7 ms·

I would love to know of another service or product where NOT using the product results in being detained. Airlines sound more and more like a cartel than anythi

• hindsightbias 3y ago
  Detained is his drama fathers word. There’s no evidence he was forced or dragged somewhere. They wanted to question him, probably in a private area. He wasn’t getting on any of their flights w/o answering so he went along with it.
  • photonerd 3y ago
    > They wanted to question him, probably in a private area. That’s literally detaining him, so I am not sure what you’re objecting to here.
    • boring_twenties 3y ago
      Literally not. If he complied voluntarily whilst having the option to leave, that's the exact opposite of detaining him.
      • cjbgkagh 3y ago
        He doesn’t have to comply, he could have simply walked to his destination instead of flying
      • axus 3y ago
        The article isn't clear if he complied voluntarily. Was breaking their handhold and dashing out of the airport into a taxi-cab his other option?
        • boring_twenties 3y ago
          IANAL but I think unless you are arrested, a handhold in and of itself would be illegal?
      • jerf 3y ago
        "Voluntarily" may be doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. People are often not fully aware of what they can and can not refuse to do. Airports have gotten a lot more complicated on that front in the last 20 years.
      • Tronno 3y ago
        Depending on the age of the child, they may not be able to legally consent to whatever happened, especially if coercion was involved. I suggest giving the victim some leeway here, given that so many airlines have a track record of passenger abuse.
      • mock-possum 3y ago
        He’s a teenager squaring up with security guards - there’s a power imbalance there that bears consideration imo
      • sonicshadow 3y ago
        Do you think there's a situation in an airport, of all places, where you refusing to comply with a security guard's orders goes well for you? I comply with everything an airport official says because a) I'm brown and b) I'm at the airport to go on a flight, not argue with some power-tripping douche.
        • boring_twenties 3y ago
          I think an airport is probably one of the least worst places: a very public place with lots of witnesses and cameras, plus its own relatively relaxed police force. If you have a flight to catch, of course, the calculus changes but once that becomes a lost cause, all bets are off.
          • sonicshadow 3y ago
            So more cameras to catch you slipping up once or thinking you have the "right" to do something, when in reality you don't because it's an airport. If I miss my flight I'm more motivated to catch the next one, not test my available civil liberties in front of poorly-paid ex-military. Best case you end up detained (in the real sense) for a long time and potentially acquitted in court, months later and having incurred plenty of mental trauma. Worst case you just go to jail. Sounds like a lose-lose
      • public_defender 3y ago
        https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ Ha. Ha. Suddenly everyone's an expert in what constitutes detention. There's actually a big difference between "literally not detaining" someone and not detaining someone. I think the detention naysayers in this thread have failed to consider that the people who practice this type of behavior are experts. Frequently the whole business of these interrogators is to make sure that someone is "not literally" detained, but that they are in fact detained, in the sense that they do not feel free to leave. In this way, the interrogator has not committed a crime or malfeasance by falsely detaining a person, but they isolate them and make them feel as though they need to answer questions. The worst part is that there is almost no clear coaching for how a person is supposed to get through this type of situation. With the police, we can give clear advice: (1) ask "am I being detained or am I free to leave?" (2) Refuse to engage in conversation; (3) Ask for a lawyer. But these aren't police. They will tell you that you are not being detained. They have a few hundred dollars of your money and maybe a bunch of your clothes, and they just need you to answer a few questions before you get on the plane. What are you going to say? "I refuse to answer questions without a lawyer"? "I refuse to remain in this tiny office answering questions"? Ok. Great. You're banned, and maybe turned over to TSA for a real custodial interrogation for acting so suspiciously at an airport. Anyway, all this to say that your word games with "literally" this and that are not clever because this is actually much worse than a real custodial interrogation because the rights and obligations are much less clear and that lack of clarity accrues to the corporation's advantage.
        • sonicshadow 3y ago
          Thank you, I was waiting for someone to clarify the word "detain". You're right this is more nefarious than an official police detention
        • boring_twenties 3y ago
          If they are airline employees and not cops I'm not aware of any way they can detain you, short of a citizen's arrest which usually requires them to have observed you committing a felony? In this case I would just declare that I'm leaving and if any resistance, demand the real cops be called or call them yourself. Same if they refuse to return your cash and/or luggage.
