People love to bag on the airlines and it's a reputation that is somewhat earned. Nevertheless, he most vocal defendants of this situation I've heard are airline employees. I assume it's in part because people go a little crazy in the air, and the industry has figured out that price is more important that service.

I'll respond to a few details below but I think the big picture is getting missed- the airline screwed up and didn't have personnel where needed. A paying customer said "no" so cops put him in the hospital.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

Well you are entitled to your opinion. But, I don't want to hear a single complaint if the rules are changed to prevent involuntary denials and then fares go up. And they will have to go up significantly. So agreed? No complaints about airfares going up if the government changes the rules.

And, if you are ever in a situation where your flight is cancelled because a crew could not be moved to staff your flight, again I don't want to hear any complaints. While it is true on doc was delayed getting to his destination, the ripple effect of not getting a crew somewhere is measured in hundreds of passengers being delayed or cancelled. The calculation is to inconvenience one or a few passengers here in order to avoid disrupting service to hundreds down the line.

No reason to plan in advance when it's easy to pump a paying customer to fix your mistake. A lot of rules and compliance, but the calculus won't change if there's an easy out to just bump a passenger.

quote:

You see, we actually go to work wanting to get our passengers safely and happily to their destinations. This guy wasn't bumped because the airline cared more about their own employees than for the customer, this guy was bumped because the airline cared more about several hundred customers downline than they care about one customer who gets bumped. This wasn't a joy ride for the Must Ride crew, this was getting in position to service hundreds of customers downline.

No question about this- Pilots and crew get paid for the 1% of the time when things go badly, not the 99% of the time when things work perfectly. This guy was bumped because someone screwed up and didn't have people where they were needed. Yes- weather, delays, duty times, etc all get in the way, but the airline screwed up. Inconveniencing passengers is cheaper than other options (standby crew in other cities, advance planning, etc). That was a choice the airline made seeking profits- no question about that either.

quote:

The airline treated the customer according the agreement, though we all wonder what would have happened had they offered more compensation to get a volunteer. No airline employee manhandled the passenger or verbally abused him. I expect the airline employees tried hard to de-escalate and reason with him. The Conflict Resolution person is highly trained to deal with difficult people, and I expect a CRO was on board before the police were called. When the passenger went off the rails and became belligerent and non-compliant with the police, the police did what they do.

Not settled and I'm not an attorney, but all the contract of carriage references are about denying boarding not kicking a customer off a plane. This isn't a settled issue. In effect you're saying he was trespassing- because airline staff longer wanted him there. That seems a little thin that a ticketed passenger was in his assigned seat and airline personnel started agitating him- the airline caused the situation.

If you want to go legal, the police were called to be the arbiter in on a civil matter (contract dispute). If he wasn't trespassing (which is thin at best)the police were and were potentially acting as agents of the airline when they used excessive force. They beat him up for not complying with their instructions.

I suspect the passenger felt entitled- he paid for the seat- and I would bet that he felt his need to be at the destination was greater than others. He might not hav been very polite about it- I don't know. Does that mean the cops can put him in the hospital? If the best come back here is "contract of carriage" you're missing the big picture- the airline screwed up. "Yeah but..." doesn't cut it.

quote:

All we have is the video of the exciting climax. If you've seen what takes to lead up to the police getting called out, you'd be skeptical that this passenger is just some normal guy who was innocently doing nothing wrong before being outrageously assaulted.

As Captain, I have every right to remove a passenger not in compliance with crew instructions. I suspect such a person has a high probability of becoming disruptive and dangerous in flight. That is why we remove drunks, because of their propensity to become disruptive and dangerous. I've had people removed from my airplane who weren't drunk but were belligerent to crew before we left the gate. I've had people arrested who were belligerent in flight. It is my job to keep you and the rest of the passengers safe from threats, and that includes people who are non-compliant and belligerent.

Within reason, but that authority isn't absolute. If you as the pilot instruct a woman to remove her top, you can't toss the woman off for not complying. You can try, but there are limits. Do you as the pilot have the authority to have the cops remove a passenger because he's wearing a blue shirt? Or a red hat? You don't have that option.

The airline can certainly deny boarding, but unilaterally deciding that a passenger has to leave for issues that are unrelated to the safety of the flight? I'm not so sure about that.

quote:

People seem to be deaf to the facts of this situation where the passenger refused to comply. He was non-compliant with the crew, with the gate agent, and then with the police. Would you want to sit on an airplane in flight with such a person?

