Man Dragged off United Flight

drunkenbeagle said:
As a very frequent customer of both in past years, I can vouch for SouthenJets customer service being vastly superior. Their employees taking pride in that isn't a bad thing in my mind, in my personal experience they have on the whole really, actually cared about their customers.
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My post was just a humorous jab at our resident JC UAL pilot's act in the Delta threads.
 
NovemberEcho said:
These memes are on point. I'm dyin
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Dude these memes are too much

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A80TRACON said:
They're both crappier
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∆∆∆∆∆ This ∆∆∆∆

As a passenger I remember dressing up for flights. Dad used to put me in a tie at least if not a suit.

Then again, when we boarded the 707 or 727 they handed out champagne and served the meal on China, didn't charge for bags, overhead space, seats, toilet use. There were just Y and F fares and no status levels. The fares were the same so they only differentiated by service and number of flights to your destination.

And best of all, no service Turkeys, Wombats or platypus
 
jskibo said:
∆∆∆∆∆ This ∆∆∆∆

As a passenger I remember dressing up for flights. Dad used to put me in a tie at least if not a suit.

Then again, when we boarded the 707 or 727 they handed out champagne and served the meal on China, didn't charge for bags, overhead space, seats, toilet use. There were just Y and F fares and no status levels. The fares were the same so they only differentiated by service and number of flights to your destination.

And best of all, no service Turkeys, Wombats or platypus
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My emotional support monkey is offended he was left off your list. 707 huh? I figured you were probably on the Wright Flyer.
 
ppragman said:
This is how I view this scenario: "You're not wrong Walter, you're just an *I don't have the education to emote without using a curse word*."

Sure, United is well within their rights, but it never should have gotten to this point. United is getting skewered for having crappy customer service, because people don't like overbooking, and because they randomly selected people instead of upping the financial incentive to find more volunteers. It's not the passengers fault United's crew schedulers didn't have their S together. Frankly, while they have every right to do what they did, and yeah, the guy acted weird, UNITED escalated the situation by calling the cops on a paying customer - they screwed up in PR world, and they'll pay for it.

According to United's own website, they serviced 143,000,000 passengers in 2016 and let's assume this will be the average we'll see in 2017. Let's say that only 1 in a million customers will be upset enough about this to say "SCREW UNITED, I'LL FLY ON LCC BRAND X INSTEAD." That's still 143 airfares they're missing out on over the course of the year. Google says that the average cost of a ticket in 2013 was $379, that's $54,197 - and that's if only 143 people change their air carrier per year. They could have upped the ante to $2500 and I guarantee that would have gotten someone off that flight and not had a public relations nightmare on their hands.

If I were a business traveler, the aggressive reminder that the gate agents wouldn't hesitate to randomly select me to physically yank off the flight would make me think twice about booking travel on United to get to important meetings, just saying. And I know that that isn't "reality" - but remember, the perception in this case is much worse than the reality, just look at these hilarious memes:

C9EAZcTUIAAEJTV.jpg:large


This one is slightly NSFW, so I'll link to it.

Here's one I find particularly funny:
C9EqIKcXkAA4Yt5.jpg


What kind of financial damage to the brand is the result of a crappy decision to escalate? Did someone even think about this sort of thing? I doubt it - and yeah, this will all blow over in a week or so, but even if 1-in-a-million people change their plans because of this they've likely lost a lot more than they've gained.
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Except that for those 143 that won't fly on United there are 143 others who won't fly on American, or Delta or any other airline because <insert reason>

People will swear to whichever flying spaghetti monster they see fit that they'll never fly <airline> again because <reasons> but when push comes to shove and they need to travel by air the next time very few will follow through. Everyone else will go in Priceline, or Expedia, or whatever other sites they use and find the absolute cheapest fare and go with that. If that happens to be United they'll think something like "uh oh, hope I don't get kicked off el oh el" right before they speed click/scroll through the contract of carriage, click "I agree" and "purchase."

The traveling public loooves to vocally lash out about the poor service of our airlines, and rightly so in many cases, but they've proven what really counts over and over again with their wallets.
 
