Hey. I heard you booked this flight legally. GET OFF THE F***ING PLANE!!!!

[Parasondox]

Another day and another fucked up story about lack of common sense and stupidity and lack of taking responsibility for your actions from a large and well known company continues. This time it's United Airlines. Roll it Phil.


Forgive me. I haven't flown in seven years and I know 9/11 changed air travel forever but double seriously? An airline overbooked a flight, in other words "fucked up like a mother fucker", tried to get passengers to give up their seat so that United staff can travel on it instead and then when a customer refuses... you beat them bloody? I know a lot of us love to go back to the good old days of rough handling but wow did United Airlines fuck up big time.

Annnnnywho thoughts? What do you think? Will you ever travel United after this? Will Ryanair lose the top spot for Worse Airline Ever? Will Pterodactyls rule the sky's once more? Will the Hindenburg make a come back?

And once again, as always, the YouTube comment section are an unfunny laughable joke. Idiocy.

 

[Queen Michael]

Best part is, the guy was a doctor who needed to get back to his patients so he could help them.

This is some supervillain-style evil.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

Joke answer: I guess they got tired of breaking [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo] guitars [http://sentium.com/a-public-relations-disaster-how-saving-1200-cost-united-airlines-10772839-negative-views-on-youtube/] and decided to move on to something bigger...

Real answer: Wow, United fucked up big time. If they managed to catch the overbooking of the flight at the gate and managed to resolve it there (Which my limited understanding of how overbooking works tells me is what normally happens), then fine. Its a shitty practice, but at least the passengers get compensated for the airline fucking around with them. But to have it happen on the plane with everyone already seated? That's United's issue and that shouldn't involve going up to a passenger and telling them "We made a mistake and you get to suffer the consequences". That they also had to turn to violence to get them out just makes it worse.

Hopefully there will be some good to come of this, but seeing the weak response from United on Twitter, I'm not going to hold my breath.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

The "good" result from this is going to be United paying far more than it would have cost to charter a plane for their four employees.

 

[Elijin]

I've seen people say that United will probably get sued, but why?

The situation is laughable, terrible planning and all BUT...
Its private property, they asked him to leave, he refused, police were involved. Police then used excessive force. I can see the police maybe being sued, but not United. Its not flight attendants man handling this guy off the plane.

 

[Redryhno]

I've seen people say that United will probably get sued, but why?

The situation is laughable, terrible planning and all BUT...
Its private property, they asked him to leave, he refused, police were involved. Police then used excessive force. I can see the police maybe being sued, but not United. Its not flight attendants man handling this guy off the plane.

Except it's not the police per say, it's the airport's security that is contracted by United and any other plane company that buys their way for the airport. I may be fucking up concepts here, but my Aviation merit badge was like 12 years ago.

He was asked to leave because they fucked up and decided that a paying customer was worth less than an employee(not going to fully judge them here, but it's still something to be considered) and instead of continually upping the refund(which watching the PhillyD video shows that they should've offered him a minimum of 1300, but they stopped at 1200 before they told him to leave) they decided to get forceful. And it led to this incident.

It's one thing if the plane hadn't been boarded and they realized they fucked up and told him he couldn't get on, it's another when people are in their seats, luggage has been loaded, and all that's really left is to get the plane started down the runway.

Basically, it happened on their plane, because of their overbooking fuck-up, because of their employees, on their orders, and it led to a guy getting hurt and thrown off a flight he'd already paid for and invalidated the ticket by getting on the plane to begin with. People have sued and won for much less. Him being a doctor with patients just makes United look even more maliciously moronic by comparison.

 

[Parasondox]

I've seen people say that United will probably get sued, but why?

The situation is laughable, terrible planning and all BUT...
Its private property, they asked him to leave, he refused, police were involved. Police then used excessive force. I can see the police maybe being sued, but not United. Its not flight attendants man handling this guy off the plane.

United created the situation in the first place. The passenger who paid his ticket just like everyone else SHOULD NOT be punished by the airlines mistake. Both he police AND United should be sued.

 

[Catnip1024]

Deliberately overbooking things is a fucked up business practice in general, statistics or no.

Say what you like about Ryanair (the food is lousy, the planes are rickety, and the pilots have the gentle touch of a Rhino), but at least I've not seen that shit happen.

