However, you knowingly agreed to the terms when you accepted employment with your airline.
The victim here never signed up to be an airline employee and thus, isn’t bound to the same conditions you and other airline employees travelling on company tickets are bound.
We have all heard of Rosa Parks but what about Irene Morgan? She not only refused to sit in the segregated section of an interstate bus, but she assaulted the sheriff who was called and tore up the arrest warrant. Her case went to the Supreme Court and she won (only the segregated seat charge, lol).
Not exactly a church mouse victim but one whose case led to a SCOTUS decision in 1946 regarding interstate transportation being desegregated.
“When I use a company paid ticket to get to/from work, all the airline that I’m flying with knows is that I’m a paying passenger. They do not know that I’m an airline employee, or anything about me, they treat me like everyone else. I am also a passenger who deserves the service that I (or my company) paid for. Being an employee of a different airline does not enable them to treat me differently, however, my company considers me to be a representative of that company at all times, even on my time off. If I do something crazy that gets me in the news (on my time off, out of uniform), I can still be disciplined. I am sure this is the same for many companies, you can’t do whatever you want, whenever you want, if it reflects poorly upon the company.”
Good for you but this has nothing to do with the passenger on United and how he was treated. He wasn’t representing any company and wasn’t flying on anyone else’s dime.
I guess you haven’t heard the saying, “Is this the hill you want to die on?” The hill I want to die on is to stand for something important, meaningful. And I want my family to have the same values. I don’t want them to die or get injured for absolutely nothing. I don’t want them to get hysterical because someone cut in front of them in line, or cut them off while they were driving. I don’t want them to go ballistic when TSA makes them be rescreened or searches their bags for no particular reason.
After 9/11, trying to “stand your ground” at an airport is crazy. There are still too many threats and too much fear (probably valid). You will be inordinately concerned about your right to this or that…how dare you tell me that you ran out of diet coke or I need to move to the back of the airplane for weight and balance, you authoritarian bully…until the next terrorist attack. It is not brave to “stand up” to flight crew or security at an airport because they are telling you to leave the airplane, it is downright stupid.
An even better site about Irene Morgan.
http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/morgan_v_virginia#start_entry
And doesn’t this sound familiar? Maybe not the “judge the race” part but investing the transportation employees with so much power over the paying customers.
Donna- I’m going to go way out on a limb here, but I’m betting the contract can be interpreted to give the airline the right to do pretty much whatever they want with respect to who gets to fly on the plane! Just taking a wild stab, since I, too, am a lawyer who has dealt with a lot of contracts.
"The responses here have been fascinating. I am a very polite person IRL but I never automatically think I have to do what authority figures tell me. And sometimes I just don’t. In most cases I think I get to make up my own mind. Usually I just go with the flow, but not always. In this United situation, where they chose at random after no volunteers, I could well imagine telling them I was very sorry but it was just too inconvenient for me to be bumped. And in those circumstances I really can’t imagine anyone laying hands on me. "
I’m pretty anti-authoritarian actually, sometimes to the detriment of my own good. I could see myself talking to the flight crew and explaining why I couldn’t be removed from the flight. I could also see myself attempting to explain to airport security. However, when 3 airport security dudes try to remove me physically, I wouldn’t just scream and resist. At some point, a rational person realizes you’ve lost the battle and then you leave and continue the war outside the airplane. The airline didn’t handle the process well in terms of enticing people to give up their seas, the security didn’t handle it well, but neither did the passenger. To make him into some hero evoking Rosa or Irene is a really far stretch. This man’s actions weren’t done in the name of human or racial rights. Let’s not demean real causes by pretending there is a comparison here.
That aside, United obviously has a corporate culture and management system that needs fixing. Not atypical of many large corporations, my guess is they don’t empower their employees to treat customers well and to be creative in resolving customer problems. I’m sure they have a standard procedure and crew were following a rigidly prescribed set of rules. The problem is that rigid structure doesn’t allow for unforeseen circumstances to find a creative way that could have addressed the problem with much, much better results.
busdriver, I guess you haven’t noticed that a lot of people are angry about what United did and what the police did. I guess you haven’t noticed that after two comically inept statements from United’s CEO, he finally said they need to to “fix what’s broken so this never happens again.”
If United gets smart, and starts offering sufficient compensation for people they need to relinquish their seats, instead of removing them involuntarily with inadequate compensation, then this dude will have done a good deed. Maybe it’s not the hill I want to die on, but I’m glad someone finally took a stand.
I will never, never endorse the idea that someone who refuses to truckle to illegitimate bullies is in the wrong just because the bullies have guns.
As expected from Calvin and Hobbes.