I'm sorry you're fed up with crappy service when you buy the cheapest ticket you can find. Pay more and you'll get a lot better service even on the same aircraft.

I don't fly first class, but I also don't shop solely on price. I suspect that many consumers have had pretty crappy service on main line carriers and they no longer see the up-side of not flying spirit or frontier to potentially save a few dollars. If your customer doesn't see the value of the difference in what you're selling, maybe the problem isn't the customer...

In 6 months, maybe less, this will be forgotten.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:...He chose the one option which guaranteed the police would be called. Then he chose the one option which guaranteed the police would physically remove him.

Correct and correct. And United chose the one option that would probably do the most damage to their reputation and future business.

Calling the police was the wrong option? What would you have done?

I wouldn't have kicked off an already paid and seated passenger to accommodate a United employee. Doing so sends a message that passengers are expendable. I would have found another way to get the employees to their destination, or make other arrangements to cover their shifts until they could make it.

No possible way UAL wins a civil lawsuit with this guy after their CEO is on record saying there's no possible way the customer was in the wrong. A defendant's lawyer would be a moron to ever allow a jury decide the case. UAL will be paying up a great deal for this. The plaintiff's lawyer will get everything he needs, and they will settle. Punitive damages would otherwise likely be awarded, which would be immense.

No, Fly-Sig, the world isn't perfect. But common sense should tell you that this set of circumstances was wrongly handled. And it's going to cost a lot more to deal with this outcome, than what it could have. When they allowed "MUST RIDES" to be added to a flight so late in the game, they screwed themselves. They should know better than to put their employees in what was a no-win situation. That is entirely on UAL. UAL chose to bump their paying passengers. Their customers, and the public doesn't like the policy as it stands, and so it will change going forward, I'm certain. Personally, I hope they go out of business over this. No, I don't particularly care about the thousands of jobs they support. The company's culture is entirely apparent in this whole situation and needs to be fixed. Another, better and more customer oriented airline will hopefully come up in their place.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:...He chose the one option which guaranteed the police would be called. Then he chose the one option which guaranteed the police would physically remove him.

Correct and correct. And United chose the one option that would probably do the most damage to their reputation and future business.

Calling the police was the wrong option? What would you have done?

I'm not Scoutmaster, but to name a few:
1. Not boarded the plane and handled this in the terminal
2. Kept going beyond $800 for volunteers. Somebody made the decision to stop at $800 and their ass should be thoroughly reamed.

One thing you don't see from the cockpit that frequent flyers see routinely is the high percentage of pissy flight attendant attitudes. I'm not going to do anything to get booted, but it's shocking how poorly people in the service industry treat their customers (especially United and American Airlines). Here is a good example, I had an aisle seat in premium economy and a flight attendant's wide ass repeatedly sits on my shoulder when bending over for the lower shelf of the drink cart. I put up the aisle arm rest and her wide ass hit the arm rest instead of my shoulder. First words out of her mouth was, "if you don't lower that arm rest I'll ask the captain to have you arrested when we land." Yep, the first words to a high tier frequent flyer were a threat. Like I said, I'm not going to do anything to get booted or arrested so I put down my arm rest and her wide ass got a soft landing on my shoulder again. When I landed at the airport, I called an executive I knew at the airline and shared the story along with her name. He passed it along to the right executive, but I have no idea what if anything resulted.

1) You're the gate agent. You've started boarding a delayed flight. Crew support, dispatch, and possibly other departments are scrambling to get crews and airplanes in position because weather issues have screwed up a complex system. A decision is made to reflow a crew of 4 and put them on your flight. Since you're in the boarding process you don't see that the numbers have all changed and there are now 4 Must Rides added to the list. As things start settling down and you click on the computer you see these 4 additions.

You couldn't have taken care of this at the gate before boarding because things changed. Now the seats are all occupied on the aircraft and you have the 4 Must Rides to get on.

2) What limit would you as a responsible corporate manager put on these offers? How would you balance this against the federal requirements mandated for involuntary compensation? How do you see your numbers affecting passenger behavior? For example, if you'd authorize gate agents to offer $1500, or $5000, or some other amount, how high would the buyoffs typically go? What if the federal mandate for a particular scenario is only $300 for an involuntary denial, would you let the involuntary buyoff go to 10x that amount at $3000? Does this make you a responsible custodian of corporate assets?

Would you get rid of involuntary denials altogether? How could this be accomplished? What if, as in this case, such a policy would result in downstream cancellations? Those downstream cancellations could quickly become hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. So would you authorize unlimited compensation for volunteers? Everyone has a price, but maybe nobody wants to go late. What if it took $10k or more per seat to get a volunteer? Would this be financially responsible if the rest of the industry were using the old less costly practices of involuntary denial?

