They made me miss most of a job interview - bounced me despite me telling them I was going to a job interview. Did not get the job. I think the job thought I had volunteered. Sigh.
I’ve flown a fair number of times before. I get it - the airline needed to make space. But any passenger bumping should have happened BEFORE they board. Not after.
@walarney Are you sure? Southwest lets you check two suitcases for free. On American that would cost $100 rt. Make sure to factor that in your fare, unless you don’t check bags. That’s why I fly with SW.
@moondrake Indeed. I flew down to Florida for a conference and my family joined me later. I checked 1 bag for me and 1 bag with their stuff, so they didn’t have to worry about it. Nice that it was free. Not so nice that they busted up my suitcase…
@medz Oh yeah. I bought a gorgeous National Geographic Polar Bear suitcase for my trip to Europe. Everyone complimented me on it, even the baggage handlers. That didn’t prevent them from scraping it all to hell and tearing off both handles. My new suitcase is a Samsonite with built in flush ripstop nylon handles. A big selling point was the one on the bottom between the wheels, making it easy to lift the full suitcase onto the bed or into the trunk.
@moondrake I usually check a bag, so it might be a wash. But if I don’t choose the lowest fare, I have to explain it on my authorization form. My company’s process involves getting a piece of paper signed by 3 people besides myself, and then scanned and sent back to me before I can book. So my options are usually limited further by the time it all gets done.
@narfcake They are the only airline that has both lost my suitcase and where I ended up watching 4 flights load before ours which was scheduled first and even with empty seats on ALL of those flights, they never offered anyone a reticket.
They also have the rudest employees of any airline I have flown in the last 5-10 years, but that may be airport dependent. I pay more to fly anything else.
Alaska is the only airline that has totally destroyed luggage for me
@katylava I don’t think they actually did in the past. But I see Concur now will mark one flight as “lowest cost logical fare”. So maybe it shows up on the approval page now, I don’t know.
I don’t know why they put so much emphasis on airfare when the hotel costs are twice as much these days. And usually by the time a trip is approved, that low fare is gone and I have to pick something a hundred or two more. Corporate logic. Don’t get me started on their personal mileage calculations.
Several years back I was returning from Vancouver and a huge snow storm was delaying flights. I ended up leaving about 8 hours late. Not because of the snow, but because the fucking airline somehow didn’t schedule flight attendants for my flight. They had to fly in a crew from Seattle but they were delayed getting in because of the storm. I was coming back through Chicago and missed the last connection that night by about 5 minutes. Ran through the airport and literally saw the jetway moving away from the plane as I got to the gate. At least the airline anted up for a hotel room since it was their fault. Surprise, surprise - it was United.
@cinoclav Snow often means that the crew got delayed somewhere else. I flew in to visit my parents one year and it snowed. They cancelled my flight at 1 am the day I was supposed to leave. The rescheduled flight was three days later. After an hour and a half on the phone I found a flight to a different airport. That was cancelled at the airport. Told them I don’t care where I go but get me the hell out of here. Next year the same thing. I drive now.
My one & only RT flight with United Airlines was about 5 yrs ago when visiting my grandparents. First when catching the commuter flight from Denver to Colorado Springs (travels originated in PHX) and my transfer was cancelled due to too few seats sold and I had to wait 3 hrs for the next scheduled bird. I could’ve driven there in less time! Then on the return flight, I reached Denver just fine but once again the scheduled plane back to Phx had some mechanical issues (I’m perfectly OK with getting that resolved!!!) and they cancelled THAT flight while awaiting for another open plane. Ended up playing musical chairs from them changing the gate 4 times and was eventually boarded 5 1/2 hrs later! The only upside to it all was I got to meet and had a lengthy conversation with Huey Lewis whose plane was also MIA. BTW, I was very pleased that he was a very down to earth & nice fella. I went back to flying on Southwest and just driving from Denver to the Springs. WAY less stress and out of all the dozens of times we’ve used them, they’ve rarely been late and my luggage has been just fine.
I have read more, they were aviation security, LEOs but not regular police. One of them was aggressive and out of line and was put on leave.
The Chicago Department of Aviation said in a statement that the incident “was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the Department.”
@moondrake they are one of two organizations / departments empowered with policing powers at the airport. Their instructions should be complied with just like any other police officer. Is it possible the officer violated the procedures he is meant to follow? Sure, and a full investigation when carried out will reveal whether that was the case and to what extent he did so. However, in the end it is completely unjust to saddle the officer with all of the blame for how this situation played out.
Dr. David Dao whether anyone cares to recognize it or not shares responsibility for what transpired here. Had he complied with the officer’s instructions, or even just gone along with things when the officer tried to pull him out of the chair things would have ended differently. Instead he chose to scream in a manner I have only ever heard before from a toddler being dragged out of a toy store without the desired toy the instant he was touched and brace himself against the chairs around him and engage in a tug of war with the officer.
Don’t like what an officer is telling you to do? That’s fine, sue the department. But until such time as you are able to do so, comply with their directions. Obviously nobody expects you to jump off a bridge at their say-so but getting out of your airline seat is definitely in the playbook.
@f00l I’ll remember it, but if they’re the cheapest I’ll probably take my chances once again. I flew United on my recent ski trip. Overall it was fine, other than them cancelling the first leg of our return trip and moving us to an earlier flight. Not a huge ordeal but it was a few hours I would’ve liked to have used to explore the city before heading to the airport. Ironically this was also coming back from Vancouver, just like my earlier story.
@cranky1950 it not bothering me has nothing to do with anything like your situation or the fact that I have a preferred Airline I typically fly regardless of price. Instead it has everything to do with my having some familiarity with industry practices and knowing that United didn’t do anything I haven’t seen or heard of other airlines doing. Other than a general feeling that this situation could have been completely avoided if they’d carried out this entire process at the gate instead of on the plane nothing United did here was particularly heinous. It remains to be seen what will happen regarding the officer involved and whether the statement released by The Aviation Security Department proves to be anything more than a PR move but in my book once you filter out all of the outraged voices bemoaning the involuntary removal of a paying ticketed passenger in accordance with the law and standard industry practice that’s the only issue at play here.
@jbartus Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right. Change often begins with a single incident which raises public outcry. Sadly in the age of social media most people will vent their wrath in forums like this and it will blow over. I’m glad their stock took a hit, that is one thing that might make them think about their policies.
@moondrake so long as you and every other person demanding that the policy of overbooking and involuntary bumping be ended recognize that doing so will mandate across the board fare hikes and likely reduce reliability I have no issue with that
@DrunkCat Actually, for a start, I think it should be a requirement that their involuntary bumping policy must be disclosed at the time of purchase. It is, in effect, a warranty, and warranties are a part of the consumer’s reasonable purchase evaluation process. If I know that buying discount tickets and travelling alone makes me first choice to get tossed with one company and a competitor uses first-checked-in as the measure, I can factor that into my purchase. I also think it should be a requirement that for each 5 hours of forced delay the involuntarily ousted passenger is entitled to a meal voucher, and if the passenger is going to be delayed overnight they must be provided with hotel and transportation to it. From what I’ve read, passengers bumped from that flight were being delayed till the following afternoon. This is not only a huge inconvenience, but can be a matter of substantial unplanned expense. It is not reasonable for the airlines to steal hours and days of their passengers’ lives and force them to spend unbudgeted funds for airport meals and emergency hotels so they can maximize their profits.
@RiotDemon it was a partner airlines passengers which needed to be transported to fly another flight which would inconvenience a lot more than 4 people if it were unable to fly on time. This is standard industry practice. It’s part and parcel of how they prevent things like maintenance issues from becoming a massive issue for dozens of flights. The law doesn’t speak to paying customers it speaks to confirmed passengers of which employees or employees of partner airlines count towards.
@moondrake I never read all of the stuff I sign. It may already say that. And I would be pretty surprised if they were bumped to the next day. Is that fact or rumor? They may have been on standby.
He was going to be refunded four times his ticket cost plus have his original ticket remain valid with the option to insist on having that refunded. Add to that that it is highly probable that United would have covered the hotel room that they offered to volunteers for the involuntary bumps as well although nobody is reporting on it.
It’s incredibly frustrating to me how many people are forming judgments on this situation without educating themselves on the relevant laws and consumer protections.
@sammydog01From CNN: “Passenger Tyler Bridges said the request for volunteers came after everyone had boarded. It was easy to understand why no one responded – it was Sunday night and the next flight was not until the following afternoon, he said.”
@sammydog01 the next flight being the following afternoon is reported fact.
@moondrake I’m not sure I understand your point. If your point is simply that he counts towards the confirmed passenger count you are correct which makes him part of the overbooking situation and eligible for bumping.
@jbartus This is my perspective: This man bought a ticket for travel in good faith that the airlines would provide the service for which they had been paid. The man went on his trip and followed all the rules to board the aircraft. After he was seated in reasonable expectation of going home, based on a policy not made available at the time of purchase, the airline had him forcibly ejected from the plane. The misbehavior of the security officer aside, at the airlines behest this man was bodily pulled from their plane because he refused to return a product for which he had paid. We don’t know what this guy’s story was, why he resisted the authorities, which was unwise but I do not think was morally wrong.
Last November while I was out of town on the afternoon of my flight my mom died in her nursing home. They couldn’t remove her body to the funeral home until I told them where we’d made arrangements. In the moment, 600 miles away, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t reach my petsitter to check the file, turned out she’d let her phone battery die. I told the nursing home I’d be home in a couple of hours and be straight over there. Then they delayed my flight for three hours due to mechanical problems, frustrating but what can you do? Every half hour they were calling me from the nursing home wanting to move my mom’s body before the other patients freaked out (small private residence care). I kept calling and calling but the petsitter wasn’t picking up. I kept texting and calling my neighbors but when I reached them they were slso out of town (they travel a lot). At last a plane pulled up to our gate and everyone started gathering their stuff. They told us to sit back down, another flight had been canceled also due to mechanical difficulties and so they were pre-empting our second plane for those passengers. So we had to sit there and watch a couple of hundred people file by and get on our plane, and wait several more hours for a THIRD plane. Meanwhile I am still fielding calls from the nursing home, they are threatening to send my mom’s body to the county, plus I am worried about what’s happened to my petsitter and my dog. Finally I realized I could call one of my friends who has a spare set of my keys to drive over and find out what was happening. Just as the last plane pulled up, my friend called with the information I needed. I was exhausted, grieving, and so furious that twice I’d gone into the bathroom to punch walls so I wouldn’t lose it on some hapless airline employee. That’s not the longest or stupidest delay I’ve experienced, but it was the worst. And I have no sympathy for the airline at all. I do not understand why we allow some industries to oversell, misrepresent and renege on their products while others are held to a high degree of accountability.
@moondrake we allow it because it allows them to offer the service we demand at the price we demand. While I empathize with the situation you described I expect that the airline had valid reasons for reassigning that plane. For example if the other flight that was cancelled was twice as big as yours then it makes sense to inconvenience as few people as possible.
