Did United Airlines have any other choice than to eject that passenger?

[coloradoatheist]

But that is a separate law and line over that isn't as clear, because it is more based on common law.

No.

This is about what free humans should allow.

And they will never allow corporations to assault people.

Those that do are not free humans but something less.

And if that was the case the places of businesses could never remove unruly customers or do things that everyone might benefit at the expense of one person.

 

[untermensche]

No.

This is about what free humans should allow.

And they will never allow corporations to assault people.

Those that do are not free humans but something less.

And if that was the case the places of businesses could never remove unruly customers or do things that everyone might benefit at the expense of one person.

They have no special rights.

They are less than humans. They are artificial entities.

They have less rights.

 

[coloradoatheist]

And if that was the case the places of businesses could never remove unruly customers or do things that everyone might benefit at the expense of one person.

They have no special rights.

They are less than humans. They are artificial entities.

They have less rights.

It's not a special right. If I invite someone over to my house and say he I would like you to leave now, they have to.

 

[untermensche]

They have no special rights.

They are less than humans. They are artificial entities.

They have less rights.

It's not a special right. If I invite someone over to my house and say he I would like you to leave now, they have to.

You are the owner.

Those mall cops did not own that plane.

Some corporate entity did.

The property rights of non-human entities are not superior to the rights of humans.

At least no sane human would want them to be.

 

[jab]

It is both the right and the duty of anyone who cares about freedom to stand up and oppose unjust laws and bullying law enforcers.

That most of the world is made up of lily livered cowards who comply with authority without a murmur renders this all the more imperative. Tyranny unopposed is detrimental to us all.

Deference to authority is the idiots' alternative to reason. It's fine for children and dogs; they know no better. But smart people obey the rules only because doing so usually coincides with the reasonable and fair course of action. And when it no longer does, smart people break the rules; and brave smart people take a stand. You can judge how just a society is by how often the law coincides with what is right; and how free it is by how often obedience is compelled by force before all other options have been exhausted.

People who fight against injustice are called heroes. They are rare; but they protect us all against the human tendency towards mindless authoritarianism.

Some authoritarians are so mindless that they mistake acts of heroism for mere annoyance at the disruption of the hero's travel plans.

You seem to misunderstand the difference between fighting in court and fighting the cop. The former is acceptable, the latter is not.

Why it's our own Mr. Manners, ruling on what is and is not acceptable. How very genteel . I crook my pinky in homage as I sip my tea.
And, based on Mr. Manners' posts, he's also a legal linguist, for he attributes meanings to the worded "boarded" that are not evidenced in the "contract"; indeed I do believe that he would declare the customer in this suit had no legally sustainable case, if he had complied under verbal protest but without putting up passive resistance.

 

[coloradoatheist]

You seem to misunderstand the difference between fighting in court and fighting the cop. The former is acceptable, the latter is not.

How very genteel of you . I crook my pinky in homage as I sip my tea.

And, I judge by your posts where you attribute meanings to the worded "boarded" that are not evidenced in the "contract", that you would say the customer in this suit had no case, if he complied under verbal protest but without putting up passive resistance.

Huh? Both Loren and I agree that if he had gone peacefully he would be entitled to the compensation for the involuntary denied boarding clause.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's not a special right. If I invite someone over to my house and say he I would like you to leave now, they have to.

You are the owner.

Those mall cops did not own that plane.

Some corporate entity did.

The property rights of non-human entities are not superior to the rights of humans.

At least no sane human would want them to be.

Stupid, irrelevant point.

The owners of the plane asked those cops to remove him.

 

[untermensche]

You are the owner.

Those mall cops did not own that plane.

Some corporate entity did.

The property rights of non-human entities are not superior to the rights of humans.

At least no sane human would want them to be.

Stupid, irrelevant point.

The owners of the plane asked those cops to remove him.

The owner is not any person.

It is owned by a corporation. A non-human entity.

Presently these non-human entities have more rights than real humans.

When anybody who believed in human freedom would demand they have much less.

 

[jab]

The problem is that your side is complacent about what happened and refuses to see the bigger picture.

The bigger picture is keeping costs down = lower prices = higher standard of living for all. Why shouldn't a higher standard of living be important?

You want him left on the plane--without a thought for the hundreds of people who are going to be left behind because the crew didn't get there.