It all sounds so simple to say it should have been handled before boarding or that more $ should have been offered, but the world isn't perfect. Every day is a mad scramble to keep as many passengers as possible moving despite countless surprises.

And lastly, if I were an airline, or any transportation company, I would absolutely get rid of overbooking. If you have a ticket, you fly/ride. Price them accordingly. Adjust your routes to achieve profitability. Make tickets non-refundable within a certain window of the flight. Then you don't lose money on those who no-show.

quote:

Originally posted by barndg00:
No possible way UAL wins a civil lawsuit with this guy after their CEO is on record saying there's no possible way the customer was in the wrong. A defendant's lawyer would be a moron to ever allow a jury decide the case. UAL will be paying up a great deal for this. The plaintiff's lawyer will get everything he needs, and they will settle. Punitive damages would otherwise likely be awarded, which would be immense.

Correct. UAL is now just trying to minimize damages.

Continuing to demonstrate that I am not of "posting whore" mentality, I do hope that the airline personnel following this topic will read my posts. Summarizing, I completely empathize with airline passengers. ("They've got you crammed in here like sardines in a can." - exact quote from an American Airlines flight attendant.) And only due to understanding the economics of commercial air travel, I can nearly empathize with flight personnel.

The good news of the evening is that something like this will not happen again.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:...He chose the one option which guaranteed the police would be called. Then he chose the one option which guaranteed the police would physically remove him.

Correct and correct. And United chose the one option that would probably do the most damage to their reputation and future business.

Calling the police was the wrong option? What would you have done?

I'm not Scoutmaster, but to name a few:
1. Not boarded the plane and handled this in the terminal
2. Kept going beyond $800 for volunteers. Somebody made the decision to stop at $800 and their ass should be thoroughly reamed.

One thing you don't see from the cockpit that frequent flyers see routinely is the high percentage of pissy flight attendant attitudes. I'm not going to do anything to get booted, but it's shocking how poorly people in the service industry treat their customers (especially United and American Airlines). Here is a good example, I had an aisle seat in premium economy and a flight attendant's wide ass repeatedly sits on my shoulder when bending over for the lower shelf of the drink cart. I put up the aisle arm rest and her wide ass hit the arm rest instead of my shoulder. First words out of her mouth was, "if you don't lower that arm rest I'll ask the captain to have you arrested when we land." Yep, the first words to a high tier frequent flyer were a threat. Like I said, I'm not going to do anything to get booted or arrested so I put down my arm rest and her wide ass got a soft landing on my shoulder again. When I landed at the airport, I called an executive I knew at the airline and shared the story along with her name. He passed it along to the right executive, but I have no idea what if anything resulted.

1) You're the gate agent. You've started boarding a delayed flight. Crew support, dispatch, and possibly other departments are scrambling to get crews and airplanes in position because weather issues have screwed up a complex system. A decision is made to reflow a crew of 4 and put them on your flight. Since you're in the boarding process you don't see that the numbers have all changed and there are now 4 Must Rides added to the list. As things start settling down and you click on the computer you see these 4 additions.

You couldn't have taken care of this at the gate before boarding because things changed. Now the seats are all occupied on the aircraft and you have the 4 Must Rides to get on.

2) What limit would you as a responsible corporate manager put on these offers? How would you balance this against the federal requirements mandated for involuntary compensation? How do you see your numbers affecting passenger behavior? For example, if you'd authorize gate agents to offer $1500, or $5000, or some other amount, how high would the buyoffs typically go? What if the federal mandate for a particular scenario is only $300 for an involuntary denial, would you let the involuntary buyoff go to 10x that amount at $3000? Does this make you a responsible custodian of corporate assets?

Would you get rid of involuntary denials altogether? How could this be accomplished? What if, as in this case, such a policy would result in downstream cancellations? Those downstream cancellations could quickly become hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. So would you authorize unlimited compensation for volunteers? Everyone has a price, but maybe nobody wants to go late. What if it took $10k or more per seat to get a volunteer? Would this be financially responsible if the rest of the industry were using the old less costly practices of involuntary denial?

It all sounds so simple to say it should have been handled before boarding or that more $ should have been offered, but the world isn't perfect. Every day is a mad scramble to keep as many passengers as possible moving despite countless surprises.

