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This seems like the wrong way to do business.
I have to agree but, I sure as hell wouldn't make them drag me off the plane. That's just asinine. I'd stick it to them for the inconvenience though.....
This guy will probably stick it to them for pain and suffering. In today's litigious worlds he will win.
to my way of thinking if they tell you to get off the plane...you get off the plane or someone named bubba will come drag you off of it. There is no choice over this....the airline decides and you do not get a vote.
This guy just won the lotto!!! I'd trade places with him in a heartbeat!
United will now be in damage control mode... I never understood how a flight can be over booked? If an aircraft has 200 seats, you can only sell 200 seats. Unless of course one is using common core. It doesn't even make sense financially because you are giving passengers a financial incentive greater than the cost of the flight to "volunteer" for another flight plus hotel. Why would an airline overbook?
Another reason why I don't like to fly. As discussed on another thread.
Were they actually LE or security as in a straw boss with a shirt and badge from the local Army surplus store...?
The best part, not only did they overbook, they kicked the guy off to get the airlines employees the seats
I'm guessing this will hurt business fairly well. I'd be buying myself a brand new Tacoma after that!
The airline is flat wrong in this, but so is labeling the airport officers as thugs. The airline is a private entity, and can make the decision to have someone removed from the plane, however wrong that may be. By not leaving, this guy subjected himself to removal in this manner. I'm not saying he's wrong. I think it's BS to overbook and then forcibly bump passengers. The airport officers are doing what their job is, by the level of force that is reasonable and necessary.
No, I'm not out of my mind. I simply recognize the fact the airline can choose to have anyone removed. I am not saying I agree with their decision to do so. What I am saying is once they tell the man he needs to leave, and he doesn't, he is subject to forcible removal. There is always civil redress for the issue. It would be no different than if I went into a restaurant, and the owner told me to leave. If I choose not to, the owner can have the police remove by whatever means are reasonable and necessary. If I am physically resisting and I get my lip split in the process, that's just part of the deal. If the owner was wrong in having me removed in the first place, then I have civil recourse against him but not against the police. The police are not there to evaluate the merits and/or justification of removal, they are acting on the owner's directions.
A free society allows private entities to make decisions, regardless of whether they are bad ones. I'm sure he will sue the airline, and will likely get a nice chunk of money for his inconveniences.
I'm with JLS on this one and once asked to leave he should have. Sure he would have been inconvenienced, and may have breech of contact lawsuit (I have't seen the contract, but I'm sure it has plenty of weasel words, terms and conditions in it). On the other hand, how United decided to handle the overbooking issue was terrible. I've never been on a flight when this has happened that they couldn't negotiate with several passengers to take a later flight by enticing them with free tickets, hotel, meals or something. Randomly selecting booked, seated passengers to be asked to leave will prove to be a PR disaster for them and cost far more than a couple free tickets. I think the root cause of the problem is there wasn't anyone with "decision making" capabilities working the ticket counter to work out a deal.
I think overbooking is an industry standard and I think they have enough statistical data to venture a estimate of how many people get stuck in traffic, change plans last minute or whatever, that the odds of 100% of the plane being full and 100% of the passengers will not consider changing plans for some compensation is pretty low, but possible. This enables the airlines to sell a couple more seats to get revenue and they only need to pay out on rare occasions when they need to compensate someone to take another flight. This is crazy how United chose to handle this situation. Even if they would have had to buy last minute tickets for their own employees on a competitors airline, they'd still come out ahead by overbooking and not have a PR mess to clean up. Hell, even if those 4 employees couldn't get to Kentucky, they probably have employees in Kentucky that would have done the OT (there may be restrictions on doing this if they were pilots, but I'm sure there's minimal restrictions on how many hours a flight attendant works in a week).
Not leaving a private place when you are told to is, in and of itself, resisting and allows an officer to use physical means to move you.
JLS...your restaurant example is not valid. The doctor not only had paid (his money accepted), but also seated (company validated his ticket). He was randomly selected for removal.
If volunteers were needed for such important seating of standby employees, it is obvious that the airline did not make an offer that paid and seated passengers found reasonable. What if that doctor was needed to perform life saving surgery when forcibly removed?
IMHO, if it was so important for the employees to take seats on that plane, they just as well could have replaced the flight attendants and let them do their jobs. Or maybe strap them on the wings.
