The first thing United should do is fire their communications firm. When one of your passengers gets a brain injury as a result of your orders, your CEO should not refer to it as “re-accommodation.” Nor should he blather on about how upset people at United are. We don’t care how upset they are. We care about how they’re going to fix this and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
CF, scalps can bleed - from a small scratch, as I have personally experienced. I would not jump to the conclusion that blood was indicator of a brain injury.
I didn’t see the video, however, do we know that he actually got a brain injury or is this just one of those internet stories?
The guy got a brain injury?
There’s video of him somehow back on the plane, and acting disoriented.
Business Insider reports he was taken off the plane for the second time on a stretcher and taken to the hospital. The airline reports he fell and hit his head on an armrest when airport security attempted to remove him. Some passengers report he was knocked out. Also, he is saying he’s being targeted for being Chinese.
I am interested in how this unfolds.
It doesn’t look to me like he just fell. It looks rough. His age is reported as 68.
Of course, I don’t know what is true.
Or maybe the guy has some issues and it isn’t brain injury/disorientation. Seriously, who puts up a fight when 3 airport security officers ask you to get off the plane and who lets themselves be literally dragged off? That isn’t a rational response.
Maybe he was drunk. That would explain a lot of this.
doschicos: other passengers are saying he was unconscious as he was dragged off, as a result of hitting his head.
Adding: if I become unconscious on a plane, I really hope I’m not dragged off like that.
Also, a high school group was so distressed, they left the plane. Chaperone said “they don’t need to see this”
It’s unimaginable to me, too, but this is what I’m reading.
“The airline reports he fell and hit his head on an armrest.” They are lying. Do they realize there’s video? And witnesses? He did not “fall.” He was dragged.
And brain injuries can happen even without blood and with very little seeming force. I’ve seen it happen in person.
United instructed that this man who bought a ticket and was otherwise not causing a problem to be physically removed from the airplane because they wanted his seat since they planned poorly. Their actions led to the preventable incident. That people are excusing them and blaming the man is amazing.
He bought his ticket. He sat in the seat he paid for. And then they told him he couldn’t have that seat and had to leave the plane because they were giving the seat to someone else who hadn’t paid for it. And somehow he is wrong for refusing to just walk away? Outside of transportation, is there another context that would possibly let be acceptable?
Oh, you are renting this house and just finished moving your belongings in 30 seconds ago? Too bad, get out and take your stuff because I’m letting my aunt live there! Don’t like it? Too bad for you! If you don’t leave now I’ll have you violently removed.
Since we are on a college search forum here’s an example: you get accepted to college, and the first day of class someone comes in and says we accepted too many students so you have to leave. Too bad that you already moved in and made life plans. The dean’s daughter needs to spot and we are overcrowded so you are out. Don’t like it? Too bad. Security will be dragging you out and kicking you off the property in 30 seconds.
Before I got sick and could easily sit in the airport for another 12 hours or so, I volunteered more than once to be the off person. I rarely flew somewhere that I needed to be by X time so it wasn’t a big inconvenience and I’d rather be bumped than someone with a family or a business person etc.
That said, I will not book anymore unless I am able to pick out my specific seat. That rules out airlines like United but that is perfectly fine with me.
This whole thing just seems weird and unnecessary. Either way, a man was essentially beaten regardless of what led up to it.
And the United CEO’s statement? Horrible. Are there really no PR people around?
CF: I know, right? We can see at least a portion of what happened, and now from different angles. I see lots of phones in those shots. It isn’t clear to me he’s unconscious since he seems to be holding on to his phone. So far, I haven’t read anything from passengers suggesting he had been drinking. Or was unruly. Folks seem a bit traumatized by the experience.
“He bought his ticket. He sat in the seat he paid for. And then they told him he couldn’t have that seat and had to leave the plane because they were giving the seat to someone else who hadn’t paid for it. And somehow he is wrong for refusing to just walk away? Outside of transportation, is there another context that would possibly let be acceptable?”
Without a doubt this situation could have been handled better so it wouldn’t have devolved into this, but I’m sure in the fine print there is something giving the airline the right to remove a passenger from the flight.
The guy had a legitimate gripe however his response was irrational as well. It’s hard to tell from the video if he fell or not, if he was unconscious or not. Neither party handled the situation well and the guy should have left without struggling with the 3 security guys and lodged a formal complaint/contacted a lawyer, whatever at that point.
Can anyone point me to a statute that allows an airline to forcibly eject a law-abiding passenger from their plane? I’ve seen statutes that say airlines can involuntarily deny boarding to people in certain circumstances, but this guy was not denied boarding. He had a ticket for the flight and he was on the plane.
This sort of stuff happens, just the other day I ordered a nice lunch, but before I could take the first bite, the waiter grabbed my plate, gave it to an off-duty assistant manager to eat, and had two bouncers throw me out.
I can’t tell what happened. If he just refused to leave, and was grabbed in such a way he was injured and dragged off either unconscious or very disoriented - then there really was no struggle on his part against security. Again, he is not a young man.
CF, some explanation here …
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-united-drags-passenger-0411-biz-20170410-story.html
"Hobart said United tries to come up with a reasonable compensation offer, but “there comes a point where you’re not going to get volunteers.”
"At that point, United’s contract of carriage says the airline can select passengers to bump to a later flight, based on a priority system that can take into account how much passengers paid, how often they fly, whether missing that flight could affect a connecting flight and how early they checked in. People with disabilities and unaccompanied minors are generally last to be bumped.
Usually, passengers — however angry — comply with the airline’s orders. But even if it’s an unusual situation, it raises questions about what rights passengers have when being removed from a flight against their will, Harteveldt said."
These two articles contain some language on the airlines’ and passengers’ rights or lack thereof.
The second link also contains a video from a closer angle than the original article/video linked.
Still wondering how the heck he got back on the plane to run down the aisle…
The airline industry these days is much like the auto industry before they got shaken up by imports, they know passengers basically have no choice in flying these days, that one airline isn’t going to be particularly better than any other so if you get treated like crap, who cares? The only reason they even offer passengers compensation for getting bumped is that there are laws governing that, the same way that now if you get stuck on a plane on a runway for more than X hours, they have to compensate you (I wonder how long those rules are going to last, last I heard the airline industry has been pressuring congress to get rid of those rules).
As far as the need to overbook, there are ways to handle that better than what they did here.Colleges do the same thing airlines do ie they admit more kids then they have slots for, in part because they know their yield rate of kids admitted to accepting, some kids on the overbook list are put on waitlist, others are accepted and if they have to, they will make room. Obviously on a plane you can’t do that, but what happened here sounds like their system is crap, if they grossly overbooked. Among other things, people are right, they could have offered more compensation to voluntarily deplane, and the other thing is how about not doing the pig in a poke, and have standby seats at a discount that if they have open seats, they have people willing to take it, not charging people full fare then inconveniencing them by bumping them.
Flying these days reminds me of the experiments they used to do on the consequences of when people are crowded and rushed along, experiements with other mamal species show just how these kind of environments cause problems. The airlines don’t care, I was reading something the other day that Delta has spent some ridiculous amount of money trying to convince passengers they care (those tv ads with the voice of Donald Sutherland), and in the end Delta is still very poorly rated.