I certainly agree with the sentiment that the man should never have been allowed to board the plane before this situation was sorted out but it does not absolve him of his responsibility for his actions.
Edit: as for the policy not being available at the time of purchase that’s a load of bunk and it speaks again forming an opinion without educating yourself on the matters at hand. Their policy is outlined in their contract of carriage which is agreed to at the time of purchase.
@jbartus
I’m not going to go all legalese here, I’ll leave that to the lawyers. But I found United’s actions appalling in terms of judgment if not in terms of contract or implied contract. And my brother, who is a contract lawyer, said to me that United was just plain dumb and appalling both in terms of business practice and in terms of contract law - and he flies more than 100 times a year for business, and does not consider himself to be any sort of liberal.
Basically, an airline needs to handle this at the gate before boarding. After boarding, if there is some emergency that mandates booting people off the plane (a legit emergency, not this “United wants a cheap way out of their own error” situation), then the fact that passengers were allowed to board means that the expected price of getting people to volunteer to deplane just jumped up to 5x or 10x what that price would have been at the gate. The airline should have expected that, and made appropriate offers. Some passenger almost certainly would have bought to a seat buyout offer that was much much higher. This is all entirely predictable, Customer Relations 101 at Community College.
If they airline couldn’t find someone who would volunteer to deplane at a much higher price, they should have ponied up and paid another airline the extra money to get that flight crew where they needed to be on time. If no commercial flights or seats were available, the airline should have ponied up for another alternative, such as one of the small planes they own and use regularly for emergency crew transport, or if need be, a charter.
Why? Because the airline wants to be a decent company that treats customers decently Because the airline doesn’t want people to hate it. Because the airline wants a good reputation and a good stock price. Because the much of the airline’s expected and planned future is in successfully expanding into foreign markets in which potential customers are highly sensitive to possible perceived bad behavior by established foreign companies which compete with local companies, and the airline needs to have lots of goodwill. Because the airline has better things to do that try to recover from obviously preventable PR disasters.
That guy had every right to protest the initial choice the crew or a computer made to order him to deplane, since that part is somewhat algorithmic and somewhat arbitrary. He, not United, is the judge of when he needs to be where. And he already knew, obviously, that there was room for him on the plane.
For any airline whose staff chose to act as the United staff did, the entire dramatic and horrid episode could have been predicted to occur at some time to some airline. Someone somewhere was going to actively or passively refuse to deplane, certainly if the passenger believed it was not a true emergency (which this was not, in any possible sense of the word). Airline will make errors in pre-scheduling crew transportation sometimes. Every airline should, in that case, be desperate to Not Be That Airline who has a very disturbing viral video or viral news report; and the airline should have crisis management teams available for consult 24/7, and have trained its crews and gate crews according to the needs of the company’s reputation, and to have policies in place to make sure that viral video never happens at their airline.
What is the cost of just pushing way up the seat buyout price offered to boarded passengers, compared to the cost of a few hour’s worth of jet fuel for a single plane? Next to nothing. That’s airline economics.
No airline can afford this sort of publicity, or this publicly demonstrated apparent lack of awareness of human decency, public relations and customer opinion. The cost of offering much higher seat buyout prices under the circumstances, or the cost of commercial tickets on another airline, or even the cost of a charter flight is a miniscule percentage of the cost United has incurred so far: a cost in reputation and stock price fall, and possibly the cost in changed regulations, foreign permits and contracts, and government hearings, that to my mind are entirely deserved. Dumb business practices at this level will likely someday create a huge /fail for any company.
United intends or intended to make a huge push into the Chinese and Asian markets. How will that go for them now, with passengers and with governments? Guess where this video got the most views? Perhaps United’s Asian plans are no longer quite on track. What is the cost of a long term great reputation in a huge and growing air market, likely to someday be the largest air market in the world, compared to the one-time cost of even a charter jet to cover crew transportation problems cause by United’s own internal scheduling error? Nice economic and strategic company vision, huh?
The flight was not overbooked. Not by United’s definition of overbooking, and not by the industry’s definition. The airline had simply failed to schedule seats for entirely predictable and normally pre-scheduled routine crew transportation. That is not technically within the definition of “overbooking”. Why should a passenger pay for that with serious personal inconvenience? There was no emergency that required mechanical or other scarce personnel to be transported with zero advance notice and without delay. And had there been such an emergency, the airline still had options beyond bumping passengers already in their seats.
The airline got exactly what it should have expected. So, technically, the airline has the legal right to forcibly deplane non-disruptive passengers, even when there is no emergency. So what? Those contracts are always written entirely in favor of a large industry which can afford lots of lawyers, to cover all possible situations. That doesn’t mean it makes sense to enforce those contract provisions when the airline has other options. It’s not like passengers have a choice of other similarly priced airlines or slightly more expensive airlines without the same contract provisions, so the passengers who need to fly have no choice, but are forced into accepting those terms, unless the passengers are so wealthy that they can afford charter options, or have the time and means for other transportation.
Furthermore, every company has an obligation to treat its customers well. And practically, in business terms, any company that doesn’t have a monopoly and dependent customer base, and whose financial well-being is highly dependent on good reputation, has a duty to its shareholders, employees, and customers not to be involved in something like this, and not to then have to try to navigate the inevitable PR disaster and financial consequences.
If what United did was so “right”, why are there not multiple reported incidents of every airline doing this, even when some customers resist and protest, as would be the inevitable outcome of such a practice, given human nature and customer expectations?
The answer is that other airlines simply have a better understanding of what acceptable business practices are, contract or no contract, and what businesses they are actually in. The other airlines are simply not this dumb.
And what of the other passengers and the millions of people who now know of this incident: should they not have their right to chose the philosophical and emotional lens through which the viewers choose to react? I don’t think we owe it to United to buy into any justification they or their defenders might care to offer.
And we haven’t even heard from the lawyers and regulators yet (except that Gov Christie wants hearings because United dominates the gate count at Neward, and regardless of what you think of Christie, other politicians will happily jump on this). Again, predictable.
To me, the reaction United has suffered is a clear case of bad management paying the expected price for negligent preparation for the obvious, and for horrible planning and decision making for inevitable situations.
@f00l If a guy in a uniform tells you to get off a plane you get off the plane and then deal with it. If you are forcibly removed from a plane you do not reboard the plane. Argue all you want about fairness and all but this guy was not acting rationally. I know some passengers were on his side but I bet his behavior scared a lot of others.
we allow it because it allows them to offer the service we demand at the price we demand.
To some degree, yes. But not to the degree that you suggest.
The cost of moving the flight crew thru unusual means that were somewhat more expensive, because the plane had already boarded, is minimal, because the situation is incredibly rare. Nothing about arranging special transportation for this crew would have raised ticket prices even one penny, and the cost would be invisible in size next to other daily predictable and constant cost inefficiencies the airlines regularly tolerate in their own practices.
And that doesn’t even begin to estimate the obvious financial losses United will now suffer due to this incident, which are enormous. Sometimes, taking care of your customers and their sensibilities, and of your own reputation is exactly equivalent to taking care of the bottom line.
I certainly agree with the sentiment that the man should never have been allowed to board the plane before this situation was sorted out but it does not absolve him of his responsibility for his actions.
Maybe the passenger’s reactions were foolish and indulgent, or maybe not. He, you, and I will disagree. But who cares about that? United deals will millions of customers every year. They know they face a variety of rational and irrational reactions. They know that some of those reactions will generate enormous outrage, even if United was “legally correct”. Why were they not prepared to avoid disaster? Someone, somewhere was going to react that way, and United knew it, or should have known it. What about the responsibility of the executives at United not to have their heads up their own asses?
I am betting that within the executive suites of United’s competitors, there is little sympathy today for United. Not because the other airlines are glad to see a /fail by a competitor. Rather, because the executives at competing airlines are astonished that United’s employees and management are that dumb.
Edit: as for the policy not being available at the time of purchase that’s a load of bunk and it speaks again forming an opinion without educating yourself on the matters at hand. Their policy is outlined in their contract of carriage which is agreed to at the time of purchase.
Said contracts are in tiny print, and are thought of even by lawyers as being relatively unreadable by customers under the stress of modern life. United may have put it in the fine print, among many other words of fine print on other topics. United had to option to put this in large and unavoidable print, something that almost every sentient person would notice, before the customer clicks to purchase.
Is the customer, in your mind, not absolved from reading and understanding every complex and long contract we engage, even when we barely have the time and energy to manage our own lives? Well then, why should the company be absolved failing to make all the salient provisions of the contract easy to read and understand; and why should United be absolved from the PR consequences (of United’s creation, given their predictability), resulting of a nightmare of its own creation (again, given the predictability that this would happen someday, somewhere)?
@f00l If a guy in a uniform tells you to get off a plane you get off the plane and then deal with it. If you are forcibly removed from a plane you do not reboard the plane. Argue all you want about fairness and all but this guy was not acting rationally. I know some passengers were on his side but I bet his behavior scared a lot of others.
OK he wasn’t acting rationally. Ok I would have obeyed a legal authority and protested later. And you would. And most people would. But not everyone will. And every airline and other company that deals in public with the public knows this.
That an astonishing % of video viewers feel enormous sympathy for the customer, and that most of these viewers are not fundamentally irrational or fundamentally unfair in their expectations of customer treatment, and in spite of the passenger’s apparent non-rationality, tells me that my reaction that United completely fucked this one up is hardly out of line.
And the people I know who are business people, mostly somewhat conservative in business outlook, and who fly constantly for business, agree with me on this. Yeah, the guy acted irrationally. Also, yeah, United has its head up its ass and deserves everything it’s getting.
Why was United not prepared for this day well in advance? There are so many things they could have done to avoid this, once the passengers had boarded.
@f00l I have a lot to do and lost 3 days already this week waiting for an available surgeon at the hospital so I’m gonna be brief and address the most salient point as I see it.
Appealing to the majority opinion is a logical fallacy and pointless. You point to them and call out sympathy for the customer, I point at them and call out ignorance of the laws and policies involved. Involuntary bumping happens to, on rough average, 51,884,615 passengers ever year. (data) The only reasons this particular case is getting all of this attention is the unfortunate outcome of this particular case and the fact that videos were taken and shared of the incident. This practice is lawful, this practice is common, this practice is shared across the industry, and this practice of involuntary bumping is essential to the way the current fare structures are designed.
Are there alternatives? Sure, but you can bet more educated people than either you or myself (on the issues at hand, not necessarily overall) have done the analysis and determined that shifting passengers to make room for crew transfers is a necessary practice to keep flights on schedule and fares low.
Whether the practice is common when passengers are already aboard would be a question to which the answer would be interesting, I think this case alone proves that it shouldn’t be, but I have personally been aboard at least one other flight where passengers were boarded before volunteers were sought (I want to say the airline was Southwest but I’m not 100% there so let’s just say ‘another major air carrier’) so I can say (anecdotally of course) that it’s not the only case where this has happened.
