Fly The Friendly Skies, eh?
 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e153a6c85332

A$$holes.

The law may say they can bump passengers of their choice after they have boarded. The law may even say that a passenger who refuses to leave when told to can be forcibly ejected. This is still outrageous. United had two recourses: offer a big enough incentive to get people off the flight voluntarily, or send the crew that needed transport some other way.

Instead they went the corporate police state route. Will watch to see how this plays out.

PR nightmare, nothing else.
No doubt they want a good time machine and a do over.

I will never willingly board a commercial flight again.

Compared to the rest of the industrialized world, our airlines suck in terms of service and performance. The American legacy carriers (Delta, American, United) are simply outclassed by the primary carriers of other countries (Lufthansa, Turkish, British, Air France, Swiss Air ...).

I took a two leg flight of United and Lufthansa, and the difference in comfort and service was quite was quite astounding, though both airlines flew 747's. Chances of my flying United is slim to none.

Gives the notorious illustration a new meaning.
http://www.readingthepictures.org/fi.../NewImage3.png

Wave of selling, market value down $700M this morning...

United flight attendants should probably wear 'we could care less' buttons on their flight jackets, lest someone is tempted to ask them for something. :)

'United’s stock is falling 3.7% and wiping $830 million off the airline’s market cap'

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uni...cap-2017-04-11

As you well know, the laws are written by the corporations, the Monsanto's, the Exxon's, the pharmaceutical industries, the airlines, and rubber stamped by our lawmakers without even a cursory glance. It's only at election time that lawmakers pretend to represent the needs of the people. And we the people swallow it up every election....

Good...

Here is a very good analysis on the management. Tempted to subscribe to LA Times, some very good articles are to be there.

At United Airlines and Wells Fargo, toxic corporate culture starts with the CEO

http://www.latimes.com/business/hilt...411-story.html

We subscribe to the Sunday only edition and have the paper del'd to friend (Korean war vet) who likes the hardcopy version. Pretty economical and we get to pick all the Meyer lemons we want from his tree.

United Assholes...
 

I used this as a a response to the local rag when queried as a subscriber (paraphrased):

1. I completely understand wanting full flights.
2. Mistakes/overbooking happens.
3. Folks who take it in the shorts should be rewarded, SIGNIFICANTLY.

If my eight-year-old daughter wouldn't say "Blow off my recital, Daddy. Take the $$$ and let's all have a family weekend out of town?" Then you're not offering enough.

And you'll have to drag me off the plane.

Now, if you don't let me get on the plane? Oddly, I perceive that as different. But I still want $$$ if you're going to screw me.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face
 

"The calls for a boycott in China could have a real impact on the company’s bottom line, with shares of United Airlines parent United Continental Holdings Inc. falling in early trade Tuesday.

United has often billed itself as the top American carrier to China, operating more nonstop U.S.-China flights, and to more cities in China, than any other airline. It offers direct flights from various American cities to Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Hong Kong, adding Hangzhou and a seasonal flight to Xian in 2016. The company got about 14 percent of its 2016 revenue from flying Pacific routes." WP

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.7d7e6e2f52d8

Social media in China is off the chain on this story.

BTW The Louisville Courier dug up some dirt on this old doctor and got pilloried for their trouble. Muckraking at it's finest.

Southwest Airlines has a new slogan. ;)

Southwest: We beat our competitors, not you

https://onsizzle.com/i/southwest-we-...s-new-12676639

United Airlines Training video: https://youtu.be/rVQcXR2HVhw

As one who witness the airline industry from the inside firsthand for many years. United was trying to get a crew to a destination for the next trips required for operation. Usually there is a place in the front for the one of them, (jump seat) pilot or co. But the rest of the crew will need seats.

The airlines and the FAA pretty much set there own rules on what happens next when a seat needs to be emptied. The FAA is on the industries side not he passengers, when it comes to $$$.


United got a well desired black eye along with airport PD!


Airport PD have a tough job but at times go over and above. One can say that is to be expected and allowed. But most of the experiences I was involved with the totally enjoyed it too much! Relished the power!!!!!

I see this as more local airport PD being the problem.


Barney

Not entirely since UA personnel called in the cavalry. Since they were offering monetary compensation (aka bribing) and when there were not enough takers, they should have upped the bid price till all seats they needed were in hand. Unfortunately there was no one there with authority to authorize a higher bid price. If there were still not enough takers UA is SOL and will need to make alternate arrangements. How much would it have cost to arrange for charter of a small turbojet plane? Louisville is not that far from ORD, around 300 miles.

How does one authorize to physically evict someone seated in a plane?

How does a plane full of people just sit there and allow this thuggish behavior to continue? Obviously it wasn't too awfully outrageous as not one person came to the poor mans defense.

This is America...we Oooooo and ahhh and tisk and protest but we never actually take action to make sure these things don't happen because we just can't be bothered to get involved.

Any airline is a business after all. When it comes to crew movement, you have a set of trips over days planned. Many many passengers and flights would be effected by the crew not being in Louisville. My guess this was not to get a crew home.
In the purchase of a ticket somewhere in the small print is relinquishing your seat if the airline decides it is needed.
In the USA regulations take care of the industry first, where in Europe have more protections for it's passengers. The max $$ is around 1300 here IIRC. I think we can agree this is lacking. The passengers chosen are not in a pot with all names in it to begin with. Never will a first class, high sky miles, frequent flyer business man name come up. But the cheap seats will always.
United needs empty seats and asked the Airport PD to assist in the removal. There should of been a better way to accomplish this for the majority of the other passengers wanting to get to travel to the Derby city.

