I am a supporter of women. I think being a sexual predator to vulnerable women matters. It may seem trivial to you, but I certainly think this makes him far less of a sympathetic charachter.
If he was wearing a ‘Make America Great’ hat and on his way to a political rally, there is a large segment of the population that would not be as ready to blame people who never laid a hand on him, and would probably laugh and cheer at his removal.
Now the gentleman whom this thread is about handled things the right way. When confronted with the threat of security, he moved from his seat (though he knew what they were doing was improper), and dealt with it later.
Do not fall for false canards. Letting a past crime influence your interpretation of events is no different from letting a political slogan on a hat influence your interpretation of events. We have all seen the videos of him calmly refusing to leave the plane, being assaulted and dragged off, and coming back in all bloody and disoriented after suffering a concussion and other injuries.
There are many “what ifs” and only one of them is “what if he had left his seat”. It bears no more weight than “what if United had managed the situation better” or “what if the airport cops hadn’t been so violent”.
For me personally, I don’t think someone’s background would influence how I saw events unfold, but it would influence how upset I was about them…it’s just human nature. A elderly Asian man is a sympathetic person. A criminal sex offender, not so much.
But it’s interesting how people are mixing up two completely separate issues, and I think it is what someone had mentioned before, that many people have had ugly experiences or been mistreated by an airline, so they are quick to blame the airline for it all.
One part is losing your seat (airlines fault), the other is police abuse of someone in custody, of which there is no comparison. I read that only 1 in 100,000 passengers are bumped, with Southwest being the worst offender (think that’s right). Focusing upon this man being bumped as opposed to the fact that he was injured in police custody, seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/04/daily-chart-6 indicates that, from 2008 to 2016, United is the most frequent at both VDB and IDB out of the “major” airlines, although two regionals (SkyWest and ExpressJet) that subcontract with United and other “major” airlines do VDB and IDB even more. Smaller Frontier uses VDB much less and IDB slightly more than United. Delta uses VDB nearly as much as United, but IDB much less.
The highest rate of IDB in this chart (ExpressJet) was 20 out of 100,000 passengers (or 1 in 5,000).
Republic (the operating subcontractor of the flight in the Dao incident) is not shown or mentioned in that article.
Wasn’t his wife part of this too? And isn’t she a full time physician that needed to see patients on Monday too? I’m seeing this as a bit of the overlooked scenario that maybe the husband was making a stand for his wife as while as himself.
@cobrat – unfortunately the documents related to his previous difficulties with the medical licensing authorities are circulating online. In the unlikely event that this matter is ever litigated, and if the documents were admissible, there are personality evaluations that could very well have bearing on his case. Not saying it’s particularly relevant to our discussion here, but that’s the reality in a litigation scenario where United’s attorneys would be looking for anything to bolster their claim that his refusal to de-board was unreasonable.
Also the little case law I could find that addresses the question of whether or not flight crew have the right to remove a passenger from a plane, indicates that the standard applied is whether or not the decision to do so was “arbitrary or capricious.” So I guess the query would be was United’s business need to get 4 crew members on that flight and thus remove him rise to the level of an “arbitrary or capricious” decision.
At the end of the day it seems to me the issue of whether the removal was legal or not is irrelevant in this particular case-- it’s the excessive force that was used to effectuate the removal that is relevant. That is what Dau will be compensated for whether the removal was a valid one or not.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Referring back to post #3 on this thread:
Well, it happened, so I am closing the thread.