phkahler 10y ago
Somehow I feel like this all comes back to banking and the finance industry. The issues in these cases all come down to money. They overbook flights to maximize resource (plane) allocation. This one was a case of having to swap in a smaller plane. It all comes down to how expensive airplanes are and the fierce competition among carriers that leads to a system with little redundancy. But think about that - how can there be such intense competition in an industry dealing with such high-priced equipment? Granted, a solution to this pinch is probably going to mean higher average fares. But I'm starting to look toward a much bigger picture to see how this comes about. Any thoughts on this?
ijafri 10y ago
In Pakistan Citizen didn't let a minster on board a flight, after it got delayed due to him. Citizen abused him and he had to leave the plane. I meant United is demonstrating something even worse than would happen in our 3rd world country, and all I get it now, the 1st World only got bit of money and tech and at the end of the day, they are just as big an assholes as we are. First they beated a customer and now another one was moved to economy in order to make room for a certain high profile.. !!! So you truly see, this is the so-called first world, racism against minorities and immigrants despite 'they' invaded Red Indians land, and now they are demonstrating same 'social class' discrimination, that's common place in the 3rd World, minus the $+Tech, and there you have even worse of the 3rd World.
hilbert42 10y ago
If that happened to me, I'd be incandescent with rage—and I'd sue at the first opportunity. I can only hope Fearns makes the airline pay many, many times over. It seems the only thing these carpetbaggers understand are lawsuits where they lose. Its CEO deserves the boot—it happened on his watch!
hilbert42 10y ago
If that happened to me, I'd be incandescent with rage—and I'd sue at the first opportunity. I can only hope Fearns makes the airline pay many, many times over. It seems the only things these carpetbaggers understand are lawsuits where they lose. The CEO deserves the boot—as it happened on his watch!
hilbert42 10y ago
If that happened to me, I'd be incandescent with rage—and I'd sue at the first opportunity. I can only hope Fearns makes the airline pay many, many times over. It seems the only thing these carpetbaggers understand are lawsuits where they lose. Its CEO deserves the boot—it happened on his watch!
11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
Been flying for 25 years, 1.5 million miles total, most of that on United. US airlines have been through hell over the last 16 years. Bankruptcies, union battles, fierce competition, and not to mention, the real threat that someone could blow up or intentionally crash the plane they're flying, all contributed to a mentality that the employees have to stick together to survive. The end result is that US airline employees see their loyalty to each other as more important than customer service. This mentality enables the micro-selling, endless class stratification, rigid authority and the generally unpleasant demeanor of staff. They're really not friendly in the US, and strikingly different from, say, Asia-based carriers.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  What you call "hell" I call record profits. Sorry if you're trying the tired old "the best way to lose millions is to buy an airline" bullshit this probably not the thread to do it in.
- Markoff 10y ago
  > US airlines have been through hell over the last 16 years. Bankruptcies, union battles, fierce competition, and not to mention, the real threat that someone could blow up or intentionally crash the plane they're flying, all contributed to a mentality that the employees have to stick together to survive. So you say US market is more competitive than European and have more strikes than European airlines and less risk? I call that very poor excuse compared to European airlines, which work under harsher conditions than American, but still keep level of service higher than American airlines (of course both are inferior to Asian carriers).
  - 11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
    I said nothing about European airlines. But I've wondered how much worse it would have been here if Ryan Air or Easy Jet had moved in.
    - Markoff 10y ago
      is there any reason to believe it could be worse than status quo?
imjk 10y ago
This happened to me once with Delta Airlines a few years back. I was ticketed for an upgrade to first class (via Medallion status), but when I went to board I was told that the stewardess had given the seat to another customer and I was moved to a middle seat in the back. As someone who tends to be non-confrontational and the fact that it was a short flight, I just went with it. I did complain when I got back via their feedback form and they compensated me with 7500 miles, which I now realize was woefully inadequate, but I didn't have much recourse.
ryan606 10y ago
United CEO Oscar Munoz was formerly a top executive at railroad CSX. It is any wonder that he treats his passengers as FREIGHT, not as PEOPLE? My wife and I try to fly Southwest whenever possible. They are the only airline (perhaps the only transportation organization) whose employees actually care about their customers' travel experiences.
tlrobinson 10y ago
Forcing passengers to relinquish seats they've already sat down in is clearly a terrible policy. Once you're in your seat you should be "locked in", except in exceptional circumstances. Pulling someone out of a seat has a much higher emotional (and PR) cost than denying someone boarding in the first place.
technofiend 10y ago
United has an interesting way of dealing with elite status these days... sure you still have silver, gold, platinum but then you have the real elite flyers. You might be the first person in boarding group one, but you'll still be eclipsed by the 1K / Global Services / Polaris flyers who are the true elite both in status and in total dollar spend. They don't even bother to wait in line - they just show up when boarding starts and are shuffled to the front of the queue (along with a friend if they want), no questions asked. Based on those layers it wouldn't particularly surprise me if one day as a mere Gold flyer I get bumped for higher tier elite. United has made it clear total dollar spend is how they judge the true status of flyers.
nonbel 10y ago
Either this is awful reporting or I missed it. Did the event described here occur before or after they dragged the doctor off the plane?
davidf18 10y ago
Actually, the Obama administration allowed United to take over Continental when we already had so few competing airlines in this country as it is, so Obama should be blamed. We need more competition, not less. With the consolidation of airlines, it is much harder than it was to say you don't want to fly with them anymore and they know it. The case with the passenger being dragged off the plane was not regular United but some lower-cost airline that has a close business relationship with United. The CEO should have set up an on-call executive that can quickly deal with situations like these two cases. It would not be very hard to do.
whack 10y ago
I've traveled on flights frequently for over a decade, and I've never had an airline refuse to seat me for a flight I had a ticket for. I don't use frequent-flyer, and just buy the cheapest tickets available on Expedia. The only saving grace I can think of is that I always get to the airport way before anyone else does. Have I just been getting lucky all this time? Short of being a frequent flyer or buying expensive tickets, is there any way I can make sure I don't get bumped off a plane I have tickets for?
- krull10 10y ago
  Not with United. I had two flights in a row that I was all checked in with boarding passes on my phone, and then they bumped me due to an "equipment" change the night before my flight. In one case I was able to get a new seat immediately and re-checkin, in the other I had to show up at the airport four hours before my flight and beg for one of the few unassigned seats. Then I got to watch hysteria at the gate from all the people that got bumped... I've never had any other airline try to bump me at all, let alone after checking in. (Just to add, I think the "changing" equipment claim is a common excuse they make up. It allows them to overbook and bump people without having to pay the US mandated fees to each person who gets bumped. In at least one of these cases they replaced the original plane with a plane of the same exact type, but claimed "it might have a different seat layout so it counts as an equipment change".)
davidf18 10y ago
I have a good story to tell about El-Al (Israeli) airlines and US Air. I was on a connecting flight on US Air to Newark to take El-Al. The US Air flight left late and arrived late. Israeli security escorted me and 2 other passengers onto the El-Al plane to Tel Aviv but the luggage did not make it. El-Al opens all bags that don't travel with the passenger in a bomb chamber which is located at JFK. So it took 3 or 4 days to get my luggage. El-Al gave me $75 even though it was not their fault. US Air paid suit, shoes, etc. that I had to purchase.
jhulla 10y ago
Comment might be buried... But, the problem is the baroque overlaid combinations of [seat class, fare class, FF status, standby, cash vs FF purchase, time of arrival at gate, etc.] intersecting with [connecting flts, equipment, weather, etc.] leads to a large range of predictable conditions with uncertain outcomes. E.g. only one seat remaining, who gets it: passenger needing to make intl connection on a FF ticket or cash paying high status passenger? This is a global optimization problem that can be easily solved - but there are many cases where on the ground discretion is required [last minute aircraft change, weather delay]. Poorly paid, under trained and under motivated staff will always drop the ball in this situation. The solution for United here is two fold 1) Increase training, comp, authority and motivation of gate agents to solve problems with minimal disruption. This used to be the case a bankruptcy ago. This setup is not likely to return due to a simple reason: cost. United in bankruptcy blew up the pension promises to some of their most experienced staff. They left. 2) The best outcome for United is to reduce the complexity of their product so that customer expectations of service align with the company's ability to deliver. tl;dr: United's service is too complex for their gate agents to deliver. Service should be simplified.