Finally, and I do hope you realize that there is no offense intended when I say this, but all of your talk about how much cheaper X would have been than the PR disaster this became is just a lot of irrelevant noise. Sure it’s probably correct, almost certainly technically correct which we all know is the best kind of correct, but it’s Monday Morning Quarterbacking. United had no way of anticipating this outcome nor did any of the other airlines which help make up that 51,884,615 passengers, on average, who are involuntarily denied boarding each year. It was business as usual until the combined actions of the Doctor and the Officer made it into a viral media issue.
The ignorant nature of the mob is the exact reason our founding fathers created a representative system in place of a pure democracy.
@jbartus
Appealing to the stated or published opinions of a number of highly knowledgeable, highly educated, customers and industry experts who are extremely familiar with the policies, practices, and economics of an industry is NOT a logical fallacy of any kind. And that’s what I did. I used, as source, quick-scanning a wide variety of press and checking on news video released from a variety of the standard well-known sources that are commonly held to be fairly “centrist”, and I am a news addict via print, podcast, and youtube, of a variety of reputable sources. I did a brief scan, I’m a half-well-read citizen here with an opinion, not someone expounding on TV or intending to publish a major scholarly article. I did not mention anything about a majority consumer opinion as a conclusive argument - merely as a supporting factor.
But "majority consumer opinion* has more weight than merely being some supportive player in some argument of mine here: because, in this case, majority consumer opinion, here, abroad, and especially in emerging markets that United desperately need to succeed in, is the very factor that is likely to determine how this episode plays out for United long term, and how badly damaged United is or is not by this incident. Consumer opinion, rational or irrational, informed or uninformed, sophisticated or, unfair, possibly even primitive, or plain superstitious, is what United is almost wholly dependent on in this situation. So United had better be prepared to act with that awareness.
And it is perfectly predictable in advance, to company executives, that public opinion can be and often is a determining factor in how a difficult situation plays out for a company. So why aren’t they prepared? Whether company leaders respect or agree with public opinion or not, or think the public is rational or fair or not, if they value their stock price, their company’s future, and their own professional reputations, these business leaders had better be ready to take public opinion, for better or for worse, into account, be prepared to deal with it as it is, not as they wish it were, and to account for and pay the price of the failure to do so as a failure of the company’s leadership and vision.
How many companies - even highly technical, or highly engineering oriented, or highly defended by laws, rules, and contracts, always acts to protect its absolute legal and contractual perogatives in every instance no matter what? I bet you don’t. You are in business, and I bet you cut customers slack, and eat small and moderate costs you shouldn’t have to eat and wish the other party would take responsibility for all the time. I have a variety of family members operating in charge of a number of businesses of many types, from street and casual enterprises, right up to professional practices, and businesses in areas highly regulated and defended both contractually and by law. And in every instance, each business eats costs and inconveniences that don’t strictly belong to it, and provides public and customer bennies it doesn’t owe. And sometimes those costs and bennies are expensive. Good judgment about when to insist on the letter of the contract, and when to back off and buy some expensive goodwill is a key attribute of business success. Bad judgment in the same areas is a key element of business trouble or failure.
A wise company is prepared for this sort of thing. A wise company is prepared to do everything possible to make absolutely sure this sort of thing does not go terribly wrong, even if the executives think they would technically be in the right to take measures they believe in; but which measures the public believes are harsh and unjustifiable to the degree that a PR firestorm ignites.
To think otherwise is to ignore what every business and law school teaches, and what most truly successful business leaders already know, either by instinct, by study and reflection, or by character.
I have not heard any serious ethicist, philosopher, logician, logistics expert, legal expert, economist, or outside airline industry expert defend United’s choices in this matter. It’s true that I have not read deeply into every possible news source on this.
Since you are presumably busy, I presume you haven’t read deeply either. I have scanned a lot of headlines and early paragraphs from a set of diverse sources. I’m not seeing the usual diversity of defenders of corporate perogatives speak up here in United’s defense. I am seeing many business, finance, legal, and other experts confess that they are appalled and mystified by United’s lack of wisdom either in preparation, during the incident, or during the early aftermath.
Crisis management is a well-established and successful industry now, and the basic principles praticed in that industry are taught in law schools, business schools, graduate schools, and corporate high-level training programs for the most promising and successful executives. United, in its prep and conduct, more or less flunked every course ever taught.
Since when can the practice of any large and complex industry, with high technical and safety requirements, the need to serve the general and somewhat unpredictably behaving public at large, in public view of other customers, operating on extremely complex economic model, weather models, cost models, logistics models and assumptions (and those not being, by nature, strictly frameable by any logical or algorithmic methods [provable]), within the glare of a high degree of publicity, and within the reasonable boundaries of public expectation of conduct if that industry wishes to keep its reputation, susceptible to any other final decision process other that highly educated, and deeply questioned judgment of the most knowledgeable and successful who run the company?
And if there is a industry fail, or the appearance of a fail, what “logical” method are you or anyone else going to turn to that can finally resolve this sort of question of what might have been better, or very good, or excellent actions and choices in these circumstances?
(Hint: Said “logical” method of resolution does not exist at present, or at least it does not exist anywhere accessible to homo sapiens. Nor will such a methodology exist in the near foreseeable future).
You can do fancy computer models concocted by the best experts and coders in every area, using the best data, the best theories, and the best math, the best industry knowledge that exists; and those experts and coders and machines and their methods and outputs can, together, do a bang up job of what they set out to do, and you can thereby gain a lot of help and information in running your airline. But situations like this one always devolve finally onto human judgment. Theoretically, this happens because the incident itself, the choices available to the airline at the time of the incident, the prep, forethought, and training that happened or did not happen in anticipation of similar incidents, are all human factos; and the publicity surrounding the incident, the legal processes and their cost and consequences, and the public reaction decide the outcome.
No one is racing to defend United here, including the alt-various-POVs, the rebels, the contrarians, the legal pundits, the professors, the true frequent flyers, the loudmouths who thrive on controversy.
I am not talking about the rationality of the choices of the passenger here. It’s any large business’s job to be prepared for shit to come down that can’t be resolved by strict reference to a contract or a rulebook or a reference to “legal rights of the company”, or a reference to the short-term bottom line; and to be prepared for the failure to take the best “human” course in a bad situation to possibly lead to terrible consequences for the company.
The statistics you site are not terribly relevant, because almost all bumping happens at the gate. On the plane may not be legally much different that at the gate, but emotionally and symbolically it is a universe away. And what business executive doesn’t understand that, outside of United’s in this instance?
I asked several people who fly a lot (such as more than once a week, for, say, the past 30 or more years), what they had witnessed in terms of boarded and seated passenger bumping. The answers ranged from “once” to “never”. All that is always handled at the gate, in their own airport histories. The companies offer sweeteners, and unboarded passengers, who all know that the airline can stop them from boarding, usually have among their ranks some who will choose to make a profit on the situation in exchange for the inconvenience. If no one steps up, the airline uses gate personnel or an algorithm to pick the unlucky ones who will not be allowed to board.
Once someone is on the plane, the passenger’s view of their own situation changes. For starters, the costs of getting someone to agree to give up a seat that person already occupies escalates radically, and the airlines should be prepared for that. If there had not been enough seats, it would have quickly been obvious during initial boarding. So a customer who is asked to deplane involuntarily knows that they were selected to have their travel plans disrupted for the convenience of the airline. They paid - they got there on time - they were allowed to board, and no one boarding lacked a seat, which means that the plane was not overbooked. “Something came up”, and the airline wants to force them to give their seat to someone else. Yes, legally there is a contractual right. But the situation is a disaster waiting to happen. Any airline executive who doesn’t “get” that really needs a lot more training, or perhaps a job in a segment of the airline industry that doesn’t deal with the general public.
@f00l
This situation didn’t blow up because customers are unpredictably armed with cameras and youtube exists, and the passengers on the plane surprisingly thought the video worth sharing. All that is entirely predictable.
The industry’s financial viability is not based on the necessity to forcibly deplane seated passengers who are not misbehaving, when no one is willing to accept the financial offers, the financial offers are not substantially sweetened from what they would have been while still in the terminal, when there is no emergency reason to do so, because those incidents are so rare as to be insignificant in terms of cost impact. Since it is perfectly predictable that this situation might well occur on some airline at some point, and that a passenger might refuse to deplane, and that the other passenger would have both video cameras and potential anger at the ready, why wasn’t United prepared?
The video went was made, and then went up, and then went viral, and then created outrage, because enough fellow passengers and video viewers found the situation brutal and traumatic to everyone involved. And it happened on the plane. And the company did not make sufficient visible efforts to seek alternative resolutions. And passengers believed that there was no genuine emergency to force United to go to this resolution, and that, whatever the contract provisions, the company behaved badly and in bad faith. United needs the good opinion of the vast majority of viewers of such a video and the good opinions of just about all the passengers on that plane. And United is supposed to know that it needs those good opinions, well in advance, regardless of the rationality of these opinions, if they are felt strongly by the customers.
Companies are supposed to be prepared for that. Executives are supposed to have executives and crisis experts ready who can “read” a situation for potential harm to the company and its customers: PR, emotional, traumatic, financial, legal, regulatory, future opportunity costs, customer and industry respect, long term costly reputation repair, safety, stock price, and every other form of harm anyone can think of.
It’s the company leadership’s job to be good at that. Really, if they can’t manage that, given that we have some degree of choice and freedom about airline travel, what does it matter what else those executives as a group might do well, if that can’t manage to keep the goodwill and respect of their customers? They can balance the books and fine-tune the schedules and logistics infinitely, and how much will that help the airline’s survival and stock price if customers hate them?
Finally, and I do hope you realize that there is no offense intended when I say this, but all of your talk about how much cheaper X would have been than the PR disaster this became is just a lot of irrelevant noise. Sure it’s probably correct, almost certainly technically correct which we all know is the best kind of correct, but it’s Monday Morning Quarterbacking.
No. It’s not. What you and I and all the commentators are doing now is Monday morning quarterbacking, true, but we weren’t present at the incident. I can promise that many people I personally know would have shown better judgment on the spot and shortly afterward that the choices made by United personnel. But the PR disaster and the swell of customer opinion is exactly what’s relevant here, and is also exactly what’s predictable. If this particular PR disaster is uncommon or unknown, it’s because other airlines, and United at other times, are handling this better. So no PR nightmare for the other companies.
Anyone high up in an airline industry knows or ought to know that forcibly deplaning a passenger is obviously a potential disaster in the making, with youtube and other passenger outrage thrown in as liklihoods, and have scenarios and alternatives ready to go, and personnel who are either trained to see when a situation is going south and it’s time to do something else, or who have easy and constant access to experts who can work successfully under these circumstances, and operate with excellent judgment.
This is exactly why companies the size of major airlines hire MBA’s, lawyers, psychologists, economists, strategy experts, PR experts, crisis experts, outside consultants in all these areas; this is why companies highly value those with the best training and best track records in the worst situations.