I bet the UA employee who got that seat was like "Thanks guys, this should be a really fun flight after you dragged a confused doctor from his seat so I could get to work on time"
Curiosity got the best of me so I googled "United Contract" and sure enough, it was crafted by a team of lawyers and is probably part of the 50 pages of stuff nobody reads and you just click "I accept" to get on with your life and buy a damn ticket....until something like this happens . Under Rule 21 section H, they can pretty much remove anyone and get it to fit into one of these categories where they can refuse service and you agreed to it. I think it was a horrible business decision to choose this path, but I think they had the right to make bad choices and they'll probably pay the consequences, either in court or through the bad publicity resulting from these decisions or a combination of the two. I'm baffled how they couldn't come up with an agreeable arrangement to get their employees to Kentucky and keep their obligations to their customers. All of these negotiations should have taken place well in advance of boarding.
See Link for United's contract.
I am not questioning it was a poor decision to evict the passenger. I am merely saying the officers acted according to the decision and direction of the airline. The two are separate issues.
Take the emotion out of this. A free society allows PRIVATE entities to make really bad decisions. As Ben h already pointed out, they CAN void the contract and remove you. Dumb? Yep. Will the doc win some money? Yep. Were the cops doing their job? Yep.
From Knuckledraggin...
Airport cop suspended over United incident
An airport cop who body-slammed a United passenger and dragged him off an overbooked flight was put on leave today – as his bosses condemned his actions amid mounting outrage over video of the incident. The Chicago Department of Aviation said it ‘obviously’ did not condone the behavior of the security officer who was filmed slamming the man into an arm rest, knocking him unconscious and dragging him away by his arms as he bled from the mouth at O’Hare. United is facing growing anger after they selected the 69-year-old man – who claimed to be a doctor – to be bumped from the overbooked flight to Louisville to make room for its staff on Sunday night. The airline’s CEO apologized today even as new video emerged of the man, who had refused to leave the flight, bleeding heavily from the mouth and mumbling about suicide in the aftermath of his brutal treatment. MORE/PICTURES/VIDEOS
It appears that the victim of this UA induced brutality was a doctor who had patients to see. The next available flight was at 2:30 PM the next day.
Question for Bad Karma: could his patients sue UA due to their physician being prevented from providing his medical care? What if he were a surgeon and a patient suffered due to delay of surgery?
Edit: Why did UA not just hire a cab/Uber and have their employees driven to Louisville...Louisville is a four-and-a-half hour, 300 mile drive from Chicago. It seems that the time needed for their employees to be there was such that they could have gone by ground.
Pig doc, they were referred to as thugs several times. That was my issue.
If one of them used excessive force, which I could not see from the videos I saw, then shame on him.
There's going to be a host of job vacancies at United Airlines coming up in the very near future over this. They may very well have the legal authority to pick people to be removed from any flight, but HOW they did it was STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!!!
I live about an hour and a half from O'Hare. They were offering $800 EACH to the people to voluntarily get off that flight to make room for their employees. As Mouse said they were going to St. Louis which is a 4+ hour drive. That's $3200.00. Hell, I'd of driven the employees down there for HALF of that!!! They'd of saved money and avoided a LOT of bad publicity.
LOL! That was about as "accommodating" as the "Affordable" Care Act is affordable!!!
And about as heavy handed too....."You MUST buy the insurance the government says you must have or we'll send men with guns to take your home and empty your bank account and other assests."
Flying used to be special. Now it's like riding a greyhound bus and the employees and other passengers act like it. After running the TSA guauntlet and finally getting to your seat you should be rewarded not assulted. I flew to SF once and the woman next to me clipped her toenails and dug at her feet the whole flight. Left her toenail clippings on the seat and floor. My guess is the passenger was sick of being treated like a felon by airline staff for buying a ticket and this was his " I am as mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore" moment. United is a clown show and has been for 20 years.
A problem with these stories based on video's is we don't see the moments leading up to when the filming starts.
Pig Doc, I agree with you that United handled this situation horribly, but if you don't comply with airport security/employee demands on an airplane these days and come out with a few cuts and bruises, I'd say you're doing pretty good. I wasn't there, but I'd say they asked him to walk out first, which he declined, so he was removed (again, this is not something I would have done, but they have the "right" to). You're doing what hurts them the most by refusing to fly with them and I support that.