- imgabe 10y ago
  The other issue is to stop overbooking every single flight and allow some slack to handle these unexpected situations that inevitably come up.
  - dragontamer 10y ago
    Which means increased costs, especially since every other airline is also overbooking flights. Free-market is an asshole in this case: gotta overbook to compete.
    - imgabe 10y ago
      I fly about once a month or so over the past 2-3 years, a number of different airlines. United is the only one that consistently asks for volunteers to get bumped on every flight.
mintplant 10y ago
> Fearns requested a full refund for his flight from Kauai and asked for United to make a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice. This is how rich guys do it. It bugs me that so much of the emphasis in this article is on the idea that they dared to do this to someone wealthy.
musesum 10y ago
User surly UX. Was going to book an impromptu multi-legged trip between San Francisco, Iowa and Arizona. American Airlines quoted a price, but the only available seats cost (around) $33 - $58 extra for each flight -- total was $200 extra. Bait and switch? So, I switched to Delta. But Delta's antique web design wouldn't allow a change. So, I attempted to talk to a Human. Voice menu was a bit schizoid: transitioning from voice to a touch-only menu. Love the response: "your selection was invalid" Who designs these things? A Lost in Space fan? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU Then I get to the part where it says: "You may choose to have us call you back ... or stay on hold ... wait time is over 3 hours". So, I cancelled.
yeukhon 10y ago
So two days ago my 2-month old Dell UltraSharp monitor broke with flickering and some cosmetic damage. I reached out to Amazon rep because I bought from there. The repr and I spoke and did some testing. Eventually he said he would help me make an exception by sending me a replacement without any fees, a pre-paid return label, and do a two-day guarantee shipment, despite the return window has already passed (it was April 6th, last week). I got my new monitor today, and I am happy. The repr said because of my purchase history. I am a good customer to them, someone who have bought probably couple thousand dollars worth of goods from Amazon over the years. AWS itself also offered to eliminate all of the charges on my account after a huge spike on billing (which is believed to be the results of network attacks) under no questions. This is how you build a $300B company. You take constant short-term losses over long-term gains. United Airline has a long fucking way to learn how to treat its customers. If customer B's flight had a mechanical failure, should do this: UA: "Sorry, we have a mechanical problem, do you wish to take the next flight? We will offer you a voucher." B: "No. I need to get there on time." UA: "Do you wish to take an economy seat? Our first-class is full." B: "No. I am a priority seating customer." (<--- does this shit even exist?) UA: "I understand. We will ask if anyone on the current flight is willing to give up." UA: "HEY PEOPLE ANYONE WANT TO GIVE UP THEIR SEAT FOR X AMOUNT OF MONEY AND INCENTIVES?" UA: "Okay no one. Increasing. We still have a few minutes left to auction a seat for an economy seat swap." UA: "Sorry Sir / Madam. No one is willing and the flight is destined to leave now, so we can't hold up the 365 passengers onboard. We are sorry for your inconvenience, we will see if other airlines have seats available and we can help arrange a flight for you based on your continued support of United Airlines." Now either B take it or leave it. Done. One airplane's delay is a delay for other 100 flights waiting to leave the airport on time. Win 100 customers over 1 customer. This is grade-school manner, fucking grade-school manner. Change your policy now if you are so serious about good customer service and fear of law suits. Actually now I come to think of it, airlines should build an auction/seat auction app.
gmarx 10y ago
These things don't matter and the airlines know it. People will continue to fly. I guarantee that a year from now if United is the most convenient flight to a place that guy needs to go, he will fly United. We simply aren't in the "free market competition" will fix it zone with air travel. I hate air travel and do everything I can to avoid it for work. Most people think I'm crazy. Why wouldn't you jump at the chance to fly to an obscure town in India on the company dime!?!?!? So do not expect this to affect anything unless the government gets involved
imroot 10y ago
I think the "higher priority" traveler might have been a FAM -- an air marshal -- who was assigned to the flight at the last minute. Even more so if he had an aisle seat.
metaphorm 10y ago
The air travel industry is a leading indicator of creeping authoritarianism in our society. I'm very glad that this story is getting the kind of media coverage that it is. This needs to be examined and resisted.
apostacy 10y ago
Some people are getting hit with paywalls. So here is the full text of the article: It’s hard to find examples of worse decision-making and customer treatment than United Airlines having a passenger dragged from an overbooked plane. But United’s shabby treatment of Geoff Fearns, including a threat to place him in handcuffs, comes close. Fearns, 59, is president of TriPacific Capital Advisors, an Irvine investment firm that handles more than half a billion dollars in real estate holdings on behalf of public pension funds. He had to fly to Hawaii last week for a business conference. Fearns needed to return early so he paid about $1,000 for a full-fare, first-class ticket to Los Angeles. He boarded the aircraft at Lihue Airport on the island of Kauai, took his seat and enjoyed a complimentary glass of orange juice while awaiting takeoff. Then, as Fearns tells it, a United employee rushed onto the aircraft and informed him that he had to get off the plane. “I asked why,” he told me. “They said the flight was overfull.” Fearns, like the doctor at the center of that viral video from Sunday night, held his ground. He was already on the plane, already seated. He shouldn’t have to disembark. “That’s when they told me they needed the seat for somebody more important who came at the last minute,” Fearns said. “They said they have a priority list and this other person was higher on the list than me.” Apparently United had some mechanical troubles with the aircraft scheduled to make the flight. So the carrier swapped out that plane with a slightly smaller one with fewer first-class seats. Suddenly it had more first-class passengers than it knew what to do with. So it turned to its “How to Screw Over Customers” handbook and determined that the one in higher standing — more miles flown, presumably — gets the seat and the other first-class passenger, even though he’s also a member of the frequent-flier program, gets the boot. “I understand you might bump people because a flight is full,” Fearns said. “But they didn’t say anything at the gate. I was already in the seat. And now they were telling me I had no choice. They said they’d put me in cuffs if they had to.” You couldn’t make this up if you tried. It shouldn’t make any difference where a passenger is seated or how much he or she paid for their ticket. But you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of United putting the arm on a full-fare, first-class traveler. If there’s anybody whose business you want to safeguard and cultivate, it’s that person. So how could United possibly make things worse? Not to worry. This is the airline that knows how to add insult to injury. A United employee, responding to Fearns’ complaint that he shouldn’t have to miss the flight, compromised by downgrading him to economy class and placing him in the middle seat between a married couple who were in the midst of a nasty fight and refused to be seated next to each other. “They argued the whole way back,” Fearns recalled. “Nearly six hours. It was a lot of fun.” Back in Southern California, he consulted his lawyer and then wrote to United’s chief executive, Oscar Munoz, who commended airline workers after the passenger-dragging incident “for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right.” Fearns requested a full refund for his flight from Kauai and asked for United to make a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice. This is how rich guys do it. He received an email back from a United “corporate customer care specialist” apologizing that Fearns apparently had an unpleasant experience. But, no, forget about a refund. As for that charitable donation, what are you kidding? A hard no on that. Instead, the service rep offered to refund Fearns the difference between his first-class ticket and an economy ticket — about a week later, as if that wasn’t the first thing they should do in a situation like this — and to give him a $500 credit for a future trip on the airline. “Despite the negative experience, we hope to have your continued support,” the rep concluded. “Your business is especially important to us and we'll do our utmost to make your future contacts with United satisfactory in every respect.” I reached out to United and asked if anyone cared to comment on Fearns’ adventure in corporate catastrophe. No one got back to me. Julia Underwood, a business professor at Azusa Pacific University, said United’s actions in both the dragged-off-the-plane episode and with Fearns reflect a coldhearted mindset utterly devoid of compassion for customers. “They’re so locked into their policies, there’s no room for empathy,” she said. As a result, Underwood said, situations that should be manageable spiral out of control and result in unnecessarily messy PR disasters. “What United and all companies need to do is to train and empower workers to deal with specific issues as they arise,” she said. “Don’t just follow whatever is written in your policies.” I couldn’t agree more. United is neck-deep in trouble this week because its workers are clearly out of their depth in handling out-of-the-ordinary events. You have to think someone on the flight crew would have been able to step up, if given the trust and authority to do so by the carrier. Fearns said three different members of the crew on his middle-seat, economy-class return to L.A. apologized for how he was treated in Hawaii. But they said they were unable to do anything. He’s now considering a lawsuit against United — and he certainly has the resources to press his case. I asked if he’ll ever fly United again. Fearns could only laugh. “Are you kidding?”