It’s United’s job to make sure that potential customers would rather drive a long, exhausting, unpleasant drive, than get on a United airplane. The financial, legal, PR, stock price, potential credit ratings hit, potential expansion into the most valuable markets of the airline future, etc etc etc, are exactly what are foreseeable. These are exactly what educated shareholders and industry experts expect the company executives to be able to plan for and navigate. Not one of the executive and business operator or owner persons I have heard speak about this thinks that the situation, and the potential for a horrible outcome, were unforeseeable.
These are exactly the sorts of situations these people expect to foresee and manage in the scope of their own professional responsibilities at their own companies. One person I heard mention this privately said that he would fire anyone who, on their own authority, carried thru on a decision like the one United personnel went with, and that if he himself did something like that, he would expect to be fired by the company board. And he said he would try to avoid flying United under current management, unless there is a lot of visible reforming of policy and practice at United, when routes permit and decent alternatives exist, as he does not willingly patronise companies who create complete disasters for themselves in stupid ways. I am finding this POV to be pretty close to universal among people of my acquaintance who run companies.
United simply faced a very bad situation, but a predictable one, and flunked it.
f00l: I read all of both of your very lengthy posts. I agree with everything you said. It bothers me that most of the news reports about this keep using the term “overbooked” in association with this event. It was NOT overbooked. It’s time that United (and others) either start leaving seats open for staff that need to be deployed elsewhere, or else understand that they don’t get to bump anyone so that they can quickly deploy folks elsewhere. Before anyone points it out, yes, I understand that the four staff folks were not even United staff, but instead worked for someone else (albeit related, as I recall).
I’ve willingly given up a seat for a (much) later flight when I was headed home (while I still worked), and the voucher wasn’t the reason I did so. I no longer fly; if the drive is more than two days, I don’t need to go wherever it is.
I flunked the ninja edit window again here and there; Ran out here time. One sentence is missing a “not”, etc.
More similar type-on-phone-at-5am, complete w 5am brain engaged errors.
Oh fucking well. ; )
I no longer fly; if the drive is more than two days, I don’t need to go wherever it is.
Hmmm. Now if one puts one’s mind to it, and is willing to drive like someone on a Cannonball Run with a full I-am-young 1971 mindset, complete with avoidance tactics, social engineering, total anarchy, and the means of staying awake, how far can one get in two days? Of course, one must intend to use the entire allowed 48 hours, without stopping, right?
'Cause if not, what fun is that?
Sounds like a rental (or borrowed) (or “borrowed”) (or “donated”) vehicle would be the best test vehicle for this.
A properly stoked crew would be helpful. I think a crew of the insane variety. Yes, that would be best.
Coast to coast is entirely within range. No sweat.
TX to Alaska? Yes, I think, with the right crew and equipment; and the right “very seriously deranged attitude”.
Google maps estimates FW to Juneau at 2 days 15 hours. Seriously, what a bunch of wusses they have in Mountain View. Or perhaps I just need to get the Google Maps Cannonball Run module for estimating routing and ETA. Perhaps Google doesn’t turn that routing on without the cheat code.
TX to S America, assuming an safe and fast way can be found through some problem areas in Mexico?
Since this would be a genuine test challenge, not a fictional movie, I would prefer to avoid the need for full on non-special-effects fully IRL combat tactics and weaponry/ammo. All that shooting while driving, one’s average mph might take a serious hit, not to mention one’s body parts.
So, say, skip Mexico and start in Belize. Hmmm, possible, at what mph average? Patagonia or even Tierra Del Fuego is the goal, of course.
Google Fucking Maps can’t find a land route from Belize to Argentina? Then lame Google Maps needs a cane or a wheelchair. What’s a little jungle clearing and river, canal, and international border/customs jumping when something important’s on the line?
Hmmmm. Whoever “loans” me a vehicle for this plot had better make it a nice one. Perhaps with a few alt backup vehicles stashed along the way for emergencies.
; )
Can someone wearing way too many decades every day convince oneself that one is really 18 or 22 years old for several days? Convince oneself thoroughly enough to find it all enormously fun?
I fear, no. But the fantasy kinda rocks.
But were there world enough, and time …
I think I am fully into no-sleep thinking now. My my. Stupid is as does.
Atlanta man shatters coast-to-coast ‘Cannonball Run’ speed record
@f00l In researching our trip to Costa Rica, I heeded the oft-mentioned advice to get GPS with the rental car. It was absolutely necessary (as outside the cities street signs are rare) and completely amazing. It alerted us to school zones, narrow bridges and roads and even speed bumps!
Perhaps if I follow my fantasy, I’ll get a rental car with a gps, and by the time I’m done, the rental agency will at least get the gps back. I’ll be taking out that extra insurance.
Anyone have ideas why United’s PR team put out such piss-poor statements in the beginning (including the letter to their employees, which they had to know for sure would get out)?
It shouldn’t take you 3 tries to get to an apology.
@dashcloud simple enough, it wasn’t being handled by a PR team. The PR statement, and therefore the one that should be treated as least likely to reflect actual positions of the leadership, is the one everyone likes whereas the initial statements are what they really think. I think it’s pretty clear that they involved a crisis management team at this point, the rapid-fire releases and motions meant to promote good will practically scream it compared to their original activities.
@dashcloud I suspect that at least part of it is the reason people and businesses often fail to apologize in even more egregious situations: apology = admission of guilt = damages. Sadly in trying to protect their collective posteriors businesses sometimes cause what they are trying to avoid. Customers who’d have been satisfied with a simple apology and token reparations feel even more outraged at the defensive posturing and blame reassignment of the offending business and mount a suit that never needed to happen.
@f00l At least they let them keep their carry ons. Hmmm, I hadn’t thought about that, what about the checked luggage of the ejected passengers? Seems like digging that out would be a time consuming proposition. Maybe that’s how they picked who got the boot, the four suitcases closest to the door. Or four people who didn’t check luggage…
No desire to further inflame anything here, but interesting info about this incident:
I have now seen at least 4-5 legal opinions, all by contract law professors at a variety of major law schools (some of these professors being aviation or common carrier specialists), none of these professors being involved in this case, all of these professors claiming to have reviewed in detail the United “fine print” contract that is the norm for passenger ticket purchases on a United Airlines flight.
It seems that United had no legal right to force or insist that Dr Dao give up his seat, and no legal right to remove him from the plane.
All those “denied boarding compensation” and “refusal of transport” small print provisions that have anything to do with overbooking, or with needing a seat for someone else, apply to the pre-boarding situation only.
According to United’s own contract, once a passenger is boarded and seated, the airline has no right to remove the passenger from the plane due to the justification of needing the seat for some other reason, or having overbooked the flight, or similar.
Needing a seat for some other reason allows the airline to deny boarding only. This, legally, happens only at the gate, or before then. Once the passenger is allowed on the plane, the passenger is legally boarded and has a different legal status regarding their seat - which is to say, it’s theirs. It does not then matter if the airline needs the seat for another reason. The airline cannot legally remove the customer from the seat for the reason of needing the seat.
What might come into validity at that point would be the airline’s right of refusal of transport, but the situations where this rule can be applied are sharply limited by federal law, case law, and United’s own passenger contract.
The rule, which unlike the denied boarding rule does provide for removal “from the aircraft at any point,” lists some two dozen justifications including: unruly behavior, intoxication, inability to fit into one seat, medical problems or concerns, etc. But nowhere in the list of some two dozen reasons is there anything about over booking, the need to free up seats, the need for seats to accommodate crew members to be used on a different flight etc.
These justifications cannot, by extensive court case history (according to legal commentary I’ve run across), be expanded to include additional reasons, just because it’s convenient to the airline that wants to. That’s the list, and that’s it.
The airline is allowed to try to free up seats by offering compensation. However, the airline may not force anyone off the plane just because no one chooses to volunteer.
Another interesting point is that United’s compensation offers did not even go up to the federally mandated minimum of $1350, applicable in certain circumstances. Some airlines who desperately need seats have offered nearly $10000 per seat recently in some cases. United obviously was not feeling generous that day.
I have also seen legal commentary from contract law experts stating that United probably cannot shift legal consequences to the actions of Airport Security. United called security and set the forcible (and apparently unjustifiable) removal of a passenger from his seat in motion.
Furthermore, both the public and (leaked or released) private statements of United executives immediately after the incident tend to put liability for the matter squarely on United. The airline’s shareholders were not well served by the rash conduct in United’s executive suite. (The private documents would surely come out in discovery anyway, even without having been leaked.)
The legal status of Airport Security in this case also seems in doubt. Their authority now appears to be far less that than of a full-fledged LEO. These workers were repeatedly told by airport management not to wear jackets indicating that they were police or a police equivalent, with similar public authority; and had been told not to indicate that they were either police or LEO’s to the public or to airline passengers.
I don’t know any details about what legal authority these security officers do and do not have.
I am no lawyer, have not read the contract, don’t intend to. I suppose the stuff I’ve read from legal experts may be one opinion among many, or may be incorrect - but I didn’t go looking for any particular POV or perspective.
I suppose we’ll see, as the court case moves forward.
@f00l At this point, the only clear winners are other airlines. Publicizing the amounts gate personnel and supervisors are now authorized to offer passengers BEFORE boarding on overbooked flights has certainly spurred conversations worldwide. It’s possible that the $9950. incentives have been available before now, but I haven’t heard of them.
@OldCatLady
All the airlines appear to be desperate to avoid public hearings, congressional debate, new FAA rules, and additional lawsuits from others. Trying to head all that off at the pass.
It seems that United had no legal right to force or insist that Dr Dao give up his seat, and no legal right to remove him from the plane.
ahahahaahahahaha
Another interesting point is that United’s compensation offers did not even go up to the federally mandated minimum of $1350, applicable in certain circumstances.
HAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH
I have also seen legal commentary from contract law experts stating that United probably cannot shift legal consequences to the actions of Airport Security. United called security and set the forcible (and apparently unjustifiable) removal of a passenger from his seat in motion.
They made me miss most of a job interview - bounced me despite me telling them I was going to a job interview. Did not get the job. I think the job thought I had volunteered. Sigh.
@Kidsandliz
This happened in the last week? Or earlier?
@Kidsandliz Did your prospective employer buy the tickets at least?
@Kidsandliz were you wearing leggings?
@f00l earlier
@Pantheist Yes
@medz : ) Not when a prospective employer is going to pick me up at the airport. Plus I don’t own any.
Seal Team Six are wusses compared to United flight crew.
@sjk3
I think it was airport security who got physical.
@f00l it was the airport police.
@jbartus But it was United who called them.
I’ve flown a fair number of times before. I get it - the airline needed to make space. But any passenger bumping should have happened BEFORE they board. Not after.
@narfcake I think this was their big mistake. Then you’re not randomly picking people.
I’ve got to book a flight this week and my choices are United or Southwest. (And Southwest is actually a bit more expensive.)
@walarney May I suggest hiring a horse drawn carriage.
@walarney Are you sure? Southwest lets you check two suitcases for free. On American that would cost $100 rt. Make sure to factor that in your fare, unless you don’t check bags. That’s why I fly with SW.
