United Airlines Demonstrates its Contempt for Customers

Parent Cafe
221

Are you a lawyer? I am not a lawyer so I will not presume to say what a court will say. All I can say is that my research into this tells me that “boarding” does not end until the plane door closes. So even if you are on the plane in your seat with a valid boarding pass, you can still be IDB.

While you might wish it to be so that boarding ends when you sit down, and that may even make sense from a common sense point of view, I wouldn’t assume that that is the legal definition.

Rule 16B(2) has to do with service animals, I don’t see how that is relevant.

222

" Emilybee - You are quite the master of distorting what people post! No one is “giving United a pass”. However, social media elevated this passenger’s status to that of a brain surgeon rushing to save a life. In fact, he had limited practice privileges at a clinic. That’s not an excuse for security personnel manhandling a passenger, but let’s get the facts right!"

I didn’t distort your post and you did not mention in your post that regardless it doesn’t matter. Then you also made the leap to assuming, without any proof whatsoever, that you doubted he has a dying patient to attend to.

The passenger’s background has zero to do with any of this and your post was victim shaming.

223

United IDB’ed about 1 passenger in 10,000 last year. I will gladly accept a 1/10000 price increase so that it no longer happens. You would think with the ill will and bad PR that IDBs cause, they would work harder to avoid them.

That may have been true 20-30 years ago, when you could find yourself on flights with only 10% of the seats filled, and regulation forced airlines to serve non-profitable routes.

This is no longer the case. Industry consolidation, dynamic pricing, the fee model, etc, have made airlines very profitable. Other than the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2008 recession, the airline industry has largely been profitable for the last 20 years or so.

United made $2.3 billion in profit last year.

224

Whether this was deliberate overbooking or they had a situation where they needed to get a flight crew someplace else doesn’t matter, what matters is the way they handled this. Yes, situations do come up, like bad weather, unexpected circumstances, that is true of any business or even life situation, and people and instututions face this every day. The problem with the United story is that they had a need to bump passengers (and I dont doubt this was to get a flight crew to where they needed to be, rather than 4 airline personnel flying free to where they wanted to go) but they basically forgot about the passengers in this story, people trying to get home, get somewhere, and instead of looking at it from a customer perspective, they looked at it from their own need only and said “well, we offered these #&&**$ people 800 bucks, wouldn’t take it, got no choice but to ‘volunteer’ them to get off”.

Did they explain why they needed volunteers? Did they think of offering let’s say 800 bucks, a hotel room for the night and a ticket on the first plane out in the morning? Or offer more money? No, they made their offer, no one wanted it, and at that point 4 passengers became ‘excess baggage’ so to speak in the face of their need. If they absolutely needed those seats, why didn’t they make the passengers a sweetheart deal when the initial offer wasn’t taken? Probably because even though they were the ones inconveniencing the passengers, they figured they had “dieu et mon droite” to tell them to leave, probably to save the airline money no doubt.

And the reason this is resounding with people is pretty obvious, despite all their slick PR campaigns with smiling personnel and so forth (surprised they haven’t come back with "fly the friendly skies’), basically the airlines treat their passengers like cattle being shipped, like all we are is the dollar amount we paid to fly, and it shows every time you fly. Like I said, in this case the airline acted like the people on the airplane were inconveniencing them by not allowing them to bump them then the other way around, and their actions pretty much confirmed that.

As far as the idea that the guy resisted and got what he deserved, that is as someone else pointed out the classic response to abuse by cops the world over, that if they got beaten up, must have deserved it. On top of that airport security is not exactly the NYPD or other major city police force level of training and for all we know the airline told the security people the guy was being removed for causing problems. The guy likely has a massive lawsuit both against the airline and the security service, and I suspect you will see this one settled out of court quickly and quietly because United knows they have a major problem with this one, as much as they don’t care about the public (to quote Commodore Vanderbilt, the owner of the old New York Central Railroad “The Public be Damned”), they have to pretend they care.

225

emilybee- I said that social media ran with the “doctor” fact and completely distorted his situation. The actual facts are different. Take it as you will, but I’m trained to be objective and the craziness of the interpretations without the facts, which you have mastered, is not helpful.

226

Harvest Moon, taken from my earlier comment, this was my thought on the argument that he was properly ejected for “interfering” with the flight crew. I think it’s applicable whether you’re analyzing the situation under the Contract of Carriage or under federal law:

I’ve seen people argue that United was justified in removing this man pursuant to Rule 21H(2) of the contract, which provides for removal from the plane of “Passengers who fail to comply with or interfere with the duties of the members of the flight crew, federal regulations, or security directives.”

But I see that as essentially a circular argument, since it assumes that the orders he failed to comply with were valid in the first place. If they weren’t justified in the first place under the contract [or under applicable law] in demanding that he leave the plane — in other words, if their underlying reason for requiring him to leave was improper — then they can’t manufacture a valid reason for removing him, and turn an improper reason into a proper one, simply by giving him an improper instruction and ejecting him for refusing to obey it! Here’s an analogy: Obviously, as a common carrier and under applicable law (as well as the Contract of Carriage itself), United would not have had the right to forcibly remove this man from the plane on grounds of his race, i.e., that he was Asian. Directing him to get off the plane because of his race and then having him forcibly dragged off for refusing to do so would clearly not provide legal justification for his removal on the alleged ground of refusing to obey the crew’s directives, or interfering with the crew. I believe that this situation is equivalent.