Once again, unlike frequent flyers you're behind a locked door in the cockpit and you don't get to see the pissy attitudes from flight attendants and gate agents when interacting with perfectly calm and reasonable people. I understand that they also deal with agitated and unreasonable people, but they routinely take it out on perfectly calm and reasonable people. IME, United Airlines and American Airlines employees do this much more often than Alaska, Southwest, and Delta employees. This means that there is something different culturally at United and American.

As far as your questions:
1. You're assuming that the 4 must rides were added after boarding started. Big assumption not in any story including UAL's CEO interview with ABC. If it happened that way, then you move on to #2.

2. As far as involuntary denials, it's a astoundingly small # (quite a few zeros before the 1) according to the NYT article previously posted, and that didn't break down passengers involuntarily denied while in the terminal vs passenger involuntarily denied who already boarded. Therefore, I as a reasonable manager would set authority levels (authority levels are something every successful US based large corporation has) for gate agents, the gate agent's boss, and the gate agent's boss' boss. If you need 4 seats and don't get them with your authority level then you escalate to the next authority level who decides whether to increase or go involuntary (bear in mind, in this instance their $800 threshold acquired zero out of the four needed seats). Additionally, the threshold for incentives to go from voluntary to involuntary would be higher for an already boarded flight vs a flight with passengers still in the terminal. I believe United (plus other US based airlines) in the coming days will have different threshold for already boarded passengers vs passengers still in terminal before going involuntary because this is costing them way more than a few grand.

The rest of your numbers are just a red herring as they don't match federal regs. Once again, it should be noted that federal regs are the MINIMUM level they have to go to not a maximum number.

In real life, my decision making authority level is at the dollar amount where I could buy the oil & gas equivalent of a Boeing 737-900ER. In 20+ years, zero times have I called in the guys with guns when my authority level is not high enough to accomplish the task. Instead, I escalate up the chain to someone who is at an authority level to make the decision.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

...Every seat on the airplane is full. You have 4 crew to get to the destination. How do you get them there without bumping 4 revenue pax?

Not getting them there means hundreds of paying customers tomorrow will be "expendable". So you better get them there.

How do you do it?

That's UAL's problem to work out. Their problem. Fix it.

Actually, that problem was simple. Offer cash for volunteers, and up the amount until enough people say yes. Whatever it takes, if it's THAT important to get the non-rev people on board.

Now the problem UAL has is far more complicated, since they were too stupid to fix the easy one.

Idiots.

quote:

Originally posted by btgoanna:

quote:

Actually it is you and pretty much everyone else on this forum who miss the point. So here it is:

Unless you are willing to pay a lot more for your tickets you are not going to get anything better than what the industry currently provides.

Do you or anybody else on this thread think the airlines are not competitive? Do you think that if someone could offer a higher level of service at the same price that they wouldn't already be doing it?

Singapore Air , Emirates , etc do exactly this !

There absolutely is a market for treating passengers better- and these Airlines thrive doing it.

The point is UNITED fucked up big time.

They are now offering refunds to ALL passengers on the flight. As others have said - up the offering until someone takes it - CASH , not stupid vouchers.

Agree lot of Airlines form the Asia country have much higher standard and better service.

quote:

No complaints about airfares going up if the government changes the rules.

Bullshit. This is America. We can complain aout whatever we want, whenever we want.

quote:

Calling the police was the wrong option? What would you have done?

Continue to up the incentive until someone accepted the offer. Also none of this "voucher" shit, cut a check which is the equivalent of cash.

Even the CEO of the company has come out now and said what they did was wrong. Yes they have the law and fine print on their side but there is such a thing as being "morally wrong". THE CEO ADMITTED THEY WERE WRONG. How hard is that to understand?

What's the difference between Chuck Norris and UAL?

Chuck Norris throws the airplane off the passenger.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: trapper189,

I see each detail is parsed, but when did UAL buy E-170's??

Yeah I know, it's all in the paint job.

When 'United breaks guitars" came out, the bean counters said it coast the airline $180 million in lost value to shares. The stock went down 10% at the time and now has 20 million views on youtube.

The new "United breaks your face" footage is at over a million hits not counting Jimmy Kimmel's parody that is up to 3 million views.

Should put the stock in free fall for a while.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:...He chose the one option which guaranteed the police would be called. Then he chose the one option which guaranteed the police would physically remove him.

Correct and correct. And United chose the one option that would probably do the most damage to their reputation and future business.

Calling the police was the wrong option? What would you have done?