@moondrake Indeed. I flew down to Florida for a conference and my family joined me later. I checked 1 bag for me and 1 bag with their stuff, so they didn’t have to worry about it. Nice that it was free. Not so nice that they busted up my suitcase…
@medz Oh yeah. I bought a gorgeous National Geographic Polar Bear suitcase for my trip to Europe. Everyone complimented me on it, even the baggage handlers. That didn’t prevent them from scraping it all to hell and tearing off both handles. My new suitcase is a Samsonite with built in flush ripstop nylon handles. A big selling point was the one on the bottom between the wheels, making it easy to lift the full suitcase onto the bed or into the trunk.
Never was a truer commercial made.
@walarney I’d still opt for Southwest. Besides the checked luggage, I appreciate that they don’t charge for changing flights.
@moondrake I usually check a bag, so it might be a wash. But if I don’t choose the lowest fare, I have to explain it on my authorization form. My company’s process involves getting a piece of paper signed by 3 people besides myself, and then scanned and sent back to me before I can book. So my options are usually limited further by the time it all gets done.
@walarney Explanation: I prefer my ass NOT to be kicked.
@narfcake They are the only airline that has both lost my suitcase and where I ended up watching 4 flights load before ours which was scheduled first and even with empty seats on ALL of those flights, they never offered anyone a reticket.
They also have the rudest employees of any airline I have flown in the last 5-10 years, but that may be airport dependent. I pay more to fly anything else.
Alaska is the only airline that has totally destroyed luggage for me
@walarney how do they verify you chose the lowest fare?
@katylava I don’t think they actually did in the past. But I see Concur now will mark one flight as “lowest cost logical fare”. So maybe it shows up on the approval page now, I don’t know.
I don’t know why they put so much emphasis on airfare when the hotel costs are twice as much these days. And usually by the time a trip is approved, that low fare is gone and I have to pick something a hundred or two more. Corporate logic. Don’t get me started on their personal mileage calculations.
at least they aren’t spirit
@Pantheist You have to pay extra for assaults.
Airline workers don’t call it throwing bags for nothing.
@cranky1950 I’d call it “Chuckin’ Lugg” if I were them.
Nah you get a part time job throwing bags on 2nd shift.
Several years back I was returning from Vancouver and a huge snow storm was delaying flights. I ended up leaving about 8 hours late. Not because of the snow, but because the fucking airline somehow didn’t schedule flight attendants for my flight. They had to fly in a crew from Seattle but they were delayed getting in because of the storm. I was coming back through Chicago and missed the last connection that night by about 5 minutes. Ran through the airport and literally saw the jetway moving away from the plane as I got to the gate. At least the airline anted up for a hotel room since it was their fault. Surprise, surprise - it was United.
@cinoclav Snow often means that the crew got delayed somewhere else. I flew in to visit my parents one year and it snowed. They cancelled my flight at 1 am the day I was supposed to leave. The rescheduled flight was three days later. After an hour and a half on the phone I found a flight to a different airport. That was cancelled at the airport. Told them I don’t care where I go but get me the hell out of here. Next year the same thing. I drive now.
@sammydog01 Except in this case they admitted they screwed up and never scheduled flight attendants for my flight. It had nothing to do with the snow.
@cinoclav Sucks but I have to give them points for honesty. Or at least one gate agent.
My one & only RT flight with United Airlines was about 5 yrs ago when visiting my grandparents. First when catching the commuter flight from Denver to Colorado Springs (travels originated in PHX) and my transfer was cancelled due to too few seats sold and I had to wait 3 hrs for the next scheduled bird. I could’ve driven there in less time! Then on the return flight, I reached Denver just fine but once again the scheduled plane back to Phx had some mechanical issues (I’m perfectly OK with getting that resolved!!!) and they cancelled THAT flight while awaiting for another open plane. Ended up playing musical chairs from them changing the gate 4 times and was eventually boarded 5 1/2 hrs later! The only upside to it all was I got to meet and had a lengthy conversation with Huey Lewis whose plane was also MIA. BTW, I was very pleased that he was a very down to earth & nice fella. I went back to flying on Southwest and just driving from Denver to the Springs. WAY less stress and out of all the dozens of times we’ve used them, they’ve rarely been late and my luggage has been just fine.
First rule of United: Comply with instructions given to you by a police officer.
#UnpopularStance
@jbartus They weren’t police officers, as I understand they were airline security, and one of them’s been placed on administrative leave.
I have read more, they were aviation security, LEOs but not regular police. One of them was aggressive and out of line and was put on leave.
The Chicago Department of Aviation said in a statement that the incident “was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the Department.”
@moondrake they are one of two organizations / departments empowered with policing powers at the airport. Their instructions should be complied with just like any other police officer. Is it possible the officer violated the procedures he is meant to follow? Sure, and a full investigation when carried out will reveal whether that was the case and to what extent he did so. However, in the end it is completely unjust to saddle the officer with all of the blame for how this situation played out.
Dr. David Dao whether anyone cares to recognize it or not shares responsibility for what transpired here. Had he complied with the officer’s instructions, or even just gone along with things when the officer tried to pull him out of the chair things would have ended differently. Instead he chose to scream in a manner I have only ever heard before from a toddler being dragged out of a toy store without the desired toy the instant he was touched and brace himself against the chairs around him and engage in a tug of war with the officer.
Don’t like what an officer is telling you to do? That’s fine, sue the department. But until such time as you are able to do so, comply with their directions. Obviously nobody expects you to jump off a bridge at their say-so but getting out of your airline seat is definitely in the playbook.
@jbartus Sure thing boss, should I also dance on command?
Never flown United that I recall.
Next time I book tickets, I will be remembering this. I suspect everyone who flies will?
@f00l won’t trouble me any.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jbartus Me either, daily because I don’t fly any more, I do the Madden thing. If the car takes to long, its too far away anyway.
@f00l I’ll remember it, but if they’re the cheapest I’ll probably take my chances once again. I flew United on my recent ski trip. Overall it was fine, other than them cancelling the first leg of our return trip and moving us to an earlier flight. Not a huge ordeal but it was a few hours I would’ve liked to have used to explore the city before heading to the airport. Ironically this was also coming back from Vancouver, just like my earlier story.
@cranky1950 it not bothering me has nothing to do with anything like your situation or the fact that I have a preferred Airline I typically fly regardless of price. Instead it has everything to do with my having some familiarity with industry practices and knowing that United didn’t do anything I haven’t seen or heard of other airlines doing. Other than a general feeling that this situation could have been completely avoided if they’d carried out this entire process at the gate instead of on the plane nothing United did here was particularly heinous. It remains to be seen what will happen regarding the officer involved and whether the statement released by The Aviation Security Department proves to be anything more than a PR move but in my book once you filter out all of the outraged voices bemoaning the involuntary removal of a paying ticketed passenger in accordance with the law and standard industry practice that’s the only issue at play here.
@jbartus Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right. Change often begins with a single incident which raises public outcry. Sadly in the age of social media most people will vent their wrath in forums like this and it will blow over. I’m glad their stock took a hit, that is one thing that might make them think about their policies.
@moondrake so long as you and every other person demanding that the policy of overbooking and involuntary bumping be ended recognize that doing so will mandate across the board fare hikes and likely reduce reliability I have no issue with that
@jbartus I’m pretty sure most people would just be happy to have a policy that prevents getting knocked unconscious with a bloodied face.
@jbartus as far as I’ve heard, he wasn’t being booted for over booking. He got booted because they wanted to put four of their employees on the plane.
@DrunkCat Actually, for a start, I think it should be a requirement that their involuntary bumping policy must be disclosed at the time of purchase. It is, in effect, a warranty, and warranties are a part of the consumer’s reasonable purchase evaluation process. If I know that buying discount tickets and travelling alone makes me first choice to get tossed with one company and a competitor uses first-checked-in as the measure, I can factor that into my purchase. I also think it should be a requirement that for each 5 hours of forced delay the involuntarily ousted passenger is entitled to a meal voucher, and if the passenger is going to be delayed overnight they must be provided with hotel and transportation to it. From what I’ve read, passengers bumped from that flight were being delayed till the following afternoon. This is not only a huge inconvenience, but can be a matter of substantial unplanned expense. It is not reasonable for the airlines to steal hours and days of their passengers’ lives and force them to spend unbudgeted funds for airport meals and emergency hotels so they can maximize their profits.
@RiotDemon it was a partner airlines passengers which needed to be transported to fly another flight which would inconvenience a lot more than 4 people if it were unable to fly on time. This is standard industry practice. It’s part and parcel of how they prevent things like maintenance issues from becoming a massive issue for dozens of flights. The law doesn’t speak to paying customers it speaks to confirmed passengers of which employees or employees of partner airlines count towards.
@moondrake I never read all of the stuff I sign. It may already say that. And I would be pretty surprised if they were bumped to the next day. Is that fact or rumor? They may have been on standby.
@jbartus If he was in a seat I assume he was a confirmed passenger…
@moondrake have you actually familiarized yourself with the legal rights of passengers in this situation?
https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights
He was going to be refunded four times his ticket cost plus have his original ticket remain valid with the option to insist on having that refunded. Add to that that it is highly probable that United would have covered the hotel room that they offered to volunteers for the involuntary bumps as well although nobody is reporting on it.
It’s incredibly frustrating to me how many people are forming judgments on this situation without educating themselves on the relevant laws and consumer protections.
@sammydog01 From CNN: “Passenger Tyler Bridges said the request for volunteers came after everyone had boarded. It was easy to understand why no one responded – it was Sunday night and the next flight was not until the following afternoon, he said.”
@sammydog01 the next flight being the following afternoon is reported fact.
@moondrake I’m not sure I understand your point. If your point is simply that he counts towards the confirmed passenger count you are correct which makes him part of the overbooking situation and eligible for bumping.
@jbartus This is my perspective: This man bought a ticket for travel in good faith that the airlines would provide the service for which they had been paid. The man went on his trip and followed all the rules to board the aircraft. After he was seated in reasonable expectation of going home, based on a policy not made available at the time of purchase, the airline had him forcibly ejected from the plane. The misbehavior of the security officer aside, at the airlines behest this man was bodily pulled from their plane because he refused to return a product for which he had paid. We don’t know what this guy’s story was, why he resisted the authorities, which was unwise but I do not think was morally wrong.