227

MomofWildChild - it matters not one whit if this guy was a homeless dude, or a magician or a musician or a brain surgeon. You say "The guy was an idiot for trying to stay on the flight when he was told to leave it."What matters is that he was treated abysmally, and United FAILED in every way possible. This is classic blaming the victim and we see it in so many situations. I am proud that he refused an unreasonable request and saddened that anyone believes that we should lose our rights just because we are sitting in a tincan on the tarmac waiting to fly.

228

Anomander, I think you’re right, especially given the definition in Rule 1 of the Contract of Carriage:

The term “Oversold Flight” means “a flight where there are more Passengers holding valid confirmed Tickets that check-in for the flight within the prescribed check-in time than there are available seats.”

Does the situation of United’s deciding after the fact – long after the “prescribed check-in time” had expired – that it had to accommodate its own employees so they could make another flight come within this definition? I have my doubts.

229

@notrichenough "Are you a lawyer? "

Yes. 30 plus years of practice in commercial contract litigation ( I also do employment law and pronbono FIrst Amendment cases)

16(b) is relevant because it uses the term " removal" not denial of boarding. Using these 2 different different terms may be interpreted by a court to mean two different things. And if there’s an ambiguity courts under legal rules of consruction have to interpret the term against the drafter ( that’s the airline)

230

Other than the shooting, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

I used to fly a great deal about 15 years ago, and I still remember one of the flight announcements, stated in a completely deadpan manner:

231

^ Well, if your interpretation is correct his chances of prevailing in a lawsuit are even better.

United’s Contract of Carriage does not specify what “boarding” actually means, as far as i can tell.

232

I wonder what they would have done if the refusing passenger was an obviously pregnant woman?

Anyway…it appears that the flight really wasn’t over-booked. It appears that United just wanted to add in some employees and then wanted to boot paying customers. United made THEIR problem into passenger problems.

U offered $800 in vouchers. Not sure if that was $200 each?? Or $800 each. I’m betting the former. $200 isn’t enough to move many folks. They should have ratcheted up the vouchers. Surely at $1k each there would have been volunteers.

I suspect that this will cost United much more than big vouchers in negative PR and perhaps a lawsuit by the injured passenger.

233

This video has already gone viral in China and have been viewed 200 million times on Weibo (Chinese Twitter). UAL sees China as a large part of its growth market. After this PR disaster, they will be lucky to have any profitable routes to China.

234

Failure to comply with th flight crew direction is grounds for removal/arrest. Airport security might have a problem but not United.

235

Not if the request is unreasonable - and in this case, it was. He was sitting quietly in his seat.

236

Funny, but airline profits are now in the 10’s of billions per year.

They’ve gotten that way by treating passengers as cattle who value is only what they paid for a ticket, and with sub-economy fares becoming all the rage, it’s only going to get worse. I have no problem with a few rules put in place to preserve passengers’ rights and dignity, even if it means shaving off a few pennies in profit.

There are only 4 large airlines left in the US. They have virtual monopolies in some cites. It’s time to reign them in a bit IMO.

237

According to the News, United offered an $800 voucher for someone to voluntarily get off the plane.

I wonder what the manager was thinking who decided that instead of increasing the amount they offered, it would be better to drag a paying customer off in front of all those cameras.

238

Did you see the Chinese press is focusing on the racial discrimination issue? United is big in China, or at least it used to be.

There needs to be a big mea culpa from United to stop the damage being done.

239

The saddest thing I heard was my car radio was set to a talk radio station (that happens to be the radio station that broadcasts mets games), and this women got on the air, incensed, and said that the man refused to submit to legitimate authority, that our society is based on obediance to authority (her exact words, not mine), and deserved what he got, and I wondered if that woman understood why her very words were troublesome, this idea that in this case the airline had the right to bump people off the plane to accomodate themselves, that as Donna put it that authority has a tag that should always be implied, legitimate authority. Getting security to remove a passenger because they are drunk or belligerent or pose a threat is legitimate authority, getting security to remove a passenger because he refused to be bumped from the flight to accomodate their interests, is not, it was the airline using power granted them, the right to remove passengers causing problems and use police/security to do it, to achieve an end they had other alternatives, like offering more money, they basically exceeded their authority, Donna is right about that, as a common carrier they are a public conveyance and don’t have absolute power to inconvenience passengers to suit their own needs and certainly don’t have the right to force people off the plane who have done nothing wrong other than refuse to accede to their demand to deplane. You can only hope the Chairman of United, his family, and the security people who did this have it happen to themselves or their families, then maybe they will understand how arrogant and wrongly they acted.

240

<<<
Failure to comply with th flight crew direction is grounds for removal/arrest. Airport security might have a problem but not United.


[QUOTE=""]

[/QUOTE]

I realize that, but in the spirit of the law, that shouldn’t mean that an airline can demand someone be removed for any ole reason.

a jerky flight crew could then demand a perfectly-behaving passenger be removed for sexist, racist, or whatever reasons…in this case, in the self-interest of UA.

I can’t imagine a court being too sympathetic to UA in this bloody case since UA really just wanted to add in some non-paying passengers and booted paying ones. UA didn’t try hard enough to get volunteers. The use of the algorithm should not be used employed until a certain max voucher amount is tried…and that should be at least $1k per seat…maybe more.