Man Dragged off United Flight
- Thread starter Bonanzaman
- Start date
RDoug
Well-Known Member
Oh, okay. I got you.
I bet you'd get 37 pages of replies if you post the video of the horse in the Cessna for a rap video.
ChasenSFO
hen teaser
That turned out to be pretty complicated for an hourly ramp tower employee with no backing. If my ventures take off and I get the right kind of sponsorship, you can be damn sure a horse will be in the sky. You have my blessing to post the NTSB report and pee pee on my poor ADM postmortem if need be.
FlyingAccountant
Well-Known Member
Latest updates:
- · The guy’s daughter came out and put everyone on blast yesterday. United then apologized again. The city of Chicago also apologized at a city council meeting.
- · There’s a group of United pilots that have actually condemned what happened.
- · Turns out the “cops” that perpetrated this aren’t even real cops, they were only security guards that were fraudulently identifying themselves as police. The same personnel involved had been reprimanded in the past for wearing clothing that identified them as police. (Prepare thy anus, City of Chicago….)
- · The city of Chicago is pissed at United for creating this situation since they’ll now be on the hook for millions, inevitably. (Even though it was rentacops under the employ of the airport/city that ultimately wailed on this guy…..)
- · United has stated they are going to create a policy to avoid the use of law enforcement in similar situations in the future.
- · Dao’s injuries included two broken teeth, sinus issues, probable broken nose, and a concussion(he got tuned up pretty good).
Screaming_Emu
Joe Conventional
"Oh, I see you're deadheading back to base at the end of your trip. Sorry, you're not allowed to positive space."
Screaming_Emu
Joe Conventional
Because all the regional did was drive the airplane to the gate. They didn't sell tickets on it, they didn't staff the gate, they didn't do any of that.
SeanD
Well-Known Member
Ah I see. I didnt know the gate staff were UA employees. But dont you think the police/security should bare most of the responsibility for this? Especially the physical harm aspect?
Screaming_Emu
Joe Conventional
Yup, in Chicago they are. Regardless, even if they wren't if they were following the policies and procedures that United lays out for them, I wouldn't say it is their fault.
jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
We had crews taking day after day of rolled days off and junior man pay because of that policy. I ran into someone that had been stuck in Charlie south through all their days off and into the next trip, at which point they couldn't fly said trip because they'd been on duty like ten days straight.
JOEFRIDAY2
Well-Known Member
Nope because the United employees called the airport police and demanded that they remove the passenger from the plane. The United employees should never have called the police over this issue.
The culture of this whole airline needs a major adjustment.
saxman
Well-Known Member
I don't think any airline employee could have foreseen what would happen. The guy wasn't budging one inch. What do you do in that case? Delay the flight indefinitely? With United saying they will use less law enforcement, perhaps this is what will happen now.
Avgirl
Well-Known Member
It appears the passenger was creating a disruption and refusing to exit the plane. So, what were they supposed to do? Good thing they didn't take it upon themselves to pull him off. In fact, there are zero videos of the United employees or the Republic crew ever acting unreasonably. They were following orders, probably from operations in a skyscraper, I would imagine it wasn't the call of anyone in that airport...and if it was a problem to call the Airport Officers, they could have refused to remove the passenger.
It isn't the culture of the airline that needs to change. It is the culture of people in general. There isn't a whole lot of respect, common sense, and decency out there. People act ridiculously, treat others horribly, and when they don't get their way, throw a tantrum and spread it all over social media. We have created a society of spoiled brats.
Screaming_Emu
Joe Conventional
I think if there is blame to be assigned to this incident, the police/security should be the recipients of it. But really I think this was just one of those things which was a Swiss cheese of unfortunate incidents.
Here's a rundown on my feelings.
Overselling makes sense and very rarely does it turn into involuntary denied boarding. I haven't had Delta non rev benefits in a while, but they showed by how many they were going to overbook each flight. Check out some of the flights out of somewhere like NRT. Routinely I would see oversells of 20-30 people, yet rarely would you run into trouble. If they didn't oversell those seats would have gone out empty. Good for non revs, bad for business.
Regardless, this wasn't a typical oversell situation. No matter how people feel about overselling, sometimes things happen where you need to move crews around. Weather, maintenance, rest issues, or illness can very easily cause a new crew to need to be flown somewhere to operate a flight out. While this is a pain in the ass for those affected, it's still sacrificing the happiness of 1-4 people so that an entire flight full of passengers can go out as scheduled. Even if it takes involuntary denied boarding, it's still good business sense to piss of 1-4 people vs an entire airplane.