Last November while I was out of town on the afternoon of my flight my mom died in her nursing home. They couldn’t remove her body to the funeral home until I told them where we’d made arrangements. In the moment, 600 miles away, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t reach my petsitter to check the file, turned out she’d let her phone battery die. I told the nursing home I’d be home in a couple of hours and be straight over there. Then they delayed my flight for three hours due to mechanical problems, frustrating but what can you do? Every half hour they were calling me from the nursing home wanting to move my mom’s body before the other patients freaked out (small private residence care). I kept calling and calling but the petsitter wasn’t picking up. I kept texting and calling my neighbors but when I reached them they were slso out of town (they travel a lot). At last a plane pulled up to our gate and everyone started gathering their stuff. They told us to sit back down, another flight had been canceled also due to mechanical difficulties and so they were pre-empting our second plane for those passengers. So we had to sit there and watch a couple of hundred people file by and get on our plane, and wait several more hours for a THIRD plane. Meanwhile I am still fielding calls from the nursing home, they are threatening to send my mom’s body to the county, plus I am worried about what’s happened to my petsitter and my dog. Finally I realized I could call one of my friends who has a spare set of my keys to drive over and find out what was happening. Just as the last plane pulled up, my friend called with the information I needed. I was exhausted, grieving, and so furious that twice I’d gone into the bathroom to punch walls so I wouldn’t lose it on some hapless airline employee. That’s not the longest or stupidest delay I’ve experienced, but it was the worst. And I have no sympathy for the airline at all. I do not understand why we allow some industries to oversell, misrepresent and renege on their products while others are held to a high degree of accountability.
@moondrake we allow it because it allows them to offer the service we demand at the price we demand. While I empathize with the situation you described I expect that the airline had valid reasons for reassigning that plane. For example if the other flight that was cancelled was twice as big as yours then it makes sense to inconvenience as few people as possible.
I certainly agree with the sentiment that the man should never have been allowed to board the plane before this situation was sorted out but it does not absolve him of his responsibility for his actions.
Edit: as for the policy not being available at the time of purchase that’s a load of bunk and it speaks again forming an opinion without educating yourself on the matters at hand. Their policy is outlined in their contract of carriage which is agreed to at the time of purchase.
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx?Mobile=1#sec25
Sorry I decided that lasy bit was just venting and TMI too late to delete it.
@moondrake we’re all guilty of venting at times don’t sweat it. It was interesting to learn the basis for your perspective
@jbartus
I’m not going to go all legalese here, I’ll leave that to the lawyers. But I found United’s actions appalling in terms of judgment if not in terms of contract or implied contract. And my brother, who is a contract lawyer, said to me that United was just plain dumb and appalling both in terms of business practice and in terms of contract law - and he flies more than 100 times a year for business, and does not consider himself to be any sort of liberal.
Basically, an airline needs to handle this at the gate before boarding. After boarding, if there is some emergency that mandates booting people off the plane (a legit emergency, not this “United wants a cheap way out of their own error” situation), then the fact that passengers were allowed to board means that the expected price of getting people to volunteer to deplane just jumped up to 5x or 10x what that price would have been at the gate. The airline should have expected that, and made appropriate offers. Some passenger almost certainly would have bought to a seat buyout offer that was much much higher. This is all entirely predictable, Customer Relations 101 at Community College.
If they airline couldn’t find someone who would volunteer to deplane at a much higher price, they should have ponied up and paid another airline the extra money to get that flight crew where they needed to be on time. If no commercial flights or seats were available, the airline should have ponied up for another alternative, such as one of the small planes they own and use regularly for emergency crew transport, or if need be, a charter.
Why? Because the airline wants to be a decent company that treats customers decently Because the airline doesn’t want people to hate it. Because the airline wants a good reputation and a good stock price. Because the much of the airline’s expected and planned future is in successfully expanding into foreign markets in which potential customers are highly sensitive to possible perceived bad behavior by established foreign companies which compete with local companies, and the airline needs to have lots of goodwill. Because the airline has better things to do that try to recover from obviously preventable PR disasters.
That guy had every right to protest the initial choice the crew or a computer made to order him to deplane, since that part is somewhat algorithmic and somewhat arbitrary. He, not United, is the judge of when he needs to be where. And he already knew, obviously, that there was room for him on the plane.
For any airline whose staff chose to act as the United staff did, the entire dramatic and horrid episode could have been predicted to occur at some time to some airline. Someone somewhere was going to actively or passively refuse to deplane, certainly if the passenger believed it was not a true emergency (which this was not, in any possible sense of the word). Airline will make errors in pre-scheduling crew transportation sometimes. Every airline should, in that case, be desperate to Not Be That Airline who has a very disturbing viral video or viral news report; and the airline should have crisis management teams available for consult 24/7, and have trained its crews and gate crews according to the needs of the company’s reputation, and to have policies in place to make sure that viral video never happens at their airline.
What is the cost of just pushing way up the seat buyout price offered to boarded passengers, compared to the cost of a few hour’s worth of jet fuel for a single plane? Next to nothing. That’s airline economics.
No airline can afford this sort of publicity, or this publicly demonstrated apparent lack of awareness of human decency, public relations and customer opinion. The cost of offering much higher seat buyout prices under the circumstances, or the cost of commercial tickets on another airline, or even the cost of a charter flight is a miniscule percentage of the cost United has incurred so far: a cost in reputation and stock price fall, and possibly the cost in changed regulations, foreign permits and contracts, and government hearings, that to my mind are entirely deserved. Dumb business practices at this level will likely someday create a huge /fail for any company.
United intends or intended to make a huge push into the Chinese and Asian markets. How will that go for them now, with passengers and with governments? Guess where this video got the most views? Perhaps United’s Asian plans are no longer quite on track. What is the cost of a long term great reputation in a huge and growing air market, likely to someday be the largest air market in the world, compared to the one-time cost of even a charter jet to cover crew transportation problems cause by United’s own internal scheduling error? Nice economic and strategic company vision, huh?
The flight was not overbooked. Not by United’s definition of overbooking, and not by the industry’s definition. The airline had simply failed to schedule seats for entirely predictable and normally pre-scheduled routine crew transportation. That is not technically within the definition of “overbooking”. Why should a passenger pay for that with serious personal inconvenience? There was no emergency that required mechanical or other scarce personnel to be transported with zero advance notice and without delay. And had there been such an emergency, the airline still had options beyond bumping passengers already in their seats.
The airline got exactly what it should have expected. So, technically, the airline has the legal right to forcibly deplane non-disruptive passengers, even when there is no emergency. So what? Those contracts are always written entirely in favor of a large industry which can afford lots of lawyers, to cover all possible situations. That doesn’t mean it makes sense to enforce those contract provisions when the airline has other options. It’s not like passengers have a choice of other similarly priced airlines or slightly more expensive airlines without the same contract provisions, so the passengers who need to fly have no choice, but are forced into accepting those terms, unless the passengers are so wealthy that they can afford charter options, or have the time and means for other transportation.
Furthermore, every company has an obligation to treat its customers well. And practically, in business terms, any company that doesn’t have a monopoly and dependent customer base, and whose financial well-being is highly dependent on good reputation, has a duty to its shareholders, employees, and customers not to be involved in something like this, and not to then have to try to navigate the inevitable PR disaster and financial consequences.
If what United did was so “right”, why are there not multiple reported incidents of every airline doing this, even when some customers resist and protest, as would be the inevitable outcome of such a practice, given human nature and customer expectations?
The answer is that other airlines simply have a better understanding of what acceptable business practices are, contract or no contract, and what businesses they are actually in. The other airlines are simply not this dumb.
And what of the other passengers and the millions of people who now know of this incident: should they not have their right to chose the philosophical and emotional lens through which the viewers choose to react? I don’t think we owe it to United to buy into any justification they or their defenders might care to offer.
And we haven’t even heard from the lawyers and regulators yet (except that Gov Christie wants hearings because United dominates the gate count at Neward, and regardless of what you think of Christie, other politicians will happily jump on this). Again, predictable.
To me, the reaction United has suffered is a clear case of bad management paying the expected price for negligent preparation for the obvious, and for horrible planning and decision making for inevitable situations.
@f00l If a guy in a uniform tells you to get off a plane you get off the plane and then deal with it. If you are forcibly removed from a plane you do not reboard the plane. Argue all you want about fairness and all but this guy was not acting rationally. I know some passengers were on his side but I bet his behavior scared a lot of others.
@jbartus
To some degree, yes. But not to the degree that you suggest.
The cost of moving the flight crew thru unusual means that were somewhat more expensive, because the plane had already boarded, is minimal, because the situation is incredibly rare. Nothing about arranging special transportation for this crew would have raised ticket prices even one penny, and the cost would be invisible in size next to other daily predictable and constant cost inefficiencies the airlines regularly tolerate in their own practices.
And that doesn’t even begin to estimate the obvious financial losses United will now suffer due to this incident, which are enormous. Sometimes, taking care of your customers and their sensibilities, and of your own reputation is exactly equivalent to taking care of the bottom line.
Maybe the passenger’s reactions were foolish and indulgent, or maybe not. He, you, and I will disagree. But who cares about that? United deals will millions of customers every year. They know they face a variety of rational and irrational reactions. They know that some of those reactions will generate enormous outrage, even if United was “legally correct”. Why were they not prepared to avoid disaster? Someone, somewhere was going to react that way, and United knew it, or should have known it. What about the responsibility of the executives at United not to have their heads up their own asses?
I am betting that within the executive suites of United’s competitors, there is little sympathy today for United. Not because the other airlines are glad to see a /fail by a competitor. Rather, because the executives at competing airlines are astonished that United’s employees and management are that dumb.
Said contracts are in tiny print, and are thought of even by lawyers as being relatively unreadable by customers under the stress of modern life. United may have put it in the fine print, among many other words of fine print on other topics. United had to option to put this in large and unavoidable print, something that almost every sentient person would notice, before the customer clicks to purchase.
Is the customer, in your mind, not absolved from reading and understanding every complex and long contract we engage, even when we barely have the time and energy to manage our own lives? Well then, why should the company be absolved failing to make all the salient provisions of the contract easy to read and understand; and why should United be absolved from the PR consequences (of United’s creation, given their predictability), resulting of a nightmare of its own creation (again, given the predictability that this would happen someday, somewhere)?
@sammydog01 said:
OK he wasn’t acting rationally. Ok I would have obeyed a legal authority and protested later. And you would. And most people would. But not everyone will. And every airline and other company that deals in public with the public knows this.
That an astonishing % of video viewers feel enormous sympathy for the customer, and that most of these viewers are not fundamentally irrational or fundamentally unfair in their expectations of customer treatment, and in spite of the passenger’s apparent non-rationality, tells me that my reaction that United completely fucked this one up is hardly out of line.
And the people I know who are business people, mostly somewhat conservative in business outlook, and who fly constantly for business, agree with me on this. Yeah, the guy acted irrationally. Also, yeah, United has its head up its ass and deserves everything it’s getting.
Why was United not prepared for this day well in advance? There are so many things they could have done to avoid this, once the passengers had boarded.
@f00l I have a lot to do and lost 3 days already this week waiting for an available surgeon at the hospital so I’m gonna be brief and address the most salient point as I see it.
Appealing to the majority opinion is a logical fallacy and pointless. You point to them and call out sympathy for the customer, I point at them and call out ignorance of the laws and policies involved. Involuntary bumping happens to, on rough average, 51,884,615 passengers ever year. (data) The only reasons this particular case is getting all of this attention is the unfortunate outcome of this particular case and the fact that videos were taken and shared of the incident. This practice is lawful, this practice is common, this practice is shared across the industry, and this practice of involuntary bumping is essential to the way the current fare structures are designed.