538 points by 4ad 10y ago

4ad 10y ago

Original title is "United passenger threatened with handcuffs to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler", but it's too long for HN so I had to shorten it.

4ad 10y ago

Note: this is a different guy. After just a few days after the previous fuckup, they pull the exact same shit AGAIN. Unbelievable...

corin_ 10y ago
Although the article doesn't give a specific date, it seems this incident actually happened first, but is only now making it to press. > He had to fly to Hawaii last week
- 4ad 10y ago
  Yeah, looks like it. Still only a few days apart.

Belphemur 10y ago

What a lack of professionalism. The customer even paid premium price to be in first class and instead of being notified at the gate, like any respectable airline would do, he's asked to give his seat to somebody "more important" than him when already seated. It doesn't make any sense, if that "more important person" came later, he should be the one getting compensated by the airline especially when the problem occurred because United needed to change the plane for a smaller one. You don't kick customer, you compensate them.

mirimir 10y ago
Also, we know now that it's illegal to remove customers after boarding, unless they do something illegal. Saying no isn't illegal.
- kevinthew 10y ago
  qsaAssadseesacasqdqsadwaqsss
- rbcgerard 10y ago
  Apparently united position is that you haven't "boarded" until the door has closed and plane has left the gate
  - shimon_e 10y ago
    That works both ways. If you are on a flexible ticket you can get a refund up until the door is closed. All these rules work 2 ways.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      I'd like to see you try?
      - shimon_e 10y ago
        I have multiple times deboarded a plane before take off. Due to change in business plans, flight delays, etc. In one case a passenger was sick on board and I asked to deboard as I didn't want to risk getting their cold. This was all on Asian airlines. My few experiences on United have been terrible. So in this case I'd say the regulations guiding airlines is fair. United's execution of these regulations is the problem. There are a million things United could have done in the chain of events to have avoided facing a PR backlash. As this is HN, I'd give a simple technical solution that would have avoided this whole problem: The computer could have deboarded 8 passangers at random from order of lowest priority. United could have explained that if their employees don't catch this flight another flight with XXX passengers will be delayed / cancelled. This would allow the supervisor to use their own discretion to allow 4 of the 8 passengers to reboard. Making the practice of "overselling" illegal is not the solution. There are times where problem could be cause by equipment swaps changing seat numbers. If we stop the airlines from overselling then travelling will become a lot more expensive.

jsemrau 10y ago

Time for regulating the oligopoly of the airline industry. Obviously the safety of passengers can not be ensured anymore. https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/united-airlines-should-go-out-of-business-325e9983e51f https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/united-airlines-should-go...

hueving 10y ago
>Obviously the safety of passengers can not be ensured anymore. Let's not be dramatic. Actual airline safety issues that lead to horrific deaths are not being discussed here. This is just piss poor customer service that could be encountered on any property (e.g. hotels that have overbooked, etc).
- macintux 10y ago
  Trying to remember the last news story about someone being dragged out of a hotel room they've already checked into.
  - fixermark 10y ago
    Trying to remember the last news story about someone being asked to leave their hotel room, refusing to do so, having police called, and continuing to refuse to do so. People being kicked out of hotel rooms because of scheduling errors does happen. It's pretty rare.
    - macintux 10y ago
      I'd be surprised were it legal to have the police drag someone out of a room they've paid for and been checked into, merely because another guest wants that room. Sure, you can ask, but on what legal basis do you have to apply violence?
      - laretluval 10y ago
        The hotel is private property. If the owners of the property ask you to leave and you don't, you are trespassing.

