The Friendly Skies...

[gblowfish]

Just kicked some poor guys ass for refusing to give up his seat!
You never see this on the United Airlines commercials....

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...ompting-outcry

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

No alternatives?

Uh, how about.....

Don't be an idiot and push people off AFTER they've boarded.

But if your airline idiotically does that, then realize that the normal rules of the compensation game no longer play. Keep upping that compensation until you find a taker. Again, the point of the volunteer system is that it precludes customers from being taken off against their will

The airline had plenty of time to get approval to re-ship their employees -- they had PLENTY of time to make the flight they were getting to. Unlike the customer, they have authorization to work with other airlines on an alternate booking arrangement.

If the doctor refused, they should have had a better bailout plan to find a next taker. So you would have been fine with this if the man was receiving critical life-saving medical surgery the next few days? Or if he was going home to see a dying parent? The airline seriously has no solution available for how to punt to another person who might be more willing?

Other than those things, yeah, **** the customer. Punt them after they paid.

The airline has done this 40K times. Those 40K in many cases probably lost hundreds of dollars in missed hotel stays, tickets, missed business deals, etc... and you want me to be apologetic to the airline who only perpetuated this problem because they purposely jack up the load rates to ensure their own profitability? **** that. This was a long time coming.

I didn't ask anyone to apologize to anyone.
I asked who was the ultimate authority when parties are at an impasse.
Your sole position to this point is 'not the cops.'

[Fish]

Originally Posted by thebrad84

I posted this on a Facebook thread about this deal yesterday. As a police officer, if I was sent to this incident and upon arrival, United officials informed me that they would like a paying customer "voluntarily" removed from the plane due to them over-booking it, I would tell them to go pound sand. I'm not going to do their dirty work and be their "muscle" to forcibly remove an other-wise peaceful, paying customer due to their error. That's a civil matter that I'm not going to get involved in. I'll standby and make sure it remains peaceful on the plane, but I'm not going to use force on a man or woman who simply is refusing to leave the plane due to their piss-poor planning.

FYi.... he was technically a Chicago Aviation Department security officer. Not a municipal police officer...

[redfriday]

Instead of removing Assad with military force, perhaps we should consider sending United Airlines and a couple of T.S.A. goons to Syria to grope and extract him.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

I didn't ask anyone to apologize to anyone.
I asked who was the ultimate authority when parties are at an impasse.
Your sole position to this point is 'not the cops.'

The ultimate authority is the airline, as they own the plane. But that doesn't mean they have the right, in my view, to remove a paid passenger for no other reason than "they want to". The man wasn't trespassing. He had paid for his ticket and had every right to be ON THAT PLANE UNTIL IT ARRIVED AT ITS DESTINATION, barring some safety, mechanical or other reasonable inability of the plane to make that trip.

[thebrad84]

Originally Posted by Fish

FYi.... he was technically a Chicago Aviation Department security officer. Not a municipal police officer...

Fair enough. The story I read yesterday said that "police were called and physically removed the passenger." After watching the video, I assumed they might just be security guards due to their less-than-professional uniforms, but tough to tell these days with some agencies uniform choices.

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

The ultimate authority is the airline, as they own the plane. But that doesn't mean they have the right, in my view, to remove a paid passenger for no other reason than "they want to". The man wasn't trespassing. He had paid for his ticket and had every right to be ON THAT PLANE UNTIL IT ARRIVED AT ITS DESTINATION, barring some safety, mechanical or other reasonable inability of the plane to make that trip.

What makes it worse in my eyes is that it was for ****ing employees. Find another flight for your employees since you already sold that flight out.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

I didn't ask anyone to apologize to anyone.
I asked who was the ultimate authority when parties are at an impasse.
You're sole position to this point is 'not the cops.'

Both of the parties consulted the authorities. The man called his lawyer, and United called security. That is one-sided and that is bullying when one side can provide muscle and the other can't. It would be one thing if they were responding to a disruption. They were abusing their power to forcibly remove a passenger against his will.

United should have had built-in the authority to handle situations like this. The impasse wasn't just with this man. It was with the entire flight. If nobody agreed to the incentives, it's because the incentives weren't high enough. And given that the mistake was based on a series of their own errors and not through some unforeseen circumstances, they should have built the incentive much higher than usual.