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etflies said:
Except that for those 143 that won't fly on United there are 143 others who won't fly on American, or Delta or any other airline because <insert reason>

People will swear to whichever flying spaghetti monster they see fit that they'll never fly <airline> again because <reasons> but when push comes to shove and they need to travel by air the next time very few will follow through. Everyone else will go in Priceline, or Expedia, or whatever other sites they use and find the absolute cheapest fare and go with that. The traveling public loooves to vocally lash out about the poor service of our airlines, and rightly so in many cases, but they've proven what really counts over and over again with their wallets.
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I would agree with leisure travel. For business travel I directed all but 4 or 5 flights over the previous 17 years to TWA, then American for a total of 1.6M miles. When I finally had enough of their crap I moved that loyalty to Delta.

So if $59 fares are important to their revenue stream I say they're in fine shape, do as you like. If you want the guy spending $5600 on a ticket to Cairo, then maybe go out of your way a bit to demonstrate my business means something to you.
 
David Dao, passenger removed from United flight, a doctor with troubled past

Morgan Watkins , @morganwatkins26 9:26 a.m. ET April 11, 2017

David Dao, the Elizabethtown doctor who was yanked off an overbooked United Airlines flight Sunday, has had a troubled history in Kentucky.

Dao, who went to medical school in Vietnam in the 1970s before moving to the U.S., was working as a pulmonologist in Elizabethtown when he was arrested in 2003 and eventually convicted of drug-related offenses after an undercover investigation, according to documents filed with the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure last June. The documents allege that he was involved in fraudulent prescriptions for controlled substances and was sexually involved with a patient who used to work for his practice and assisted police in building a case against him.

Dao was convicted of multiple felony counts of obtaining drugs by fraud or deceit in November 2004 and was placed on five years of supervised probation in January 2005. He surrendered his medical license the next month. After completing his probation and undergoing several psychological evaluations, the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure permitted Dao to resume practicing medicine in 2015 under certain conditions.

In 2016, Dao and the licensing board entered into an amended agreement allowing Dao to practice medicine with a restricted license that places certain limitations on his work as a doctor.

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/ne ... 100318320/
 
This isn't going to be popular with some of you. (IF) UAL followed their policies (if you read the safety section; I think they did) they should have removed this guy in exactly the fashion he forced them into.

I think this is a very interesting situation because it exemplifies the differences between those who think society should "follow the rules" and those that think "peace/love and common sense prevails if we all sit down and talk about it."

Pretty funny how a small situation like this elicits so much debate.

I personally think they should have tossed him out the front door at the airport.
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jskibo said:
I would agree with leisure travel. For business travel I directed all but 4 or 5 flights over the previous 17 years to TWA, then American for a total of 1.6M miles. When I finally had enough of their crap I moved that loyalty to Delta.

So if $59 fares are important to their revenue stream I say they're in fine shape, do as you like. If you want the guy spending $5600 on a ticket to Cairo, then maybe go out of your way a bit to demonstrate my business means something to you.
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Maybe. They're sure to lose customers over this. But I doubt many of their high value, super double secret platinum gemstone status customers, if any at all will switch because of this. They likely have too much invested in United for this to sway them to change. Legacy carriers cater to loyal/high mileage customers because they are their bread and butter and this guy wasn't picked to be removed because he is high up on the totem pole of frequent flyer status. While 1.6m miles is impressive, over 17 years that averages 94,000/yr and some change. There are customers who do that every few weeks with the airline. Those are the high value types they don't want to lose. I agree that anyone who purchases a ticket, no matter if it is Ma n' Pa Kettle on their first trip or Joe McFrequentFlyer on their millionth mile of the year, should be treated with the same levels dignity and respect but at the same time people need to understand that this isn't Nam. There are rules.

In fact, within the contract of carriage that United has, they spell out how they choose which passengers are to be removed and it includes both fare, and frequent flyer status among a smattering of other factors such as itinerary and when they checked in. As such, I would be quite surprised if this doctor was a frequent flyer and was picked to be removed over a leisure passenger who travels once or twice per year.
 
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