adekok 10y ago

Can someone read this: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag... and explain where it allows them to refuse transport to a well-behaved passenger after boarding? Rule 21 seems to apply, but nothing there looks like "United can refuse to transport you 'just cause'". I've seen lots of people claim this behavior is legal, all without a shred of evidence to back them up.

deleted 10y ago
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icantdrive55 10y ago
It has someting to do with FAA regulations. Basically, they own you when you step on that plane.
tiatia 10y ago
I have not used United in many years after a major cluster f.. on a trip. Things like this were supposed to happen sooner or later. This airline hast a total "FU" attitude regarding customers. It is the only airline that I insist of not using. Regarding the boarding, this was posted by a lawyer: [Edit: This is about the recent incident, not this HN post] 1. First of all, it’s airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about “OVERSELLING”, which is specifically defined as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to deny boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply. 2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it’s clear that what they did was illegal– they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a. 3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you’ve boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn’t have been targeted. He’s going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco.

paulgb 10y ago

He and the doctor may have a solid legal case: http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-illegally-de-boarding-passenger/ http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-... I hope for United's sake these are anomalies and not a pattern of behavior.

mpweiher 10y ago
> ...not a pattern of behavior. It's actually far worse than just a "pattern of behavior", it is how United and other airlines (mostly US, but rest of the world is catching on) have deliberately structured their enterprise and the entire customer experience. Everything revolves around "privilege". Even 20 years ago, this used to be bad. On most European airlines' flights, you just waited at the gate until your flight was called, then got in line (with some minor prioritization) then flew. Whenever I had the misfortune of flying United (an ever rarer occasion as I wizened up to the situation and later to "codeshare" flights), half the gate was at the counter, jockeying for perks and arguing status and privilege. This has apparently now been codified with (last I checked) 6 separate cattle lanes for boarding. Also, when I was booked on United business (a mistake), the flight attendants apparently had to try to find certain "special" elite passengers and suck up to them, in order to get little "stars" on their cards. How utterly demeaning! Again, the US has been on the frontier of this deplorable trend, but the rest of the world is catching up, with Heathrow being the first airport I've seen with separate security lines for first class passengers. Munich caught up a little later. To me, it looks like the airlines in general (and it looks like United in particular) are so embedded in this completely artificial conception of segregating their passengers by privilege, that results like the ones we are seeing are not anomalies and not even outliers, but the logical and maybe even unescapable consequences. Dear Airlines: I just want to get from A to B. I don't care the slightest bit about your weird privilege system, and your efforts of forcing me to care by making "non-privileged" travel hellish just make me consider alternatives including not flying, but certainly not flying with your airline. Oh, and it doesn't have to be that way. Quite a few years ago I was on a multi-legged Star Alliance trip, with several legs across the US getting me from Maui to a Lufthansa flight out of JFK. The penultimate stopover was Chicago, but the United flight coming in to Chicago was late and the United flight leaving didn't wait for me. I tried the United counter, but for the longest time there was simply no-one there, and when someone showed up they told me it wasn't their problem. ?? Desperate, I searched a bit and found a Lufthansa hotline. After I told my sob-story, the operator said "Oh, you're in Chicago, why do you need to go to JFK? We have a flight leaving Chicago in 3 hours, let me just rebook you on that" Said, done. It was a normal economy ticket. Service. Update: Check out https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/top-perks-united-global-services/ https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/top-perks-united-global-ser... This is a thing?!?

h1d 10y ago

This is just golden... "placing him in the middle seat between a married couple who were in the midst of a nasty fight and refused to be seated next to each other." Crews don't even try to move them to be seated next to each others.

ambulancechaser 10y ago
You're advocating for the flight crew to instruct a passenger to relinquish their seat after they have already sat in it so that a first class customer could have it? I think it's safe to say that that should be an action of last recourse...

hocpoc 10y ago

I had to re-check (twice) if the news in the satire column. I literally cannot believe you would kick someone paying your company $1000

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tici_88 10y ago

Travelling in the US or with US airlines is not looking very good right now. Not just the United incident(s) but also TSA, Trump travel restrictions, flights constantly overbooked, massively late etc. I wonder if it will start impacting traveller and tourism numbers at some point. I think anyone who doesn't really need to be in the US and/or is planning travelling with kids is likely to have some second thoughts at this point. Recently Canada's girl guides cancelled all trips to the US: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/14/canadian-girl-guides-cancel-trips-us-fears-trump-travel-restrictions/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/14/canadian-girl-gui.... I wonder if this is a first step of a large trend yet to develop.

shimon_e 10y ago
This is actually a really good thing if numbers are greatly hit. It'll hopefully lead to the entire US travel industry to focus on becoming the most travel friendly place it can be. But the hit needs to be big enough for shareholders to care.
- bigtimeidiot 10y ago
  >But the hit needs to be big enough for shareholders to care. Also time. Something like a fundamental travel industry shakeup could take decades. Here's hoping. As a Canadian, crossing that border is getting less and less appealing.
Klathmon 10y ago
Anecdotally I've noticed that for like 5 years now my friends and family have a pretty severe aversion to flying anywhere for anything. From needing to show up hours before the flight, to the invasive screenings, the insane restrictions on what you can and cannot bring, the sentiment that if you check any baggage it's basically as good as gone, the ever increasing cost, the delays, and even things like the worry about if your ticket will actually get you on the damn plane! If I have to choose between a 3 hour flight, and a 12 hour drive, the 12 hour drive is what I pick almost every time now. Ignoring "disasters" (massive accident, theft, etc...) I'm going to have all my stuff, I know i'm not going to waste hundreds of dollars on a ticket that will get "rejected" at the last second, i'll have a car when I get to my destination, i can bring whatever the fuck I want, and it's a fraction of the cost.

jeswin 10y ago

I'm appalled by how this frontal assault on human dignity is shielded by law. What many of us learned this week is that it seems to be perfectly legal to bump off poorer or less privileged people specifically from a plane. This is boat allocation on Titanic all over again.