Woods, there will be new job openings at United and unfortunately they will be the guys on the ground floor who were complying with "procedure" and not the decision makers who created the problem.
I tend to agree Keith, but even if this passenger went a-hole on them it STILL doesn't justify the airline arbitrarily removing someone from a flight they bought and paid for because of a reason like this. If it were so important that their own employees HAD to get to St. Louis then they should have had the brains and efficiency to PLAN it ahead of time!
This is going to be a major black eye for them and the irony is that they punched themselves in the face with their own fist!
What the coming lawsuit is going to cost them (not to mention the loss of sales...) is going to make the $3200 they could have paid a limo service to drive the aforementioned employees to St. Louis instead of what they did look like pocket change.
Let's see what their stock does today. That will b very telling
Couple more things......
I just heard on the radio that this man's wife was on a plane sitting a few rows back! If that's indeed true, then the lawsuits will really go berserk..."mental anguish", etc.
I also do NOT blame the police. They were doing their jobs, period. It wasn't them who made the policy to remove passengers. In fact, it's the policy that's the culprit here. If this man refused and they didn't remove him, then they'd have to go to the next person on the list. What if they also decided to make a stand? THen you go to the one after that?? YUP! Then it'd begin to resemble our immigration policy (or lack thereof) regarding illegal aliens. You don't enforce your own law then you may as well not have it.
No, the fault of this lies directly at the feet of the CEO of United Airlines. That's why he's not budging.......yet.
If you didn't want to put those employees in a limo and drive them to St. Louis, then you should have basically had an auction on that plane where you kept raising the ante of what you'd compensate a paid passenger if they gave up their seat.
If they offered me enough I'd WALK to St. Louis! It's business, pure and simple.
People offer up new United Airlines slogans! FUNNY!!
"We now have red eye AND black eye flights!"
http://mashable.com/2017/04/11/united-airlines-new-mottos-twitter-hashtag/#50314KTapmq0
The CEO doubled down and defended the actions.
Passenger was of Chinese descent and the people of China are not too happy. Asking for boycott of United. Paraphrasing they "want an apology from his bloody mouth" and I don't believe that was meant in British dialect.
That's a lot of customers to piss off.
here's a good one
Economics 101
If the facts are as they have been presented, he should sue United and win. If it were me, I would sue for $300 million and settle for $100 million. He should sue the security officers personally too, and the entire crew for allowing this to happen. His wife can sue also.
I bet lawyers are burning his phone up right now! If this goes right, he should have his own 747 shortly.
What's not coming out.... Here's the standard policy that ALL airlines have (my brother in law works in the airline world)
- Overbooking is normal, but this wasn't that. This was an emergency to get a flight crew to their plane, if not done, then that entire plane doesn't fly. So that's a bigger lost cost that paying off a handful of people to get off the plane.
- What should of happened, which is standard, is NOBODY gets on the plane until the overbooking is resolved. The fact that the plane was boarded first indicates it was an unexpected issue with the flight crew at the destination they were scrambling to solve.
- They DID raise the price to get off the plane, some takers, some didn't, not enough did, they hit their max per policy, so computer randomly selects people. All got off except this one.
- Once he refused multiple requests from the flight crew, next step is call the police, they did. At this point United is free and clear legally.
- The guy was removed from the plane, then ran back on, that's when the "fun" started with the bloody mouth etc. Essentially at that point he turned it hostile. How should they react when a person rushes a plane to get on?
Also, AT ANY POINT, any of the other 200+ passengers could have resolved this by volunteering. Nobody did.
I don't think it is the responsibility of the passengers to resolve.
How should they react when a person rushes a plane to get on? I'm sure the civil courts will answer that question quite amicably for the passenger. The court of public opinion is weighing in on the CEO. Their board will weigh in in the near future.
What is up with UAL??? wasn't it last month they had 2 teens thrown off for wearing legging's? Their stock is down ~3% today and rightfully so. This company needs a reset big time.
Looks like he is a real stand up guy
May be so. However they have no bearing on what transpired on the plane. A jury will never hear it.
Whatever he did....selling prescription drugs, fraud, deceit.....has nothing whatsoever to do with this incident. He was a free man, not a fugitive from the law. He bought a ticket legitimately with US currency supposedly, and broke no law by boarding the airplane. I hope he punishes the thug(s) who drug him off the plane, and sues the airline, United CEO, the flight crew, and whoever sold him the ticket. I hope he becomes extremely wealthy. I would like very much to sit on the jury for this one.
