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I've also wondered about the pilots during the United incident, and media coverage has been strangely quiet on that topic. The executive summary of the inciden

I've also wondered about the pilots during the United incident, and media coverage has been strangely quiet on that topic. The executive summary of the incident seems to be that there just weren't any adults in the room. One can easily picture gate agents, flight attendants, and the aviation department staff involved basically feeling that they must follow instructions, being worried about breaking policies, being written up, whatever. You'd hope that if the whole thing were put in front of a pilot, they'd perhaps take a more wholistic, pragmatic, problem-solving view, and try a few other options first. Seems like almost anything would have been better - talking to the passengers, getting everybody to leave the plane and reboard / sort it out in the terminal, cancelling the flight, getting a bigger plane, putting the airline staff on a different airline, anything. If a pilot couldn't come up with a better solution to something like this, I'd worry how they'd fare in the air with a mechanical emergency.

mikeash 10y ago
My uninformed guess is that the pilots had no idea of the details of what was going on. They were probably in the cockpit with the door closed preparing for their part of the flight. No doubt they were kept informed of the situation, but it was probably vague generalities like, "We need to bump four passengers so we can deadhead crew, we should have you ready to go in 15 minutes." And next thing the poor pilots know, they have a starring role in a lawsuit.
- tacostakohashi 10y ago
  I think that's quite possible, and I'd like to believe that's what happened. I guess there must be a cockpit voice recording somewhere - I wonder if that will ever come out, or if people need to die for that to happen. I'm still kind of skeptical that the pilots could be completely oblivious about it though. You'd think that if something is serious enough for a flight attendant or gate agent to call law enforcement, and get them onto the plane, then they'd tell the pilot about it too, if only as a courtesy or practical measure so they're not surprised about the noise or banging on the door. Also, at some point the pilots are going to have manifests of passengers vs crew, and that would change, so you'd think they'd see that happening, since the plane was fully boarded it seems possible they'd have had the first manifest, and wonder about / be annoyed about late changes. Or, maybe they'd simply see the law enforcement folks get on, or hear the call on the intercom / radio, etc. I'm more inclined to think that the situation was misrepresented to them ("we have an unruly passenger, but we're taking care of it"), and they took it at face value without asking any questions. Will be interesting to see what comes out.
sverige 10y ago
Actually, they were not United pilots, but pilots for Republic Airlines which was operating the United flight. The United Pilots union issued an angry statement, as unions are wont to do. [0,1] [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/united-airlines-pilots-letter-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/united-airlines-pilots-letter... [1] [Video] http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/video/united-pilots-issue-statement-on-passenger-dragging/vp-BBzRkoi http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/video/united-pilots-issue-statem...

mikeash 10y ago

My uninformed guess is that the pilots had no idea of the details of what was going on. They were probably in the cockpit with the door closed preparing for their part of the flight. No doubt they were kept informed of the situation, but it was probably vague generalities like, "We need to bump four passengers so we can deadhead crew, we should have you ready to go in 15 minutes." And next thing the poor pilots know, they have a starring role in a lawsuit.

tacostakohashi 10y ago
I think that's quite possible, and I'd like to believe that's what happened. I guess there must be a cockpit voice recording somewhere - I wonder if that will ever come out, or if people need to die for that to happen. I'm still kind of skeptical that the pilots could be completely oblivious about it though. You'd think that if something is serious enough for a flight attendant or gate agent to call law enforcement, and get them onto the plane, then they'd tell the pilot about it too, if only as a courtesy or practical measure so they're not surprised about the noise or banging on the door. Also, at some point the pilots are going to have manifests of passengers vs crew, and that would change, so you'd think they'd see that happening, since the plane was fully boarded it seems possible they'd have had the first manifest, and wonder about / be annoyed about late changes. Or, maybe they'd simply see the law enforcement folks get on, or hear the call on the intercom / radio, etc. I'm more inclined to think that the situation was misrepresented to them ("we have an unruly passenger, but we're taking care of it"), and they took it at face value without asking any questions. Will be interesting to see what comes out.

sverige 10y ago

Actually, they were not United pilots, but pilots for Republic Airlines which was operating the United flight. The United Pilots union issued an angry statement, as unions are wont to do. [0,1] [0] http://www.businessinsider.com/united-airlines-pilots-letter-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/united-airlines-pilots-letter... [1] [Video] http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/video/united-pilots-issue-statement-on-passenger-dragging/vp-BBzRkoi http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/video/united-pilots-issue-statem...