mirimir 10y ago
No, it's not legal. Edit: See lawyer quote from tiatia.
- michaelt 10y ago
  In a way, there are two questions at work here. The first question is whether you can have rent-a-cops throw a passenger off a plane after they have taken their seat. As I understand it, that is not legal. The second question is about over-booking more broadly. After all, though there's a legal distinction between a passenger a second before boarding and a second after, from a customer service standpoint they're still denied the seat they were promised. Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, that is legal. But should it be?
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Maybe not. But IANAL. However, why can't they bid for passengers to fly later. After boarding, they'd probably just need to pay more.
  - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
    Is it right that an airline can sell 310 tickets on a 300 seat plane, deliberately entering into 10 contracts it knows it cannot honour? As I understand it, that is legal. But should it be? I assume there are weasel words in the contract(airline ToS) to allow this.
    - briandear 10y ago

olodus 10y ago

>Instead, the service rep offered to refund Fearns the difference between his first-class ticket and an economy ticket So he paid the cost of first class but flied economy and when they get called out on it they think all they need to do is compensate for the difference? With the way he was treated?! How can you call yourself "Customer care specialist" and think that is a way to treat customers?

jamiethompson 10y ago
Not only that, if you're downgraded and the policy is to refund the difference then you as a customer shouldn't have to ask for a refund, it should just happen. As a business, you literally could not get away with this kind of behaviour in Europe.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
He contacted the CEO and got the CCS instead, so I imagine what happened was the CEO handed this off to Customer Care and said give them the difference in price and be done with it.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

If I paid full-fare and I'm already seated, who could possibly be more important than me?

URSpider94 10y ago
on United -- it was almost certainly a Global Services passenger. Those folks get whatever they want.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Then the airline needs to leave a seat unsold to allow them to do this. I hope they get sued within a cent of their ability to continue operating.
  - URSpider94 10y ago
    So, let's just say for a moment that this applied to 100 flights per day, and meant that United foregoes $1,000 in revenue per seat that they don't sell. They would be giving up $100,000 per day, or $1 million every 10 days, or roughly $35 million per year, by leaving a first-class seat empty on every flight. Weighing that against the risk of pissing off one or two first-class passengers a month for those times when everyone shows up for their flight and a VIP suddenly wants to claim a seat, just doesn't make good business sense.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      >just doesn't make good business sense. // I didn't say it did. They have to tell their top paying customer "no" or charge enough to make this possible. Humanity/morality should come in to the equation at some point too. An alternative of course is to run an auction to be bought out of the seat, but they can't absolutely guarantee a seat that way. If they want to guarantee a seat, they must keep one; nothing else is a guarantee of a seat, only a promise to try and give one.

Zigurd 10y ago

While this might or might not be technically legal, what shocks me is the response you'll see on online fora, that passengers should just shut up and comply, and that failure to do so is childish. These posts are often at great length, and laden with appeals to authority. Some might be trolls. But others appear to be by people who genuinely value an environment where the lowliest airline employee, no matter how poor their judgement, no matter how absent their discretion, is more right than any customer. Munoz's email to employees, of which I've not seen a retraction, takes this line wholeheartedly. It's a trait that suffuses the industry. Who the hell ARE these people?

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
FWIW this attitude is the one taught by primary school teachers in the UK "do what the teacher tells you straight away without question" and it's evil. I can see how such an attitude gets then reinforced and survives in adults, "that's what 'good' pupils do".
- user15672 10y ago
  This is taught so that small kids don't carry on doing things that might be dangerous (kids don't know the difference between dangerous and annoying, so a blanket rule is more sensible here). It's not evil, it's damn sensible. Please feel free to critisise the continuation of this teaching to older kids who can think critically about what they're doing, but don't ask for primary school kids to not do what the accountable adult is telling them.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    No, demanding doing things without question is truly an insidious evil. Even a 5 year old has faculty enough to question some blanket commands. T: "everyone sit down now, please" P: "my chair has wet paint on it Sir, do I have to sit down too?" Should the teacher say "always do as I say first time" next or should they acknowledge they were operating on imperfect knowledge of the situation and modify the command? This is only slightly contrived, some pupils will sit in the paint through fear of the teacher (some, occasionally, through over-bearing desire to please the teacher). Always allowing a command to be questioned develops critical thinking and encourages creativity whilst demanding pupils use good communications. It's harder to handle with a group, for sure, but worth it IMO. Questioning a command in order to get a reason for complying does not equate to "not doing what an accountable adult says". "Because I say so" should be the last fallback, not the first and only reason available. It requires humility. Being corrected by a 7yo, say, in front of a group can feel humiliating; but it's more important to do what is right than it is to instill a misplaced sense of obedience as being the highest virtue. This allows for the fallibility of the accountable adult and respects - and develops - the faculty of the child(ren).

stuaxo 10y ago

Browsing that on firefox on mobile was terrible, about part way down the page a fullscreen video overlay appears that I couldn't work out how to close.

Markoff 10y ago
ublock origin?

agumonkey 10y ago

Incredible how loss of temper is reaching any space of society these days. Feels like a worldwide fever.

golergka 10y ago

So, this is a guy who apparently wasn't VIP enough: > Fearns, 59, is president of TriPacific Capital Advisors, an Irvine investment firm that handles more than half a billion dollars in real estate holdings on behalf of public pension funds.

marcosscriven 10y ago

The crux of the article, for me, is this: "What United and all companies need to do is to train and empower workers to deal with specific issues as they arise,” she said. “Don’t just follow whatever is written in your policies." Unfortunately that's so often the case - one may as well be conversing with a robot in many customer service situations. I can only imagine it's just as frustrating for the disempowered service reps.

rayiner 10y ago
Empowering local service reps often leads to worse things. The cases where a Muslim passenger or whatever was forced to leave because another passenger complained wasn't written into any policy, it was the result of local crew exercising their discretion.

ptero 10y ago

At the moment I wish United gets beaten up well for forced passenger removal earlier this week. However, IMO this article just tries to pile onto the "United stinks" meme and is poorly written (more emotions than facts). Some things missing (for me): 1. When did this happen? The article makes it look like this just happened, but does not mention a date. I suspect the omission is on purpose (if so, boo!; if not, sorry, but please add event date). 2. The fact that the guy bumped off is rich is irrelevant (and going on and on about it dulls the message). 3. The fact that the seat the guy was downgraded was noisy (people arguing on both sides) is irrelevant. IMO the main point is valid -- the person was first to the seat and in general whoever gets into the seat first keeps it in case of a seat collision or a duplicate ticket. He should not have been asked to free it to another passenger (who should have been downgraded instead and compensated somehow). But conflating this with unrelated issue to get on a "United stinks" meme is a cheap trick. My 2c.

tyingq 10y ago
The information is missing from the story, but is available on other write ups of the same story. It happened on April 1st. He was offered the difference in price between the first class seat and the economy seat. That seems like poor compensation since this is basically a form of denied boarding, which involves higher compensation. Perhaps technically, since he still had a seat, it's not denied boarding, but it's certainly worth more than the fare difference. The relevant part is that the United staff specifically said he would be put in handcuffs if he didn't comply. That's the part to me that makes this fair game to bootstrap some attention from the other incident.
- briandear 10y ago
  Any verification that handcuffs were threatened? A guy saying it's so while also claiming he's considering a lawsuit doesn't lend much credibility -- he has a financial incentive to hyperbolize.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    There's not proof, but in his letter to United he asked only for a full refund. He did ask them to donate $25k to the charity of his choice, which seems an odd request if your goal is extortion. He doesn't appear to need the money: http://www.tripacificllc.com/team.html http://www.tripacificllc.com/team.html Edit: Also, he has a JD from Stanford. Lol...United picked the wrong guy.

nkkollaw 10y ago

This getting ridiculous. The removal was awful, and they did deserve all the bad press. This article however is just trying to ride the wave to get some clicks. There are millions of people who travel every day. Stuff like this must happen hundreds of times every day on pretty much every airline.