They ****ed up, they threw a totally unreasonable incentive at the passengers, and then in order to save a few hundred bucks they hired muscle to forcibly remove the passenger. There is absolutely positively no defending that practice.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

The ultimate authority is the airline, as they own the plane. But that doesn't mean they have the right, in my view, to remove a paid passenger for no other reason than "they want to". The man wasn't trespassing. He had paid for his ticket and had every right to be ON THAT PLANE UNTIL IT ARRIVED AT ITS DESTINATION, barring some safety, mechanical or other reasonable inability of the plane to make that trip.

Whether or not the 'have the right' is inherent in 'ultimate authority as owner'

Whether they should, or how they should suffer after are separate matters.

And certainly separate is the recognition of the authority of police personnel once employed.

[Amnorix]

Different hypothetical -- Bill Gates shows up at Gate 12 late on a Friday night. Day before Christmas, in fact. He had a sudden inspiration -- he REALLY wants to see the Christmas day fireworks in Paris. It's the last flight out.

He goes up to the boarding gate -- "hey, I'm Bill Gates and here's my black Amex card. I will pay you -- no lie -- TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS to take this plane and fly it to Paris. It's a 747 so it can handle the distance no problem."

Gate calls up the chain. Eventually it reaches the CEO -- who is also a personal friend of Bill Gates, and he says says "twenty-five million is more than everyone on this flight paid, by a factor of like 20. Give the man the plane and take it to Paris. Oh, and tell him let's do lunch sometime, it's been too long."

The 500 people -- mostly families -- on the plane flying to Disney World (originally scheduled destination was Orlando) are told to remove themselves. "$1,000 vouchers or a punch in the face by the cops, your choice." Oh, and they'll fly all these people to Disney Christmas night. Good luck figuring out what to do Christmas Day.

You're cool with that? Because the airline is the "ultimate authority"?

[Donger]

I read that this technically wasn't a United flight. It was a United Express flight operated by Republic Airlines.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Different hypothetical -- Bill Gates shows up at Gate 12 late on a Friday night. Day before Christmas, in fact. He had a sudden inspiration -- he REALLY wants to see the Christmas day fireworks in Paris. It's the last flight out.

He goes up to the boarding gate -- "hey, I'm Bill Gates and here's my black Amex card. I will pay you -- no lie -- TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS to take this plane and fly it to Paris. It's a 747 so it can handle the distance no problem."

Gate calls up the chain. Eventually it reaches the CEO -- who is also a personal friend of Bill Gates, and he says says "twenty-five million is more than everyone on this flight paid, by a factor of like 20. Give the man the plane and take it to Paris. Oh, and tell him let's do lunch sometime, it's been too long."

The 500 people -- mostly families -- on the plane flying to Disney World (originally scheduled destination was Orlando) are told to remove themselves. "$1,000 vouchers or a punch in the face by the cops, your choice." Oh, and they'll fly all these people to Disney Christmas night. Good luck figuring out what to do Christmas Day.

You're cool with that? Because the airline is the "ultimate authority"?

Might want to crack your old contracts nutshell and review the limits on demands for specific performance.

[Mephistopheles Janx]

Originally Posted by Donger

I read that this technically wasn't a United flight. It was a United Express flight operated by Republic Airlines.

In the same way that American Eagle isn't really an American Airlines flight.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by Donger

I read that this technically wasn't a United flight. It was a United Express flight operated by Republic Airlines.

Not to mention I don't know that its United's fault the security guys decided to get physical, they don't work for United.

[Prison Bitch]

Doctor dragged off United flight was felon who traded prescription drugs for secret gay sex with his patient and took them himself - and he needed anger management, was 'not forthright' and had control issues, psychiatrist found



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...t-gay-sex.html

[Mephistopheles Janx]

Originally Posted by Prison Bitch

Doctor dragged off United flight was felon who traded prescription drugs for secret gay sex with his patient and took them himself - and he needed anger management, was 'not forthright' and had control issues, psychiatrist found



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...t-gay-sex.html

So he deserved this. It was merely him getting what he had coming to him.