I wouldn't have kicked off an already paid and seated passenger to accommodate a United employee. Doing so sends a message that passengers are expendable. I would have found another way to get the employees to their destination, or make other arrangements to cover their shifts until they could make it.

How? Every seat on the airplane is full. You have 4 crew to get to the destination. How do you get them there without bumping 4 revenue pax?

Not getting them there means hundreds of paying customers tomorrow will be "expendable". So you better get them there.

How do you do it?

Easy answer.

You have the police assault whoever you choose over a civil matter. You claim all kinds of rights and arrogance.
You double down that you are superior, and no one else understands, and that options given are countered with a bunch of htpotheticals not in evidence.

Apparently.

In no other setting would the police do this. NONE. Both parties would be referred to their respective attorneys. I keep hearing "trespassing" but you can't be trespassing if you paid to be there. No different than renting a hotel room, then the hotel deciding they want to rent the room to someone else. If the hotel owner called the police, the police would do nothing and advise him to contact his attorney.

But, here we have a bunch on a power trip that can use a government gun to force compliance to their shitty business model. And just like in this thread, their arrogance is so bad that they just don't know when to quit digging.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:...He chose the one option which guaranteed the police would be called. Then he chose the one option which guaranteed the police would physically remove him.

Correct and correct. And United chose the one option that would probably do the most damage to their reputation and future business.

Calling the police was the wrong option? What would you have done?

Increase the damn incentive until four passengers accepted it, as someone may already have suggested.

Fly-Sig, you really need to give it a rest. Seriously, just give it up. Damn. Stop acting like we've kicked your dog. And don't tell me that you're not taking all of this personally. Just take a break.

Repeatedly, members have stated to you the nature of the problem here, yet you keep asking questions like "What would you have done beside call the police". The answer appears in this thread, over and over. Don't ask questions when you refuse to hear the answers.

Just take a break, please.

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:...He chose the one option which guaranteed the police would be called. Then he chose the one option which guaranteed the police would physically remove him.

Correct and correct. And United chose the one option that would probably do the most damage to their reputation and future business.

Calling the police was the wrong option? What would you have done?

Increase the damn incentive until four passengers accepted it, for crying out loud!

+1. I'm pretty sure 4 x $10,000 is going to be a lot cheaper than the upcoming settlement. I wonder why United is saying that they won't be using the po-po in this type of situation in the future? I'm pretty sure it's because they realize how fucked up of a decision they made really was. How much are they going to need to spend on marketing to get past this? Maybe more than the settlement.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
Inconveniencing passengers is cheaper than other options (standby crew in other cities, advance planning, etc). That was a choice the airline made seeking profits- no question about that either.

Not in this case. United has now refunded the full ticket price for every passenger that was on that flight and is getting ready to stroke a big check to the passenger who was assaulted. It's going to cost them a lot more than if they had handled this appropriately.

quote:

When the passenger went off the rails and became belligerent and non-compliant with the police, the police did what they do.

New video is out that shows the doctor talking to the police calmly before the assault occurred. At no time did he raise his voice or become belligerent.

quote:

People seem to be deaf to the facts of this situation where the passenger refused to comply. He was non-compliant with the crew, with the gate agent, and then with the police. Would you want to sit on an airplane in flight with such a person?

Yes, you seem to have missed several facts:

The airline completely disagrees with your position and says that their employee did not use common sense due to a 'system failure' and the passenger was not at fault. After their internal investigation the CEO has said:

quote:

Munoz said the problem resulted from a "system failure" that prevented employees from using "common sense" in the situation and that Dr. David Dao , whom security officers dragged by his hands, on his back, from the cabin before takeoff, was not at fault .

And in another interview:

quote:

Question about the passenger:

" Do you think he is at fault in any way ?"

Munoz: "No. He can't be. He was a paying passenger sitting in our aircraft and no one should be treated that way. Period."

quote:

Originally posted by sourdough44:
I see each detail is parsed, but when did UAL buy E-170's??

Yeah I know, it's all in the paint job.

United has seven (7) "Regional" carriers that fly feed for them to/from select markets; Skywest, ExpressJet, Republic, Mesa, Trans States, CommmuteAir, and GoJet. Aircraft range from the Bombardier Q-200/300 (Dash-8 series) to the EMB-145, and EMB-170/175. This particular event occurred on a Republic Airlines EMB-170.

And "overbooking" isn't going away, so we can table that idea right now; 99.99% of the time it works without incident. Unfortunately, the "perfect storm" was generated on this one.

Rener and Ryron Gracie give drag defense pointers in case you are scheduled to fly United




Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdyx2PSD_OA