Veen 10y ago
> Stuff like this must happen hundreds of times every day I think that's the problem.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  It's bound to happen. The percentage must be 0.something.

bedhead 10y ago

Jeff Bezos' annual letter, released yesterday, had a good line (one of many) that immediately made me think of this United situations and broadly the crazy rules we've created for air travel and the culture that surrounds it all: "It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second."

boomka 10y ago

By the way, in the case of Dr Dao it was also not overbooking that caused him to get bumped off, but airline's assignment of lower priority to him than someone else. Just like in the parent article. There were other misreportings as well, not to mention that some news outlets ran character assassination stories and almost nobody emphasised that Dr Dao was a senior. The best piece I've seen deconstructing this is http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-removal-reporting-management-fail.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-remo...

EtherOr 10y ago

I wonder if this is a staged attempt (on the part of United, if not also the passenger) to prove that the prior instance was not about race or class (e.g. economy vs. first). "See, we do it to everyone!" Could this latest behavior be used as defensive evidence in a court case alleging discrimination?

gus_massa 10y ago
Nah. Apparently this is a previous incident that was ignored because no one had a viral video with a blooding client. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a HUGE amount of stupidity.
rkeene2 10y ago
The events in the article happened before the more famous and serious event.

tech4all 10y ago

I don't develop games... But if I did I would create a game called "United flight agent". You would be standing in the aisle facing the rear of the plane. Each round you would have a goal number of passengers to forcibly remove. You would walk up and down the aisle and punch out selected passengers. Once you had suitably subdued a passenger you click a security badge and the "Airport Rental Security" guys come and drag the passenger off. The game timer would be a chart of United's share price. The round is over when the price hits zero. The price could rise and fall with certain events:. A passenger stumbling back on the plane for instance. The game would end immediately if you punched a baby - even United agents don't punch babies! Feel free to run with it!!

gm-conspiracy 10y ago
Will somebody please post the kickstarter/indiegogo link?
cryodesign 10y ago
These guys are already on it: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vr-game-voluntary-disembarkment#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vr-game-voluntary-disemba...
antognini 10y ago
I bet you could put a new skin over Papers, Please and it would work pretty well without having to change many of the game dynamics.

MayeulC 10y ago

People usually like to interact with other people for that "human touch", and even quote it as a reason why they won't lose their job to automation. I think I would rather interact with a robot than with a crew that has procedures so rigid (and dumb) that they are not allowed to have empathy. I think that's sadly representative of the corporate mindset brought to the extreme. The consumer is not king anymore, it's a product. When did this start? I wonder.

jccalhoun 10y ago

Flying always makes me wish workers of the world really would unite... That being said, the way this article is written makes me want to kick the author off of a plane while in flight. "Fearns requested a full refund for his flight from Kauai and asked for United to make a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice. This is how rich guys do it." This is how rich guys do it? Really? ugh.

phkahler 10y ago

Somehow I feel like this all comes back to banking and the finance industry. The issues in these cases all come down to money. They overbook flights to maximize resource (plane) allocation. This one was a case of having to swap in a smaller plane. It all comes down to how expensive airplanes are and the fierce competition among carriers that leads to a system with little redundancy. But think about that - how can there be such intense competition in an industry dealing with such high-priced equipment? Granted, a solution to this pinch is probably going to mean higher average fares. But I'm starting to look toward a much bigger picture to see how this comes about. Any thoughts on this?

ijafri 10y ago

In Pakistan Citizen didn't let a minster on board a flight, after it got delayed due to him. Citizen abused him and he had to leave the plane. I meant United is demonstrating something even worse than would happen in our 3rd world country, and all I get it now, the 1st World only got bit of money and tech and at the end of the day, they are just as big an assholes as we are. First they beated a customer and now another one was moved to economy in order to make room for a certain high profile.. !!! So you truly see, this is the so-called first world, racism against minorities and immigrants despite 'they' invaded Red Indians land, and now they are demonstrating same 'social class' discrimination, that's common place in the 3rd World, minus the $+Tech, and there you have even worse of the 3rd World.

hilbert42 10y ago

If that happened to me, I'd be incandescent with rage—and I'd sue at the first opportunity. I can only hope Fearns makes the airline pay many, many times over. It seems the only thing these carpetbaggers understand are lawsuits where they lose. Its CEO deserves the boot—it happened on his watch!

hilbert42 10y ago

If that happened to me, I'd be incandescent with rage—and I'd sue at the first opportunity. I can only hope Fearns makes the airline pay many, many times over. It seems the only things these carpetbaggers understand are lawsuits where they lose. The CEO deserves the boot—as it happened on his watch!

hilbert42 10y ago

11thEarlOfMar 10y ago

Been flying for 25 years, 1.5 million miles total, most of that on United. US airlines have been through hell over the last 16 years. Bankruptcies, union battles, fierce competition, and not to mention, the real threat that someone could blow up or intentionally crash the plane they're flying, all contributed to a mentality that the employees have to stick together to survive. The end result is that US airline employees see their loyalty to each other as more important than customer service. This mentality enables the micro-selling, endless class stratification, rigid authority and the generally unpleasant demeanor of staff. They're really not friendly in the US, and strikingly different from, say, Asia-based carriers.