Was the plane to sit waiting until the decision was made by the passengers in who stayed?





Barney

So lets beat the passenger senseless, kill him even if he does not comply with "industry regulations"

What a filthy crass country we are.

I kind of feel that if I bought the ticket I won the ride. If you want/need it pay me for it. But just like the airlines, they get to decide how much to charge for he ticket. A simple refund would not suffice for me. I paid $400 for a ticket, it is mine. I get to decide what it is worth fro me to sell it. They simply did not offer enough money to get the passengers to relinquish their seats. I would bet that if they offered the overnight acommodations, and then started hitting the $2k and north value, people would have volunteered.

I agree the marketplace should decide the price for the seat needed. The airlines overbook seats with little regard to the passengers. Hopefully this will be helpful in fixing the industry lacking in customer service.


Barney

The regs on overbooking don't apply. They apply to who gets through the gate. Once he boards he's past that.

There's a rule 21 in United's Contract of Carriage. It basically says they can kick you off the aircraft if you cause trouble, or if there a safety issue. It does not say they can kick you off to make room for anyone. So I think the Doctor was right to insist he did not have to go involuntarily.

Nonetheless, he was not right to defy the crew's orders. On the aircraft, the crew wields the Captain's authority, which is fairly absolute. Don't obey orders, any necessary force can be used. If was legal for the cops to throw him off, no fault to them unless extra and unnecessary force was applied.

The Doctors legal recourse was to get off the plane, and then sue.

That's not to say United did the right thing, from either a pragmatic or a moral point of view. And they are legally correct only on a particular point: once they had wrongly and illegally decided to evict him, and wrongly and stupidly called on cops to use force to do it, he was legally required to submit and leave, without prejudice to his rights for damages.

Pragmatically and morally, United should never even think of using force against a passenger who is behaving properly. They are now paying a very high price for this lesson, so I hope they learn from it.

Legal recourse? Wonder how much legal recourse a citizen has against a slew of highly paid corporate lawyers. Fracking...how much legal recourse do landowners have for poisoned water wells and cracked foundations from earthquakes? None....

Deregulation that began under the Carter administration and exploded in the 80's is at the heart of this story.

Point taken, certainly, and I was discussing only the legal ins-and-outs here, in the abstract, sort of as a chess problem.

What the Doctor did was an excellent illustration of both the power and the risks of 'civil disobedience.' His defiance will have tremendous effects, effects many orders of magnitude larger than the effects of 'going quietly and filing a lawsuit.' I expect he will be compensated at a many of orders of magnitude larger level.

The other side, of course, is he had to endure a violent and traumatic reaction.

Not much, in fact I doubt if one can find a lawyer to take this case if the passenger had voluntarily deplaned.

I do agree with DQ that if I am asked to deplane under the captain's orders, I will need to by law and that refusing to do so is an offense. This is probably why most people put up a scene when evicted. In this particular instance if the passenger quietly deplanes, he by doing so is tacitly accepting the airlines offer. So this is a Catch-22 for the passenger.

I would have insisted that the Captain needs to speak to me directly while I am seated in my assigned seat and would have asked specific questions as to the value of my seat and airlines other options.

And the Captain would have sent a security officer to deliver United's response. :)

Then I would have said out aloud 'chicken' and 'shit' under my breath as I walked out, very very slowly making sure that I went nowhere near the cockpit door for fear getting shot. :D

I would have passed out my business cards on my way out requesting people to email me their videos of the encounter. Now hopefully I would have an excellent potential witness list just in case. ;)

Well, Trump wants to "run the country like a business". This wasn't too different from his encouraging his idiot supporters to beat up dissenters at his campaign rallies. I imagine he's fully on board with United here.

I'm having a hard time with this issue. I've flown with this airline many times and have had great service and good experiences.

When husband and I got married in Chicago, the airline flew all our wedding presents back for no extra charge.
When we flew with two nine month old babies, they gave us a complimentary bottle of champaign for having such cute, well behaved babies.

I realize those were good PR gestures.... So what happened to their good customer service over the years?

I would like to think this incident was the result of poor decisions by individual employees rather than a reflection of the culture in that business..... But, I'm not so sure.

UA today has by far the worst reputation for customer service of any major airline, and this is well deserved, besides flying some airplanes that have seen better days. Just last month I flew United on two legs of my flight to India and I can attest to this.

I read somewhere yesterday that Southwest who flies twice as many passengers as UA has less than half as many complaints filed with FAA. The reason given was that Southwest empowers their staff and crew to resolve situations instead providing them with a manual with strict guidelines.

The Police are the ones who physically harmed the passenger. It could be argued the passenger was resisting and got what he desired. Not by me, but believe the Airport PD were told to remove him and overreacted with overwhelming force.

United not the mainline carrier I work for BTW if that matters, also failed in being compassionate. The staff my guess were under the ticking clock on getting the flight out on time. Passenger needing to connect in SDF and so on. Needed to get crew to SDF and had a plane waiting for the gate. Plus under staffed for the job at hand. All these issues are squarely ones United need to train and plan better for.

This lack of caring service is more the way of our society these days.Companies getting by with less workers and forgoing customer service as a goal more so rather the opposite. Going to self service or internet leaving out the human touch.



Barney

I'll NOT have what she's having!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0bb9638e2e2e4

Fliers, Do You Know Your Rights?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...le-span-region