United can’t seem to catch a break.
Another instance of the abysmal customer service and institutional/managerial culture at United:
http://fortune.com/2017/04/15/united-airlines-segway-disability/
And now Congress is getting involved:
While many of us would have stood our ground, most of us would have yielded once law enforcement showed up and handled it rather than risk the violent beating that ensued. While most wouldn’t have guessed there would be violence, I think most would guess consequences of defying a person charged with removing a passenger would not be pleasant.
I do feel for the passenger, of course. I hope these LEOs are fired and prosecuted as appropriate for their grossly excessive force.
They may also end up bankrupted according to an attorney friend as their actions violated the procedures of the Chicago Aviation Police by that agency’s own admission, they may also lose professional immunity.
Also, Chicago city council questions whether Chicago Aviation Police even had the authority to act in forcing already boarded passengers to be involuntarily bumped off:
Color of authority does not shield people who use authority to batter and injure others–nor should it. If the officers had a history of violence or they were improperly screened, trained, hired and supervised, there would be liability for whomever employed them, as I’m sure Dr Dao’s attorney will explore and pursue.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Two threads about the United incident have been closed. This thread will not be allowed to drift into that topic. I won’t take the time to delete any posts, but any more on the subject and this thread will be closed, too.
But can Norwegian Airlines last very long with extremely low fares? Doesn’t seem like they have any particular advantage over any other non-US airline flying international routes to/from the US (since they cannot fly domestic US routes).
There was a short lived cruise line NCL America (subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Lines) that used US-flagged ships and US crews so that they could cruise around Hawaii without making a non-US stop somewhere like Kiribati. But it did not last that long. (Notice that almost all cruises have stops in more than one country?)
While most of these failed (you can add National, North American, ATA, Aloha, Trump, and some others), ValueJet survived (renaming itself to AirTran, and recently being acquired by Southwest), and Virgin America survived (and is being acquired by Alaska).
No doubt many of those fares are just to get people interested, and there are limited seats. However, if fuel prices stay low, when you pay your employees far less than the competition, give them minimal benefits and no 401K match, make them pay for most of their health insurance and work them more than other carriers, your costs are a lot lower.
How does the CEO/senior management compensation structure compared with pilots/staff ratio compare with the remaining major US Airline corporations?
Are they similar or is the ratio better/worse?
And how to address the widespread negative customer perception of the Airline Industry/US Airlines?
Especially considering most of the online reviews and my own experiences has tended to be that overseas carriers tend to be far better in the customer service department even before 9/11 given the same/lower ticket price for comparable/better class of seating.
Norwegian Airlines hires some flight attendants from Thailand. However, plenty of other airlines fly to the US which are based in countries with generally lower pay levels than the US, such as Mexico, China, India, Colombia, Panama, Fiji, Philippines, Turkey, Jamaica, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Chile, Pakistan, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Ukraine, Uzbekistan. Norwegian Airlines does not seem to be anything special in this respect.
Regarding health insurance, both Norway and Thailand have universal health insurance, the lack of which in the US, along with the highest-in-the-world cost of health care in the US, put US employers in general at a competitive disadvantage because their US employees have a high added cost of employer provided health insurance that employees in many other countries do not have.
I wonder about the points raised by busdriver about Norwegian airlines. Norway isn’t part of the EU but surely they have a typically strong Scandinavian wage. Or do they? I wonder if the difference is that maybe the airline isn’t as top heavy as ours are, with so much going to top executives rather than crew.
While executive compensation is everyone’s favorite target for criticism, the vast majority of the time it is a rounding error for Fortune 500 companies.
The wages there may be decent compared to other jobs in Norway, but in no way compare to the salaries of major airline crews in the US, who are all unionized. They force people to accept training contracts for three years (which means you pay them major bucks if you quit), they are a “Flag of Convenience” carrier. Some of their employees make so little they are encouraged to apply for Medicaid, and since there are people out there still looking for jobs, they can get away with it. Perhaps they look good compared to the average wages in the US or Norway, but compared to industry standard over here, the pay and work rules are very poor.
The successful shedding of private unions in the US, in my opinion, has been a huge factor in the stagnation of American workers wages and benefits.
However, most fortune 500 companies don’t have the mediocre/poor performance levels regarding earnings and customer service as the major US airlines in the last 15-20+ years.
Also, I wonder about the top-heaviness of their senior management in relation to pilots/staff. Top heavy organizations tend to be very inefficient and highly resistant to any institutional reforms.
There are structural reasons why the airline industry, over the long term, is destined towards low profitability. The right way to rate management is relative to others in the same industry, not across industries.