"- The guy was removed from the plane, then ran back on, that's when the "fun" started with the bloody mouth etc. Essentially at that point he turned it hostile. How should they react when a person rushes a plane to get on?"
That's where he messed up. Once off, he should have remained off.
"That's where he messed up. Once off, he should have remained off."
Nope. He was reclaiming the seat which was rightfully his, by contract. I would have done the same thing. Normally I do not approve of lawsuits as a way to settle things like this, but United needs to be punished, and hopefully they will be. United stock is down 3% today......and it is beileved that this incident is the reason. I hope it keeps dropping, and I believe it will. People are fed up with this kind of crap.
Tiger-eye, the women with the leggings was entirely different. They were United employees who where flying in their employee system and were violating a known dress code. A business has the right to tell its employees what clothing are acceptable while representing the company. This whole snafu is a whole nother matter.
What do we teach people? If a cop tells you to comply with an order, you do it, then deal with it later after the incident is over.
So if an airlingline security, TSA or cops tells you to diss board a plane, you do it and deal with it later.
sundowner, the "contract" basically says they will get you to your destination, it doesn't require it to be on that plane. The contract leans EVERYTHING to the airline, they can ask you to get off the plane for no apparent reason and you have no right to any one particular seat. It's something everyone agrees to, and nobody reads, when you buy an airline ticket.
United is 100% in the right "legally". In public opinion and all effects that causes, they look pretty bad. They followed documented policy, but it was never intended for someone to object to this level, they just assumed when the police said "lets go" that that would be the end of it.
Airline security personnel do not have the authority of a duly sworn policeman who is supposed to be working to protect and serve the public. Just because some thug is wearing a uniform does not mean one must obey him. A policeman can give a lawful order, and is to be obeyed. A private security person cannot. Even is this day and age, law abiding United States citizens still have rights, and this man's rights were trampled. I hope he is well compensated for that.
No, they do not have the authority of a sworn officer. However, as an employee/agent of the airline, they have the authority to remove a person from the premises of the company they are employed by/represent. Their scope of authority would not extend beyond the premises of that.
Citizens do have rights. Unfortunately, sometimes folks don't know the legal boundaries of their rights and events like this happen.
" However, as an employee/agent of the airline, they have the authority to remove a person from the premises of the company they are employed by/represent."
Not if it involves an assault upon a person who is doing what he paid for, which is occupying a seat on an airplane. He posed no danger to anyone. He paid for his seat and had a reasonable expectation that the airline would uphold it's end of the contract.
The airline is no doubt within their legal rights to handle this the way they did. But just because you CAN do something doesn't always mean you SHOULD. This hopefully is a lesson to them on how NOT to do this.
When all's said and done, this will wind up with it having been far cheaper for UAL to just hire a private plane to fly their employees to St. Louis if a private limo bus couldn't get them there on time, which is doubtful as the limo could have had them there in 4 1/2 hours max. As it was all this unnecessary drama delayed the flight in question for another 2 1/2 hours as it was. If 2 hours was that tight for them then they aren't running a very efficient or well managed operation.
Imagine you go out with your wife and some friends for a meal at a really fancy restaurant. The kind where the ambiance of the place is just as inspiring as the meal. You all order and pay for your food after you are seated. Just as the food comes the maitre d comes over to you and says that he has employees that have to start their shift soon and they must eat first so you folks must take your food carry out and leave.
How long do you think they'd be in business???
HOLY CH*T!!!! They could have paid the 4 passengers a MILLION DOLLARS EACH and still be $796,000.00 ahead today!!!!!!!!!!
And they were going cheap with offering a few hundred to these people. Like I said......
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.aol.com/article/finance/2017/04/11/united-airlines-just-lost-800-million-in-value/22035499/
What would have happened if one of the "overbooked" passengers ie UAL employee would have drawn the short straw? Call for a do-over?
Lord How I wish I could be on the jury for this one.
UAL Protest At O'Hare..............................
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2017/04/11/protesters-at-ohare-blast-united-airlines/
But then we have this...........
"U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said she wants congressional hearings and legislation that would bar airlines from removing passengers who are already seated aboard an aircraft."
You all remember Schakowsky, she's the wife of Robert Creamer, who was the Democrat operative responsible for the planned violence at the Trump rallies.