Some people are saying that they should have just kept marking the price up until someone budged. That's a good idea in theory, but with websites like "the points guy" and the networking that those irritating "road warriors" do, it's just a matter of time until people figure out that if they stay put someone is going to win big. If something like a $50 travel voucher was offered before they started yanking people out of seats, I'd say that is unfair. But I think what was offered was a reasonable price for the level of inconvenience caused.
"Oh my god, he's a doctor! He needed to see his patients!" is what some people are claiming. What I've read makes that a bit less than truthful. Even if he was moving on to do some sort of life saving surgery, any one of the people in the foreground of the video could have gladly given him their seat. They didn't.
This brings me to the response of the gate agents. They were faced with a situation, they attempted to deal with it in what I think was a reasonable manner, this failed. This lead them to call the authorities. This would have been the case in any other industry. If I showed up at a restaurant with reservations and found out they were full and unable to accommodate me, if I sat on the floor and refused to move, the police would be called.
As for the police, it's hard to judge from what I see in the video. If someone is refusing to leave an economy class seat on an RJ, it's time to forcefully remove them so that everyone else can get to where they're going. That doesn't mean they can beat the hell out of them, but I don't think that's necessarily what happened. It's been a while since I've seen the video, but I don't see them hit the passenger. The only trauma I really see is when it looks like there's a little bit too much momentum as he finally breaks loose from the seat and hits his head on the armrest on the adjacent seat. Regrettable, yes. But I don't think it was careless or done on purpose.
In this country we seem to have a bunch of people who have forgotten how to adult. Sometimes we find ourselves in unavoidably crappy situations. Despite what we see on reality TV, you're much more likely to have a positive outcome by picking up your things, walking up to the gate, and talking to the gate agent in an unemotional manner. You might not always win, but it certainly stacks the odds in your favor. Quick related story, my wife and I were once the recipient of a free economy to business class upgrade on Delta from MUC-ATL. We had bought tickets on Air France so that we wouldn't have to worry about loads to/from MUC during the Christmas market season. The first leg of our return journey was MUC-CDG, but it was cancelled due to snow in Paris. When I approached the counter after standing in line for quite some time, I was polite, friendly, and showed some empathy towards the poor lady at the ticket counter. She expressed surprise that compared to everyone else, I was being so nice about the whole situation. In the end she made a phone call over to the Delta ticket counter. She apologized profusely that she couldn't get us out the same day, but that we would be in business class on the direct flight to Atlanta the next morning.
JOEFRIDAY2
Well-Known Member
For those of you still reading through all of these posts.
Like many aircraft accidents, United screwed up at many places that led to this incident.
1. United created a culture that thinks it's ok to bully customers.
2. Because United got away with bullying their employees for many years, those employees thought it was ok for this airline to bully their customers.
3. The gate agents should have denied boarding prior to the passengers being boarded instead of attempted to rip passengers out of their seats after they had been boarded.
4. United was running this entire show and REPUBLIC has no part in this screw up. United bullies REPUBLIC as well. Their culture is now trying to somehow blame Republic instead to admitting they are 100% responsible.
5. After United had screwed up, they could have simply offered more money for those people to volunteer their seats. A few thousand dollars would have stopped this incident from going any further.
6. After this incident happened and millions of people had seen the video, the CEO of United congratulates the United employees for a job well done and he apologized to the passengers on the plane, but not the Doctor that had been ripped out of his seat,. (It's the United culture in action.)
This passenger had a paid ticket and he did absolutely nothing wrong, yet the culture of this airline is trying to somehow place blame on the passenger.
This passenger is going to get millions and he deserves every penny.
Like many aircraft accidents, United screwed up at many places that led to this incident.
1. United created a culture that thinks it's ok to bully customers.
2. Because United got away with bullying their employees for many years, those employees thought it was ok for this airline to bully their customers.
3. The gate agents should have denied boarding prior to the passengers being boarded instead of attempted to rip passengers out of their seats after they had been boarded.
4. United was running this entire show and REPUBLIC has no part in this screw up. United bullies REPUBLIC as well. Their culture is now trying to somehow blame Republic instead to admitting they are 100% responsible.
5. After United had screwed up, they could have simply offered more money for those people to volunteer their seats. A few thousand dollars would have stopped this incident from going any further.
6. After this incident happened and millions of people had seen the video, the CEO of United congratulates the United employees for a job well done and he apologized to the passengers on the plane, but not the Doctor that had been ripped out of his seat,. (It's the United culture in action.)
This passenger had a paid ticket and he did absolutely nothing wrong, yet the culture of this airline is trying to somehow place blame on the passenger.
This passenger is going to get millions and he deserves every penny.
Screaming_Emu
Joe Conventional
Meh.
Avgirl
Well-Known Member
The big bad corporation argument. Always falls flat. Good thing you don't run a business, because it wouldn't last long...