Let's be honest, it would have been much easier to incentivise people - I'm pretty sure you could convince at least someone on the plane to take the next one if you gave them compensation / prizes / a night in a five star hotel. You catch more flies with honey than with police truncheons.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Airlines routinely overbook flights because there are nearly aways a handful of no-shows, and the airline wants to minimise empty seats on a flight. The alternative would be raising the price of tickets.

Not that I'm defending United here; they handled the situation atrociously. Standard practice for airline overbooking is to offer passengers a 4x refund on their ticket price to give up their seat. Actually filling the plane is rare enough that this still pays off in the end. But United apparently wouldn't pony up enough cash [http://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/4/10/15244100/united-overbooking-bumping-scandal], and when no-one took them up on the refund offer, they just grabbed people and hauled them off the plane.

Astonishingly poor handling on their part.

 

[Zontar]

Astonishingly poor handling on their part.

That's an understatement, reading that one could mistake this as being legal. Just kicking them off alone even with the offer of compensation is a lost civil case, and that's just for those who comply with the order to get off. What happened to that man is on top of that a case of assault and potentially aggravated assault.

This isn't just a case of United being out of quite a bit of money, there's a very real potential for prison time for the United staff and air port security involved.

 

[MHR]

What a shit way to do that. If they offered up 1200 dollars to everyone on the plane and nobody took it, I find that hard to believe, but I guess it's possible.

But to draw a name from a hat and have that decide who you drag off a plane kicking and screaming seems like SOMEBODY fucked up here.

 

[Derekloffin]

There is no doubt this is plenty F'ed up, and apparently contrary to United's policy too as they should never have allowed boarding in the first place. I have no doubt this will have legal action result and probably a hefty settlement.

 

[Elijin]

I've seen people say that United will probably get sued, but why?

The situation is laughable, terrible planning and all BUT...
Its private property, they asked him to leave, he refused, police were involved. Police then used excessive force. I can see the police maybe being sued, but not United. Its not flight attendants man handling this guy off the plane.

Except it's not the police per say, it's the airport's security that is contracted by United and any other plane company that buys their way for the airport. I may be fucking up concepts here, but my Aviation merit badge was like 12 years ago.

He was asked to leave because they fucked up and decided that a paying customer was worth less than an employee(not going to fully judge them here, but it's still something to be considered) and instead of continually upping the refund(which watching the PhillyD video shows that they should've offered him a minimum of 1300, but they stopped at 1200 before they told him to leave) they decided to get forceful. And it led to this incident.

It's one thing if the plane hadn't been boarded and they realized they fucked up and told him he couldn't get on, it's another when people are in their seats, luggage has been loaded, and all that's really left is to get the plane started down the runway.

Basically, it happened on their plane, because of their overbooking fuck-up, because of their employees, on their orders, and it led to a guy getting hurt and thrown off a flight he'd already paid for and invalidated the ticket by getting on the plane to begin with. People have sued and won for much less. Him being a doctor with patients just makes United look even more maliciously moronic by comparison.

Then why do all the outlets keep talking about the issue being forwarded to the Chicago police in regards to their Aviation officers?

Unless this is some massive 'America is crazy' thing that I'm not getting my head around. In my country, airport security has zero rights or authority on a plane, and generally will be fired if they enter a plane with passengers boarded. Aviation officers are a blend of state and federal police personnel who are on site at airports, whose duties cover anything necessary at the airport. They're renamed slightly because all airports are defined as federal land to ensure the laws are uniform nationally, so standard state police have no jurisdiction unless posted on site as an aviation officer.

And the news isn't presenting the hand off to Chigago police in a way which implies its under investigation, its being done so in regards to questions about the officers conduct. Everything points to those officers being a police branch, not private security.

United fucked up, for sure. But if a company has a fuck up which results in calling the cops, why is that company suddenly liable for the behavior of the police? Are we in an age of corporate policing, where the company can waive the persons rights and approve excessive force? Because if we're not, the actions of individual police officers are on those officers.

Not to mention, I'm having difficulty taking several of you seriously as you cite they offered 1200 and no one took it, when that video source you're quoting specifically says they stopped at 800, and didn't even go to the 1200, which is just shy of the 1300 legally entitled to a passenger in the event of a disruption to their flight plans.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

They didn't even 'overbook' it in the usual sense of that term. They needed to resolve a critical staffing issue by putting 4 pilots on that flight and somehow didn't discover they were over capacity until AFTER everyone was on the plane. That's mega incompetence and resolving it by calling security to remove a random passenger is just pouring extra fuel on the fire.