1_2__3 10y ago
What you call "hell" I call record profits. Sorry if you're trying the tired old "the best way to lose millions is to buy an airline" bullshit this probably not the thread to do it in.
Markoff 10y ago
> US airlines have been through hell over the last 16 years. Bankruptcies, union battles, fierce competition, and not to mention, the real threat that someone could blow up or intentionally crash the plane they're flying, all contributed to a mentality that the employees have to stick together to survive. So you say US market is more competitive than European and have more strikes than European airlines and less risk? I call that very poor excuse compared to European airlines, which work under harsher conditions than American, but still keep level of service higher than American airlines (of course both are inferior to Asian carriers).
- 11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
  I said nothing about European airlines. But I've wondered how much worse it would have been here if Ryan Air or Easy Jet had moved in.
  - Markoff 10y ago
    is there any reason to believe it could be worse than status quo?

imjk 10y ago

This happened to me once with Delta Airlines a few years back. I was ticketed for an upgrade to first class (via Medallion status), but when I went to board I was told that the stewardess had given the seat to another customer and I was moved to a middle seat in the back. As someone who tends to be non-confrontational and the fact that it was a short flight, I just went with it. I did complain when I got back via their feedback form and they compensated me with 7500 miles, which I now realize was woefully inadequate, but I didn't have much recourse.

ryan606 10y ago

United CEO Oscar Munoz was formerly a top executive at railroad CSX. It is any wonder that he treats his passengers as FREIGHT, not as PEOPLE? My wife and I try to fly Southwest whenever possible. They are the only airline (perhaps the only transportation organization) whose employees actually care about their customers' travel experiences.

tlrobinson 10y ago

Forcing passengers to relinquish seats they've already sat down in is clearly a terrible policy. Once you're in your seat you should be "locked in", except in exceptional circumstances. Pulling someone out of a seat has a much higher emotional (and PR) cost than denying someone boarding in the first place.

technofiend 10y ago

United has an interesting way of dealing with elite status these days... sure you still have silver, gold, platinum but then you have the real elite flyers. You might be the first person in boarding group one, but you'll still be eclipsed by the 1K / Global Services / Polaris flyers who are the true elite both in status and in total dollar spend. They don't even bother to wait in line - they just show up when boarding starts and are shuffled to the front of the queue (along with a friend if they want), no questions asked. Based on those layers it wouldn't particularly surprise me if one day as a mere Gold flyer I get bumped for higher tier elite. United has made it clear total dollar spend is how they judge the true status of flyers.

nonbel 10y ago

Either this is awful reporting or I missed it. Did the event described here occur before or after they dragged the doctor off the plane?

davidf18 10y ago

Actually, the Obama administration allowed United to take over Continental when we already had so few competing airlines in this country as it is, so Obama should be blamed. We need more competition, not less. With the consolidation of airlines, it is much harder than it was to say you don't want to fly with them anymore and they know it. The case with the passenger being dragged off the plane was not regular United but some lower-cost airline that has a close business relationship with United. The CEO should have set up an on-call executive that can quickly deal with situations like these two cases. It would not be very hard to do.

whack 10y ago

I've traveled on flights frequently for over a decade, and I've never had an airline refuse to seat me for a flight I had a ticket for. I don't use frequent-flyer, and just buy the cheapest tickets available on Expedia. The only saving grace I can think of is that I always get to the airport way before anyone else does. Have I just been getting lucky all this time? Short of being a frequent flyer or buying expensive tickets, is there any way I can make sure I don't get bumped off a plane I have tickets for?

krull10 10y ago
Not with United. I had two flights in a row that I was all checked in with boarding passes on my phone, and then they bumped me due to an "equipment" change the night before my flight. In one case I was able to get a new seat immediately and re-checkin, in the other I had to show up at the airport four hours before my flight and beg for one of the few unassigned seats. Then I got to watch hysteria at the gate from all the people that got bumped... I've never had any other airline try to bump me at all, let alone after checking in. (Just to add, I think the "changing" equipment claim is a common excuse they make up. It allows them to overbook and bump people without having to pay the US mandated fees to each person who gets bumped. In at least one of these cases they replaced the original plane with a plane of the same exact type, but claimed "it might have a different seat layout so it counts as an equipment change".)

davidf18 10y ago

I have a good story to tell about El-Al (Israeli) airlines and US Air. I was on a connecting flight on US Air to Newark to take El-Al. The US Air flight left late and arrived late. Israeli security escorted me and 2 other passengers onto the El-Al plane to Tel Aviv but the luggage did not make it. El-Al opens all bags that don't travel with the passenger in a bomb chamber which is located at JFK. So it took 3 or 4 days to get my luggage. El-Al gave me $75 even though it was not their fault. US Air paid suit, shoes, etc. that I had to purchase.

jhulla 10y ago

Comment might be buried... But, the problem is the baroque overlaid combinations of [seat class, fare class, FF status, standby, cash vs FF purchase, time of arrival at gate, etc.] intersecting with [connecting flts, equipment, weather, etc.] leads to a large range of predictable conditions with uncertain outcomes. E.g. only one seat remaining, who gets it: passenger needing to make intl connection on a FF ticket or cash paying high status passenger? This is a global optimization problem that can be easily solved - but there are many cases where on the ground discretion is required [last minute aircraft change, weather delay]. Poorly paid, under trained and under motivated staff will always drop the ball in this situation. The solution for United here is two fold 1) Increase training, comp, authority and motivation of gate agents to solve problems with minimal disruption. This used to be the case a bankruptcy ago. This setup is not likely to return due to a simple reason: cost. United in bankruptcy blew up the pension promises to some of their most experienced staff. They left. 2) The best outcome for United is to reduce the complexity of their product so that customer expectations of service align with the company's ability to deliver. tl;dr: United's service is too complex for their gate agents to deliver. Service should be simplified.

imgabe 10y ago
The other issue is to stop overbooking every single flight and allow some slack to handle these unexpected situations that inevitably come up.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  Which means increased costs, especially since every other airline is also overbooking flights. Free-market is an asshole in this case: gotta overbook to compete.
  - imgabe 10y ago
    I fly about once a month or so over the past 2-3 years, a number of different airlines. United is the only one that consistently asks for volunteers to get bumped on every flight.

mintplant 10y ago

> Fearns requested a full refund for his flight from Kauai and asked for United to make a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice. This is how rich guys do it. It bugs me that so much of the emphasis in this article is on the idea that they dared to do this to someone wealthy.

musesum 10y ago

User surly UX. Was going to book an impromptu multi-legged trip between San Francisco, Iowa and Arizona. American Airlines quoted a price, but the only available seats cost (around) $33 - $58 extra for each flight -- total was $200 extra. Bait and switch? So, I switched to Delta. But Delta's antique web design wouldn't allow a change. So, I attempted to talk to a Human. Voice menu was a bit schizoid: transitioning from voice to a touch-only menu. Love the response: "your selection was invalid" Who designs these things? A Lost in Space fan? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU Then I get to the part where it says: "You may choose to have us call you back ... or stay on hold ... wait time is over 3 hours". So, I cancelled.