Do you two know what conditions he is bound to? Do you know that he isn’t considered to be representing whatever business that he works for? Do you know that he wasn’t “flying on anyone else’s dime”? Do you know the conditions of his employment? It is very common that people are considered to be representatives of their companies, this is not exclusive to airline employees.
I was merely making a point that resisting compliance with security and flight crew personnel could be something that gets someone fired or disciplined, as an employee. Not just airline employees.
How long before people have to disembark for “higher priority” passengers? Would you obey that, too?
Executive Platinum on AA gets “Guaranteed availability in the Main Cabin.” That could easily happen (and I’m sure it does, frequently, before people get on the plane.)
Doschicos: it is still not clear to me he actually physically resisted those security officers. Some witnesses have said they grabbed him and yanked him from the window seat across two empty seats, slamming his head/face into the armrest of one of those seats. No reports I have read from witnesses describe him physically resisting. He is a 68 or 69 year old man, according to reports.
Adding: it seems lately there have been a bunch of unpleasant incidents on planes which caused passengers to be removed. In most cases I read about, many on the plane supported the removal. They cheer and clap.
In this case, I can’t find anyone on that plane who wasn’t distressed by what happened to their fellow Passenger. I don’t see anyone supporting the airline or security. That doesn’t mean those people don’t exist, of course.
@MomofWildChild, as you know, lawyers can interpret contracts to mean almost anything, regardless of plain language! It’s a question of what interpretations are reasonable. And I happen to think it’s quite a stretch to interpret this contract, as written, to permit removal from the plane – as opposed to denial of boarding – under the stated circumstances. At most, the contract is ambiguous, and we all know how ambiguous contracts tend to be read. Certainly, the contract was badly drafted, and it wouldn’t surprise me if United changes the wording after all this dies down.
@MomofWildChild :“I’m going to go way out on a limb here, but I’m betting the contract can be interpreted to give the airline the right to do pretty much whatever they want with respect to who gets to fly on the plane! Just taking a wild stab, since I, too, am a lawyer who has dealt with a lot of contracts.”
A court might be willing to interpret the contract with respect to safety concerns in favor of the airlines interpretation. As little as “I got a weird feeling” could even suffice.
United’s problem here is that they have admitted there was no safety consideration. It was a random removal to make way for employees. Thus the contract will be interpreted like any other. Which I’m sure you know means it will be interpreted AGAINST the drafter. Thus the fact that it " can be interpreted" the way the airline wants doesn’t help it. If there’s another reasonable interpretation that favors the customer, the airline loses. That’s basic contract law.
And there are certainly reasonable interpretations of Uniteds Contract of Carriage that would forbid REMOVAL of a seated customer ( versus denial of boarding ). That’s because the CoC uses both the terms " denial of boarding" and " removal" from aircraft implying they are different things.
Of course I have noticed it. I also have noticed plenty of assumptions and blaming that is just purely uniformed speculation. I suspect a large part of it is that United has a reputation for treating people like crap. That is why I distinctly avoid them at all costs, sometimes paying hundreds of dollars out of my own pocket and taking inconvenient routing to fly on someone (anyone) else.
I haven’t read the CEO’s comments, so I can’t say anything critical about them. However, from the comments on here about them, I suspect that instead of giving the public a fuzzy, comforting, apologetic statement saying how his employees really screwed up and they will be disciplined, it sounds like he backed them up for following company policy. And as an employee, if I followed company policy, I would appreciate my boss backing me up…however, that’s not what the public wants to hear.
My guess is that Republic employees can’t just choose random amounts to offer people, they have a procedure to follow, and a limit (perhaps based upon the routing). I’m guessing they hit the limit. If they didn’t start offering until people got onboard, perhaps it was because they found out at the last minute that they needed to get flight crew on the airplane and didn’t know how many seats would be open until boarding was complete. Sometimes people check in, yet don’t make the flight (traffic, miss their connection, booked a bogus extra leg for a lower fare, etc). And when they were unable to get any takers, they ran the program that determined who was going to be removed. No doubt procedures state that when someone refuses to get off the airplane, they call security. The rest is on airport security, as far as removal.
So my guess is this all went pretty much by the book. It’s not like United Express employees have the authority to keep upping the ante, pulling wads of hundred dollar bills out of their personal wallets and offering them to passengers. However, often gate agents are rude and abrupt, and I suspect that if they had taken more time, been more persuasive and friendly, they would have gotten more takers. I doubt they had the authority to keep giving out money.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Oops, people are resorting to personal attacks. I’m going to close the thread for now. I may open it again when more information comes out, but for now everything that can be said has been.