Oh, and then they casually pretended on twitter that it was no big deal until people started posting videos.

 

[Elijin]

Also RE: paying customer vs staff members.

Its shitty, for sure....but these reports seem to be saying the staff included pilots. If they want to reposition a pilot that badly, there has probably been an issue elsewhere, so in practical terms its actually 'A single paying customer vs an entire flight of paying customers because they have no pilot'.

Also, to me, might hint to why this shit wasn't dealt with prior to boarding. Needing and getting a pilot (and flight crew?) somewhere else to fill a gap last minute, isn't exactly going to be some well planned operation, so much as a last minute panic rush to shuffle things about. That said, given we're talking about pilots, why on earth they wouldn't offer a full refund AND free tickets on the next flight is baffling.

Doing that for 1-4 people surely costs less than having a grounded plane in another airport. Doubly so because airports tend to charge planes for being on the ground, so as well as lost customer income, they have to pay for that shit. Its why red eye flights with a handful of people on them aren't just discontinued. Its a lower cost to fly a plane with 8 passengers throughout the night than it is to park that plane in a hanger overnight in a lot of airports.

 

[Silvanus]

Airlines routinely overbook flights because there are nearly aways a handful of no-shows, and the airline wants to minimise empty seats on a flight. The alternative would be raising the price of tickets.

Another alternative would be that the airline just makes a little less profit. The costs of their own risky, greedy policy should not be passed onto the consumer or the staff.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Only in the US can a corporation have that much power.

 

[Ryotknife]

okay, some context is needed here (note, not saying they handled it right)

1. airlines routinely overbook flights because there are no shows and they dont want empty seats. The alternative is higher ticket prices.

2. 4 crew members needed to get on that flight or else the flight they are suppose to work on WILL BE CANCELED

3. People were asked to voluntarily give up seats for recompense, not enough people did. By the way, FOUR people were selected, not just one.

4. usually this sort of thing is handled BEFORE the passengers board the plane, but for some odd reason happened after (united screwed up most likely)

5. When no one volunteers, the airline is well within their right to start giving up other passenger's seats

6. They explain to this man multiple times that he needed to give up his seat. The police were trying to calmly talk to him when another security person sudden walked in and dragged him out, and he has been placed on leave while being investigated. I would also like to point out that the passenger was getting more and more belligerent towards staff as the situation went on.

So from evidence, the only thing that is United's fault is that this situation existed (ie passengers giving up seats after boarding). As far as the man being violently dragged out, that is on the security officer.

 

[4Aces]

A few more things to consider:

Airlines have agreements with other carriers to transfer you when your flight is cancelled. No mention of even offering this is mentioned.

The claim that four non-pilots were critical to the operation of other future flights is laughable. Airlines also share attendants, and can operate with 50% of their standard compliment.

Cancelling your ticket for non-critical reasons (engine fell off, or pilot spontaneously combusted in the pilot's lounge after chugging 1L of Stoli Elite) is a breach of contract, and the airline is liable a full refund, plus all damages, including harassment. This guy gets to add assault, assault causing bodily injury, and mental anguish given how infamous this has become with his bleeding face plastered all over it.

No one has mentioned why we are only seeing coach class being full. If it turns out that business or first class had empty seats, the entire fiasco will go nuclear. After which they might as well change their name to lottery, since everyone will refuse to surrender a seat hoping for a repeat with easy lawsuit at the end of that particular rainbow.

 

[jklinders]

Once the passengers have been boarded and are seated and they have gone through the boarding procedures and searches and full body cavity searches they should just have eaten the cost of flying their employees via charter.

Leonard French while more a copyright law specialist has weighed in. He is rather incensed and concerned over the implications of United's actions here.
While airlines do have established rules regarding overbooking and bumping, there is nothing in United's charter about removing passengers that have already boarded. The expectation of travel that was set by being already seated makes united's case very weak. The security could be risk of charges as well due to the possibility that he invoked excessive force.

My opinion. Once the plane is boarded, it becomes a United Airlines problem they don't have enough seats. Either make me an offer I won't refuse or fuck off.