Are there alternatives? Sure, but you can bet more educated people than either you or myself (on the issues at hand, not necessarily overall) have done the analysis and determined that shifting passengers to make room for crew transfers is a necessary practice to keep flights on schedule and fares low.
Whether the practice is common when passengers are already aboard would be a question to which the answer would be interesting, I think this case alone proves that it shouldn’t be, but I have personally been aboard at least one other flight where passengers were boarded before volunteers were sought (I want to say the airline was Southwest but I’m not 100% there so let’s just say ‘another major air carrier’) so I can say (anecdotally of course) that it’s not the only case where this has happened.
Finally, and I do hope you realize that there is no offense intended when I say this, but all of your talk about how much cheaper X would have been than the PR disaster this became is just a lot of irrelevant noise. Sure it’s probably correct, almost certainly technically correct which we all know is the best kind of correct, but it’s Monday Morning Quarterbacking. United had no way of anticipating this outcome nor did any of the other airlines which help make up that 51,884,615 passengers, on average, who are involuntarily denied boarding each year. It was business as usual until the combined actions of the Doctor and the Officer made it into a viral media issue.
The ignorant nature of the mob is the exact reason our founding fathers created a representative system in place of a pure democracy.
Food for thought:
https://thepilotwifelife.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/i-know-youre-mad-at-united-but-thoughts-from-a-pilot-wife-about-flight-3411/
@jbartus That sure was convincing.
@jbartus
Appealing to the stated or published opinions of a number of highly knowledgeable, highly educated, customers and industry experts who are extremely familiar with the policies, practices, and economics of an industry is NOT a logical fallacy of any kind. And that’s what I did. I used, as source, quick-scanning a wide variety of press and checking on news video released from a variety of the standard well-known sources that are commonly held to be fairly “centrist”, and I am a news addict via print, podcast, and youtube, of a variety of reputable sources. I did a brief scan, I’m a half-well-read citizen here with an opinion, not someone expounding on TV or intending to publish a major scholarly article. I did not mention anything about a majority consumer opinion as a conclusive argument - merely as a supporting factor.
But "majority consumer opinion* has more weight than merely being some supportive player in some argument of mine here: because, in this case, majority consumer opinion, here, abroad, and especially in emerging markets that United desperately need to succeed in, is the very factor that is likely to determine how this episode plays out for United long term, and how badly damaged United is or is not by this incident. Consumer opinion, rational or irrational, informed or uninformed, sophisticated or, unfair, possibly even primitive, or plain superstitious, is what United is almost wholly dependent on in this situation. So United had better be prepared to act with that awareness.
And it is perfectly predictable in advance, to company executives, that public opinion can be and often is a determining factor in how a difficult situation plays out for a company. So why aren’t they prepared? Whether company leaders respect or agree with public opinion or not, or think the public is rational or fair or not, if they value their stock price, their company’s future, and their own professional reputations, these business leaders had better be ready to take public opinion, for better or for worse, into account, be prepared to deal with it as it is, not as they wish it were, and to account for and pay the price of the failure to do so as a failure of the company’s leadership and vision.
How many companies - even highly technical, or highly engineering oriented, or highly defended by laws, rules, and contracts, always acts to protect its absolute legal and contractual perogatives in every instance no matter what? I bet you don’t. You are in business, and I bet you cut customers slack, and eat small and moderate costs you shouldn’t have to eat and wish the other party would take responsibility for all the time. I have a variety of family members operating in charge of a number of businesses of many types, from street and casual enterprises, right up to professional practices, and businesses in areas highly regulated and defended both contractually and by law. And in every instance, each business eats costs and inconveniences that don’t strictly belong to it, and provides public and customer bennies it doesn’t owe. And sometimes those costs and bennies are expensive. Good judgment about when to insist on the letter of the contract, and when to back off and buy some expensive goodwill is a key attribute of business success. Bad judgment in the same areas is a key element of business trouble or failure.
A wise company is prepared for this sort of thing. A wise company is prepared to do everything possible to make absolutely sure this sort of thing does not go terribly wrong, even if the executives think they would technically be in the right to take measures they believe in; but which measures the public believes are harsh and unjustifiable to the degree that a PR firestorm ignites.
To think otherwise is to ignore what every business and law school teaches, and what most truly successful business leaders already know, either by instinct, by study and reflection, or by character.
I have not heard any serious ethicist, philosopher, logician, logistics expert, legal expert, economist, or outside airline industry expert defend United’s choices in this matter. It’s true that I have not read deeply into every possible news source on this.
Since you are presumably busy, I presume you haven’t read deeply either. I have scanned a lot of headlines and early paragraphs from a set of diverse sources. I’m not seeing the usual diversity of defenders of corporate perogatives speak up here in United’s defense. I am seeing many business, finance, legal, and other experts confess that they are appalled and mystified by United’s lack of wisdom either in preparation, during the incident, or during the early aftermath.
Crisis management is a well-established and successful industry now, and the basic principles praticed in that industry are taught in law schools, business schools, graduate schools, and corporate high-level training programs for the most promising and successful executives. United, in its prep and conduct, more or less flunked every course ever taught.
Since when can the practice of any large and complex industry, with high technical and safety requirements, the need to serve the general and somewhat unpredictably behaving public at large, in public view of other customers, operating on extremely complex economic model, weather models, cost models, logistics models and assumptions (and those not being, by nature, strictly frameable by any logical or algorithmic methods [provable]), within the glare of a high degree of publicity, and within the reasonable boundaries of public expectation of conduct if that industry wishes to keep its reputation, susceptible to any other final decision process other that highly educated, and deeply questioned judgment of the most knowledgeable and successful who run the company?
And if there is a industry fail, or the appearance of a fail, what “logical” method are you or anyone else going to turn to that can finally resolve this sort of question of what might have been better, or very good, or excellent actions and choices in these circumstances?
(Hint: Said “logical” method of resolution does not exist at present, or at least it does not exist anywhere accessible to homo sapiens. Nor will such a methodology exist in the near foreseeable future).
You can do fancy computer models concocted by the best experts and coders in every area, using the best data, the best theories, and the best math, the best industry knowledge that exists; and those experts and coders and machines and their methods and outputs can, together, do a bang up job of what they set out to do, and you can thereby gain a lot of help and information in running your airline. But situations like this one always devolve finally onto human judgment. Theoretically, this happens because the incident itself, the choices available to the airline at the time of the incident, the prep, forethought, and training that happened or did not happen in anticipation of similar incidents, are all human factos; and the publicity surrounding the incident, the legal processes and their cost and consequences, and the public reaction decide the outcome.
No one is racing to defend United here, including the alt-various-POVs, the rebels, the contrarians, the legal pundits, the professors, the true frequent flyers, the loudmouths who thrive on controversy.
I am not talking about the rationality of the choices of the passenger here. It’s any large business’s job to be prepared for shit to come down that can’t be resolved by strict reference to a contract or a rulebook or a reference to “legal rights of the company”, or a reference to the short-term bottom line; and to be prepared for the failure to take the best “human” course in a bad situation to possibly lead to terrible consequences for the company.
The statistics you site are not terribly relevant, because almost all bumping happens at the gate. On the plane may not be legally much different that at the gate, but emotionally and symbolically it is a universe away. And what business executive doesn’t understand that, outside of United’s in this instance?
I asked several people who fly a lot (such as more than once a week, for, say, the past 30 or more years), what they had witnessed in terms of boarded and seated passenger bumping. The answers ranged from “once” to “never”. All that is always handled at the gate, in their own airport histories. The companies offer sweeteners, and unboarded passengers, who all know that the airline can stop them from boarding, usually have among their ranks some who will choose to make a profit on the situation in exchange for the inconvenience. If no one steps up, the airline uses gate personnel or an algorithm to pick the unlucky ones who will not be allowed to board.
Once someone is on the plane, the passenger’s view of their own situation changes. For starters, the costs of getting someone to agree to give up a seat that person already occupies escalates radically, and the airlines should be prepared for that. If there had not been enough seats, it would have quickly been obvious during initial boarding. So a customer who is asked to deplane involuntarily knows that they were selected to have their travel plans disrupted for the convenience of the airline. They paid - they got there on time - they were allowed to board, and no one boarding lacked a seat, which means that the plane was not overbooked. “Something came up”, and the airline wants to force them to give their seat to someone else. Yes, legally there is a contractual right. But the situation is a disaster waiting to happen. Any airline executive who doesn’t “get” that really needs a lot more training, or perhaps a job in a segment of the airline industry that doesn’t deal with the general public.
(more)
@f00l
This situation didn’t blow up because customers are unpredictably armed with cameras and youtube exists, and the passengers on the plane surprisingly thought the video worth sharing. All that is entirely predictable.
The industry’s financial viability is not based on the necessity to forcibly deplane seated passengers who are not misbehaving, when no one is willing to accept the financial offers, the financial offers are not substantially sweetened from what they would have been while still in the terminal, when there is no emergency reason to do so, because those incidents are so rare as to be insignificant in terms of cost impact. Since it is perfectly predictable that this situation might well occur on some airline at some point, and that a passenger might refuse to deplane, and that the other passenger would have both video cameras and potential anger at the ready, why wasn’t United prepared?
The video went was made, and then went up, and then went viral, and then created outrage, because enough fellow passengers and video viewers found the situation brutal and traumatic to everyone involved. And it happened on the plane. And the company did not make sufficient visible efforts to seek alternative resolutions. And passengers believed that there was no genuine emergency to force United to go to this resolution, and that, whatever the contract provisions, the company behaved badly and in bad faith. United needs the good opinion of the vast majority of viewers of such a video and the good opinions of just about all the passengers on that plane. And United is supposed to know that it needs those good opinions, well in advance, regardless of the rationality of these opinions, if they are felt strongly by the customers.
Companies are supposed to be prepared for that. Executives are supposed to have executives and crisis experts ready who can “read” a situation for potential harm to the company and its customers: PR, emotional, traumatic, financial, legal, regulatory, future opportunity costs, customer and industry respect, long term costly reputation repair, safety, stock price, and every other form of harm anyone can think of.
It’s the company leadership’s job to be good at that. Really, if they can’t manage that, given that we have some degree of choice and freedom about airline travel, what does it matter what else those executives as a group might do well, if that can’t manage to keep the goodwill and respect of their customers? They can balance the books and fine-tune the schedules and logistics infinitely, and how much will that help the airline’s survival and stock price if customers hate them?
No. It’s not. What you and I and all the commentators are doing now is Monday morning quarterbacking, true, but we weren’t present at the incident. I can promise that many people I personally know would have shown better judgment on the spot and shortly afterward that the choices made by United personnel. But the PR disaster and the swell of customer opinion is exactly what’s relevant here, and is also exactly what’s predictable. If this particular PR disaster is uncommon or unknown, it’s because other airlines, and United at other times, are handling this better. So no PR nightmare for the other companies.