yeukhon 10y ago

So two days ago my 2-month old Dell UltraSharp monitor broke with flickering and some cosmetic damage. I reached out to Amazon rep because I bought from there. The repr and I spoke and did some testing. Eventually he said he would help me make an exception by sending me a replacement without any fees, a pre-paid return label, and do a two-day guarantee shipment, despite the return window has already passed (it was April 6th, last week). I got my new monitor today, and I am happy. The repr said because of my purchase history. I am a good customer to them, someone who have bought probably couple thousand dollars worth of goods from Amazon over the years. AWS itself also offered to eliminate all of the charges on my account after a huge spike on billing (which is believed to be the results of network attacks) under no questions. This is how you build a $300B company. You take constant short-term losses over long-term gains. United Airline has a long fucking way to learn how to treat its customers. If customer B's flight had a mechanical failure, should do this: UA: "Sorry, we have a mechanical problem, do you wish to take the next flight? We will offer you a voucher." B: "No. I need to get there on time." UA: "Do you wish to take an economy seat? Our first-class is full." B: "No. I am a priority seating customer." (<--- does this shit even exist?) UA: "I understand. We will ask if anyone on the current flight is willing to give up." UA: "HEY PEOPLE ANYONE WANT TO GIVE UP THEIR SEAT FOR X AMOUNT OF MONEY AND INCENTIVES?" UA: "Okay no one. Increasing. We still have a few minutes left to auction a seat for an economy seat swap." UA: "Sorry Sir / Madam. No one is willing and the flight is destined to leave now, so we can't hold up the 365 passengers onboard. We are sorry for your inconvenience, we will see if other airlines have seats available and we can help arrange a flight for you based on your continued support of United Airlines." Now either B take it or leave it. Done. One airplane's delay is a delay for other 100 flights waiting to leave the airport on time. Win 100 customers over 1 customer. This is grade-school manner, fucking grade-school manner. Change your policy now if you are so serious about good customer service and fear of law suits. Actually now I come to think of it, airlines should build an auction/seat auction app.

gmarx 10y ago

These things don't matter and the airlines know it. People will continue to fly. I guarantee that a year from now if United is the most convenient flight to a place that guy needs to go, he will fly United. We simply aren't in the "free market competition" will fix it zone with air travel. I hate air travel and do everything I can to avoid it for work. Most people think I'm crazy. Why wouldn't you jump at the chance to fly to an obscure town in India on the company dime!?!?!? So do not expect this to affect anything unless the government gets involved

imroot 10y ago

I think the "higher priority" traveler might have been a FAM -- an air marshal -- who was assigned to the flight at the last minute. Even more so if he had an aisle seat.

metaphorm 10y ago

The air travel industry is a leading indicator of creeping authoritarianism in our society. I'm very glad that this story is getting the kind of media coverage that it is. This needs to be examined and resisted.

apostacy 10y ago

Some people are getting hit with paywalls. So here is the full text of the article: It’s hard to find examples of worse decision-making and customer treatment than United Airlines having a passenger dragged from an overbooked plane. But United’s shabby treatment of Geoff Fearns, including a threat to place him in handcuffs, comes close. Fearns, 59, is president of TriPacific Capital Advisors, an Irvine investment firm that handles more than half a billion dollars in real estate holdings on behalf of public pension funds. He had to fly to Hawaii last week for a business conference. Fearns needed to return early so he paid about $1,000 for a full-fare, first-class ticket to Los Angeles. He boarded the aircraft at Lihue Airport on the island of Kauai, took his seat and enjoyed a complimentary glass of orange juice while awaiting takeoff. Then, as Fearns tells it, a United employee rushed onto the aircraft and informed him that he had to get off the plane. “I asked why,” he told me. “They said the flight was overfull.” Fearns, like the doctor at the center of that viral video from Sunday night, held his ground. He was already on the plane, already seated. He shouldn’t have to disembark. “That’s when they told me they needed the seat for somebody more important who came at the last minute,” Fearns said. “They said they have a priority list and this other person was higher on the list than me.” Apparently United had some mechanical troubles with the aircraft scheduled to make the flight. So the carrier swapped out that plane with a slightly smaller one with fewer first-class seats. Suddenly it had more first-class passengers than it knew what to do with. So it turned to its “How to Screw Over Customers” handbook and determined that the one in higher standing — more miles flown, presumably — gets the seat and the other first-class passenger, even though he’s also a member of the frequent-flier program, gets the boot. “I understand you might bump people because a flight is full,” Fearns said. “But they didn’t say anything at the gate. I was already in the seat. And now they were telling me I had no choice. They said they’d put me in cuffs if they had to.” You couldn’t make this up if you tried. It shouldn’t make any difference where a passenger is seated or how much he or she paid for their ticket. But you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of United putting the arm on a full-fare, first-class traveler. If there’s anybody whose business you want to safeguard and cultivate, it’s that person. So how could United possibly make things worse? Not to worry. This is the airline that knows how to add insult to injury. A United employee, responding to Fearns’ complaint that he shouldn’t have to miss the flight, compromised by downgrading him to economy class and placing him in the middle seat between a married couple who were in the midst of a nasty fight and refused to be seated next to each other. “They argued the whole way back,” Fearns recalled. “Nearly six hours. It was a lot of fun.” Back in Southern California, he consulted his lawyer and then wrote to United’s chief executive, Oscar Munoz, who commended airline workers after the passenger-dragging incident “for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right.” Fearns requested a full refund for his flight from Kauai and asked for United to make a $25,000 donation to the charity of his choice. This is how rich guys do it. He received an email back from a United “corporate customer care specialist” apologizing that Fearns apparently had an unpleasant experience. But, no, forget about a refund. As for that charitable donation, what are you kidding? A hard no on that. Instead, the service rep offered to refund Fearns the difference between his first-class ticket and an economy ticket — about a week later, as if that wasn’t the first thing they should do in a situation like this — and to give him a $500 credit for a future trip on the airline. “Despite the negative experience, we hope to have your continued support,” the rep concluded. “Your business is especially important to us and we'll do our utmost to make your future contacts with United satisfactory in every respect.” I reached out to United and asked if anyone cared to comment on Fearns’ adventure in corporate catastrophe. No one got back to me. Julia Underwood, a business professor at Azusa Pacific University, said United’s actions in both the dragged-off-the-plane episode and with Fearns reflect a coldhearted mindset utterly devoid of compassion for customers. “They’re so locked into their policies, there’s no room for empathy,” she said. As a result, Underwood said, situations that should be manageable spiral out of control and result in unnecessarily messy PR disasters. “What United and all companies need to do is to train and empower workers to deal with specific issues as they arise,” she said. “Don’t just follow whatever is written in your policies.” I couldn’t agree more. United is neck-deep in trouble this week because its workers are clearly out of their depth in handling out-of-the-ordinary events. You have to think someone on the flight crew would have been able to step up, if given the trust and authority to do so by the carrier. Fearns said three different members of the crew on his middle-seat, economy-class return to L.A. apologized for how he was treated in Hawaii. But they said they were unable to do anything. He’s now considering a lawsuit against United — and he certainly has the resources to press his case. I asked if he’ll ever fly United again. Fearns could only laugh. “Are you kidding?”