    • bobbean 3y ago
      It's literally not. That's the definition of an interview
      • photonerd 3y ago
        They forced him to officially stay in a place & be questioned or he was going to be removed & deprived of something he legally purchased. That’s detainment by coercion at least.
  • boeingUH60 3y ago
    I agree with you on this. The issue is that people want to get outraged at any little thing nowadays out of self-righteousness.
    • jackmott42 3y ago
      [flagged]
    • mitchdoogle 3y ago
      Intimidating and scaring people before they have done anything is worthy of outrage. That should not be acceptable at airports anywhere. And that's before you even consider that what the kid was trying to do was not unethical, so receiving any punishment whatsoever is outrageous.
  • jackmott42 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • sonicshadow 3y ago
    Alright the first paragraph: > A teen traveling solo for the first time from Gainesville, Florida to Charlotte was taken to a security room by American Airlines. There he was interrogated – and forced to buy a new ticket – according to the boy’s father. What is your definition of "detained"?
    • awb 3y ago
      Private companies have no legal right to detain anyone. They probably intimidated him into coming with them and he agreed / complied.
    • LeafItAlone 3y ago
      detained: to hold or keep in or as if in custody > according to the boy’s father Who wasn’t present. The airline may have asked nicely and the son complied and never tried or asked to leave. That’s not being detained. We will probably only know the details if this goes to court and it comes out or if video of the interaction is released.
      • sonicshadow 3y ago
        I guess the burden of proof lies with the person writing the story, so if you want to believe it's all wrong then go ahead.
        • LeafItAlone 3y ago
          This entire article is based off the word of the father who has supposedly been flying with Skiplagged for over five years and somehow didn’t know that the airlines didn’t look favorably on it. That makes me just a little suspicious, since the time I heard of it my first question was “is this allowed”.
      • dylan604 3y ago
        If the boy is an underage teen, then it would also be illegal to interrogate him without the presence of a guardian. If I am going about my business, but you request that I stop what I'm doing to follow you to have a chat, you are detaining me. period. you pussyfooting around this like it's not is just disingenuous at best
  • mitchdoogle 3y ago
    It seems to me like the kid thought he didn't have a choice but to go with them. That would be forcing him. If it was typical security/police talk, it probably went something like, "You need to come with us. We need to ask you a few questions". I'd guess most teenagers would be too intimidated and scared to do anything else. If they didn't specifically inform him that he didn't have to go with them or answer their questions, then it sounds like he was detained
• awb 3y ago
  The airline’s position is that it’s a contract. When you buy the ticket you agree in the T&C not to game the system. The other way to fix it would be to charge every leg at direct flight prices and then offer a rebate for completing your full itinerary.
  • klardotsh 3y ago
    The correct way to fix it is for every leg offered by an airline to be priced comparably, with the per-leg pricings transparently displayed to customers as part of the booking process, such that skiplagging is no longer a necessary tactic to avoid getting gouged by the airline cartels. But since that might cost these businesses some money, there's limited legislative pressure to force them to do the right things.
  • mcv 3y ago
    I don't understand the logic behind charging less for two legs than for just one. That sounds incredibly shady to me, and for an airline to be able to enforce it like this should definitely be illegal. It sounds like abuse of market power, rather than an honest supply-demand with an eye on their costs, thing. They try to extort more for the shorter trip due to artificial scarcity.
    • awb 3y ago
      It is a supply and demand effect. Prices aren’t generated based on a fixed markup over costs. It’s way more expensive to fly into smaller regional hubs like Charlotte because the supply of airlines that want to maintain a presence there is smaller than a national hub like New York City. That’s how you get these upstart airlines that take over a corner of the US when the prices get too high. Then the big airlines drop their prices to compete because the supply went up.
    • CPLX 3y ago
      It is abuse of market power. They are trying to extract monopoly rents out of people that need to be in Charlotte because they dominate that airport. They can’t do that in NYC because of heavy competition. There are effectively four major airlines. That’s just not nearly enough to avoid anti-competitive bullshit like this.
• jzwinck 3y ago
  The UK's National Rail used to have a "4 for 2" offer. Four people could travel together with a 50% discount if booked in advance. One day our friend was ill but three of us weren't going to miss the only sunny day of British summer so we went without him. The ticket agent on the train was quite insistent that we were breaking the rules...and I guess in some sense we were, as the tickets did say four people had to travel together. We ended up with a "One time courtesy exception" so we could continue our journey. National Rail later revised the program to a 33% discount for groups of 3 or more.