Anyone high up in an airline industry knows or ought to know that forcibly deplaning a passenger is obviously a potential disaster in the making, with youtube and other passenger outrage thrown in as liklihoods, and have scenarios and alternatives ready to go, and personnel who are either trained to see when a situation is going south and it’s time to do something else, or who have easy and constant access to experts who can work successfully under these circumstances, and operate with excellent judgment.
This is exactly why companies the size of major airlines hire MBA’s, lawyers, psychologists, economists, strategy experts, PR experts, crisis experts, outside consultants in all these areas; this is why companies highly value those with the best training and best track records in the worst situations.
It’s United’s job to make sure that potential customers would rather drive a long, exhausting, unpleasant drive, than get on a United airplane. The financial, legal, PR, stock price, potential credit ratings hit, potential expansion into the most valuable markets of the airline future, etc etc etc, are exactly what are foreseeable. These are exactly what educated shareholders and industry experts expect the company executives to be able to plan for and navigate. Not one of the executive and business operator or owner persons I have heard speak about this thinks that the situation, and the potential for a horrible outcome, were unforeseeable.
These are exactly the sorts of situations these people expect to foresee and manage in the scope of their own professional responsibilities at their own companies. One person I heard mention this privately said that he would fire anyone who, on their own authority, carried thru on a decision like the one United personnel went with, and that if he himself did something like that, he would expect to be fired by the company board. And he said he would try to avoid flying United under current management, unless there is a lot of visible reforming of policy and practice at United, when routes permit and decent alternatives exist, as he does not willingly patronise companies who create complete disasters for themselves in stupid ways. I am finding this POV to be pretty close to universal among people of my acquaintance who run companies.
United simply faced a very bad situation, but a predictable one, and flunked it.
@f00l So I just read your last post… just kidding.
/giphy no time for that
f00l: I read all of both of your very lengthy posts. I agree with everything you said. It bothers me that most of the news reports about this keep using the term “overbooked” in association with this event. It was NOT overbooked. It’s time that United (and others) either start leaving seats open for staff that need to be deployed elsewhere, or else understand that they don’t get to bump anyone so that they can quickly deploy folks elsewhere. Before anyone points it out, yes, I understand that the four staff folks were not even United staff, but instead worked for someone else (albeit related, as I recall).
I’ve willingly given up a seat for a (much) later flight when I was headed home (while I still worked), and the voucher wasn’t the reason I did so. I no longer fly; if the drive is more than two days, I don’t need to go wherever it is.
@sammydog01
On this morning, I agree that dancing is much more important that anything else.
/giphy dance
@f00l
/giphy I’m dancing right now
@Shrdlu
Thx
I flunked the ninja edit window again here and there; Ran out here time. One sentence is missing a “not”, etc.
More similar type-on-phone-at-5am, complete w 5am brain engaged errors.
Oh fucking well. ; )
Hmmm. Now if one puts one’s mind to it, and is willing to drive like someone on a Cannonball Run with a full I-am-young 1971 mindset, complete with avoidance tactics, social engineering, total anarchy, and the means of staying awake, how far can one get in two days? Of course, one must intend to use the entire allowed 48 hours, without stopping, right?
'Cause if not, what fun is that?
Sounds like a rental (or borrowed) (or “borrowed”) (or “donated”) vehicle would be the best test vehicle for this.
A properly stoked crew would be helpful. I think a crew of the insane variety. Yes, that would be best.
Coast to coast is entirely within range. No sweat.
TX to Alaska? Yes, I think, with the right crew and equipment; and the right “very seriously deranged attitude”.
Google maps estimates FW to Juneau at 2 days 15 hours. Seriously, what a bunch of wusses they have in Mountain View. Or perhaps I just need to get the Google Maps Cannonball Run module for estimating routing and ETA. Perhaps Google doesn’t turn that routing on without the cheat code.
TX to S America, assuming an safe and fast way can be found through some problem areas in Mexico?
Since this would be a genuine test challenge, not a fictional movie, I would prefer to avoid the need for full on non-special-effects fully IRL combat tactics and weaponry/ammo. All that shooting while driving, one’s average mph might take a serious hit, not to mention one’s body parts.
So, say, skip Mexico and start in Belize. Hmmm, possible, at what mph average? Patagonia or even Tierra Del Fuego is the goal, of course.
Google Fucking Maps can’t find a land route from Belize to Argentina? Then lame Google Maps needs a cane or a wheelchair. What’s a little jungle clearing and river, canal, and international border/customs jumping when something important’s on the line?
Hmmmm. Whoever “loans” me a vehicle for this plot had better make it a nice one. Perhaps with a few alt backup vehicles stashed along the way for emergencies.
; )
Can someone wearing way too many decades every day convince oneself that one is really 18 or 22 years old for several days? Convince oneself thoroughly enough to find it all enormously fun?
I fear, no. But the fantasy kinda rocks.
But were there world enough, and time …
I think I am fully into no-sleep thinking now. My my. Stupid is as does.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/us/new-york-los-angeles-cannonball-speed-record/
28 hours, 50 minutes.
I wonder if a true id10t could beat that?
Naw.
Maybe …
@f00l In researching our trip to Costa Rica, I heeded the oft-mentioned advice to get GPS with the rental car. It was absolutely necessary (as outside the cities street signs are rare) and completely amazing. It alerted us to school zones, narrow bridges and roads and even speed bumps!
@moondrake
Perhaps if I follow my fantasy, I’ll get a rental car with a gps, and by the time I’m done, the rental agency will at least get the gps back. I’ll be taking out that extra insurance.
Kinda too bad it’s unlikely to happen.
; )
Anyone have ideas why United’s PR team put out such piss-poor statements in the beginning (including the letter to their employees, which they had to know for sure would get out)?
It shouldn’t take you 3 tries to get to an apology.
@dashcloud Ooh, ooh, I know! Spicey is moonlighting on their PR team!
@dashcloud simple enough, it wasn’t being handled by a PR team. The PR statement, and therefore the one that should be treated as least likely to reflect actual positions of the leadership, is the one everyone likes whereas the initial statements are what they really think. I think it’s pretty clear that they involved a crisis management team at this point, the rapid-fire releases and motions meant to promote good will practically scream it compared to their original activities.
@jbartus Because they spend as much for PR s they do for inflight services.
@dashcloud I suspect that at least part of it is the reason people and businesses often fail to apologize in even more egregious situations: apology = admission of guilt = damages. Sadly in trying to protect their collective posteriors businesses sometimes cause what they are trying to avoid. Customers who’d have been satisfied with a simple apology and token reparations feel even more outraged at the defensive posturing and blame reassignment of the offending business and mount a suit that never needed to happen.
Why are the other three ejections not making headlines? Has anyone seen video showing how the police enforced them?
@OldCatLady People almost always leave peacefully muttering obscenities under their breath.
@thismyusername
@f00l At least they let them keep their carry ons. Hmmm, I hadn’t thought about that, what about the checked luggage of the ejected passengers? Seems like digging that out would be a time consuming proposition. Maybe that’s how they picked who got the boot, the four suitcases closest to the door. Or four people who didn’t check luggage…
@moondrake don’t worry, it is likely the luggage will be lost just like it would had they made the flight.
@djslack I like that one.
@djslack this one is fantastic.
No desire to further inflame anything here, but interesting info about this incident:
I have now seen at least 4-5 legal opinions, all by contract law professors at a variety of major law schools (some of these professors being aviation or common carrier specialists), none of these professors being involved in this case, all of these professors claiming to have reviewed in detail the United “fine print” contract that is the norm for passenger ticket purchases on a United Airlines flight.
It seems that United had no legal right to force or insist that Dr Dao give up his seat, and no legal right to remove him from the plane.
All those “denied boarding compensation” and “refusal of transport” small print provisions that have anything to do with overbooking, or with needing a seat for someone else, apply to the pre-boarding situation only.
According to United’s own contract, once a passenger is boarded and seated, the airline has no right to remove the passenger from the plane due to the justification of needing the seat for some other reason, or having overbooked the flight, or similar.
Needing a seat for some other reason allows the airline to deny boarding only. This, legally, happens only at the gate, or before then. Once the passenger is allowed on the plane, the passenger is legally boarded and has a different legal status regarding their seat - which is to say, it’s theirs. It does not then matter if the airline needs the seat for another reason. The airline cannot legally remove the customer from the seat for the reason of needing the seat.
What might come into validity at that point would be the airline’s right of refusal of transport, but the situations where this rule can be applied are sharply limited by federal law, case law, and United’s own passenger contract.
These justifications cannot, by extensive court case history (according to legal commentary I’ve run across), be expanded to include additional reasons, just because it’s convenient to the airline that wants to. That’s the list, and that’s it.
The airline is allowed to try to free up seats by offering compensation. However, the airline may not force anyone off the plane just because no one chooses to volunteer.
Another interesting point is that United’s compensation offers did not even go up to the federally mandated minimum of $1350, applicable in certain circumstances. Some airlines who desperately need seats have offered nearly $10000 per seat recently in some cases. United obviously was not feeling generous that day.
I have also seen legal commentary from contract law experts stating that United probably cannot shift legal consequences to the actions of Airport Security. United called security and set the forcible (and apparently unjustifiable) removal of a passenger from his seat in motion.
Furthermore, both the public and (leaked or released) private statements of United executives immediately after the incident tend to put liability for the matter squarely on United. The airline’s shareholders were not well served by the rash conduct in United’s executive suite. (The private documents would surely come out in discovery anyway, even without having been leaked.)
The legal status of Airport Security in this case also seems in doubt. Their authority now appears to be far less that than of a full-fledged LEO. These workers were repeatedly told by airport management not to wear jackets indicating that they were police or a police equivalent, with similar public authority; and had been told not to indicate that they were either police or LEO’s to the public or to airline passengers.
I don’t know any details about what legal authority these security officers do and do not have.
I am no lawyer, have not read the contract, don’t intend to. I suppose the stuff I’ve read from legal experts may be one opinion among many, or may be incorrect - but I didn’t go looking for any particular POV or perspective.
I suppose we’ll see, as the court case moves forward.
A few sources:
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/united-cites-wrong-rule-for-illegally-de-boarding-passenger/
http://www.newsweek.com/why-united-were-legally-wrong-deplane-dr-dao-583535
http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/04/the_solution_to_airline_overbooking_throw_money_at.html
As for United’s future:
If I were a shareholder, I’d be thinking hard about serious amends and serious changes at the company.
@f00l At this point, the only clear winners are other airlines. Publicizing the amounts gate personnel and supervisors are now authorized to offer passengers BEFORE boarding on overbooked flights has certainly spurred conversations worldwide. It’s possible that the $9950. incentives have been available before now, but I haven’t heard of them.
@f00l Delta lifts cap for voluntary bumping to $9,950 http://usat.ly/2pBC2MC via @usatoday
@OldCatLady
All the airlines appear to be desperate to avoid public hearings, congressional debate, new FAA rules, and additional lawsuits from others. Trying to head all that off at the pass.
ahahahaahahahaha
HAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH
AEHEAEAHAEHeAHEHAAEHAE
/giphy uproarious laughter