She is SO typical of a liberal Democra'ts "thinking" ability. That's right Jan, pass another law that makes ZERO sense. I WANT the airlines to be able to remove anyone who they deem a threat, whether they're seated, or standing on their head.
They just have to use their brains when they do it! (Unlike Jan Schakowsky....of course you can't use what you don't possess).
"If there’s one thing I have learned over the years, it’s that there are always two sides to every story."
WOW. What a distortion. As a former airline employee (32 years) let me explain how this "RANDOM" selection works. The airline has X number of seats on the aircraft, as people book & pay for their flight they are assigned a seat number, once all seat numbers have been assigned they sell a number of "open" unassigned positions (number determined by "no show" history for that specific flight). Those "open" positions are not guaranteed to get on the flight, they only get a seat if someone with an assigned seat does not show up. If after being boarded someone shows up for that seat the open passenger is removed in the reverse order they were boarded. The last 4 open passengers boarded were the RANDOM people removed. The doctor (if he was, I've heard that con many times) was physically removed by law enforcement not airline employees & his resistance was "failure to follow a lawful order", he should have been arrested, especially after escaping custody & reboarding the aircraft (unauthorized access of an aircraft is a federal security violation). FAA has specific regulations regarding such situations & it appears United followed those regulations specifically. Moral of the story, book early to get an assigned seat, & don't act like an arrogant entitled child when you don't like the rules. Just read this and it makes the most sense of anything iv herd.
So who loses their job ?? The airline employees who told law enforcement officers that the person must be removed from the plane ?? Nope. The law enforcement officers who actually put their hands on the guy and removed him. They are the ones who have been placed on suspension. That's one of the CRAPPY parts of being in law enforcement. You get dragged into the middle of a civil matter that might turn into something like a trespassing......... and are expected to do the dirty work for the company. I've been a police officer for 23 years...... We get dragged into this kind of stuff on a regular basis........ In my city we get called to hotels for evictions that might turn into trespassing complaints if they don't leave. I hate getting dragged into these civil matters and after 23 years I'd be real careful about putting myself into the position those TSA Officers did........ It is a no win situation for law enforcement.
That may all very well be correct Pat, but the question remains....WHY didn't they have their Chinese fire drill (no pun intended....really) BEFORE they boarded all the freaking passengers??? I would imagine that this overbooking shell game is something that would be completed at the gate and NOT after everyone's been seated on the damn plane!
Legal as it is, UAL screwed the pooch BIG time on this one.
Here it comes........................
http://forums.bowsite.com/TF/bgforums/thread.cfm?forum=1&threadid=462420&MESSAGES=1&FF=CMT
This was not an overbooked flight. That's why they were already on the plane. The issue was at the destination airport. There was a scheduled flight there, that had no flight crew due to weather issues in that crew not being able to arrive. So essentially they had no flight crew for a different flight.
They essentially were looking for 4 people to inconvenience so that they could get 200+ off the ground from another airport.
As with everything, looking backwards is easy. But try to put that aside, you are the airline, here's what you have:
- a plane boarded (bummer #1) where you need to convince 4 people to get off so that you can get 4 flight crew on. - If you don't you have 200+ stranded customers, plus all associated penalty fees (which are significant) for missing a scheduled flight not due to weather (that flight's issue wasn't weather)
The guy actually got OFF THE PLANE, then rushed back on. Based on reports I've read, that is where the real trouble started. Normal overbooking is resolved before boarding the plane, this wasn't the case here.
Yes, and he was doing his job, AS ORDERED! What if he refused? He'd be unemployed right now and not just on leave.
I know it's typical of corporate to blame the "little guy", and if the little guy had in fact came to work impaired, or did some other act against his job rules then he should be canned. But he didn't do that. No, some $250,000.00 a year suit(s) should get sh*t canned for this one.
Just saw the attorneys at presser. Dimetrio is a self centered self serving idiot, imo.
I agree. He's the captain of the ship and he should go down with it.
UAL should be relieved as hell that Dr. Won Ton didn't suffer a heart attack while being wailed on or had brain damage. Then the suit wouldn't be in the millions but BILLIONS!
That's the kind of thing you need to take into account when you use physical force, especially in a situation like this.
When this is over he'll have his OWN private jet!
I'll bet bk wishes he could have this case!