Wrong. We wanted him left on the plane . . .

But not only him -- what about the other 3 who did comply and got off? They did so under coercion, not by free choice, so you must want them also left on the plane -- right? Isn't it just as wrong to threaten force as it is to use it when the threatened one refuses to comply?

. . . and for the airline to find a rational, peaceful, appropriate solution for their internal logistical problem.

But not knowing what that is, because we're not omniscient, we have to leave that to those who directly perform the service, based on the best they can decide within the limited time frame.

One that does NOT involve violence against paying passengers.

What is the percentage of airline passengers who have violence done to them? Maybe one in a couple billion? It's a pretty small fraction. So the companies are doing a pretty good job of not doing violence to passengers. Maybe a grade of A-.

Now, the best answer is to increase the compensation offered but that assumes there's somebody on scene empowered to offer more--and that's unlikely. The norm is they don't offer more than the IDB rules mandate.

Then they should have located someone with the authority to increase the compensation before they resorted to violence against a paying customer.

Of course this also means increasing the compensation to the 3 who complied and got off. They chose to exit the plane under the terms of the lower compensation. You can't change the terms when someone refuses to comply after others already complied. The whole compensation question is being worked out -- but they had a decision to make at that time. They couldn't hold that plane there for 3 or 4 weeks (months) to allow time for the compensation policies & procedures to be settled.

A typical leftist answer--unable to make hard choices so you "choose" the path of inaction that results in greater harm.

The "greater harm" here is advocating to allow a corporation to direct authoritarian violence against innocent citizens in the pursuit of maximized profits . . .

The citizen in question is not totally "innocent" if he disobeys a lawful order from a security officer or law enforcement official.

The greater tragedy is that you don't recognize this fact, and instead - yet again - advocate for authoritarian violence against innocent people.

Ultimately there has to be a threat of force when people refuse to obey a lawful order. The infrequency of actually resorting to violence indicates a good success rate at achieving the goal of minimum violence.

but, um, for one thing, this was, er, you know, NOT a lawful order. You are accepting as aximatic a premise that needs proof and that even the airline has, um, sort ob backed away from.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How very genteel of you . I crook my pinky in homage as I sip my tea.

And, I judge by your posts where you attribute meanings to the worded "boarded" that are not evidenced in the "contract", that you would say the customer in this suit had no case, if he complied under verbal protest but without putting up passive resistance.

Huh? Both Loren and I agree that if he had gone peacefully he would be entitled to the compensation for the involuntary denied boarding clause.

I think he's still entitled to it.

 

[Artemus]

thanks Artemus
"From the letter that United CEO Oscar Munzo sent to employees the day after the incident (emphasis mine):
Quote Originally Posted by Oscar Munzo
'On Sunday, April 9, after United Express Flight 3411 was fully boarded, United's gate agents were approached by crewmembers that were told they needed to board the flight."
The claim that no one is boarded until the door is closed or the plane backs out of the gate is total bullshit fabricated by apologists trying to defend the reprehensible behavior of United Airlines and the police who dragged the guy out. That has been made abundantly clear by personal-rights law professors, aviation-law attorneys, and even the CEO of the company itself. At this point it is just willful ignorance to claim otherwise."

And there are other lawyers that have said different.

Saying this yet again without providing a link goes beyond willful ignorance.

 

[jab]

start your own company with investors who agree with you and prove that your business plan is better, instead of pretending you know better than those who are taking the risks.




It's more than a few thousand, and that higher cost will be passed on to future passengers. When the cost to the company goes up, the well-being of passengers goes down.

United has announced a change, i.e., to never again eject a passenger by force, which means future costs will be higher, because the one-out-of-ten-billion passenger who does this will not be removable, and so some other passengers who would have yielded their seat now will not do so, and costs will be much higher than they would have been otherwise. Probably it means there will be more empty seats on future flights, because they won't be able to book as many.

If that passenger had left the plane, like the other 3 -- the law-abiding passengers -- did, then the future costs would not have to go up, and the well-being of all consumers would have been served. But now, because of his bad behavior, costs to all future passengers will be higher, and their well-being lower.




No, the cost-savings, the money, is also important to future passengers, and a guarantee that no one can be forcefully removed regardless of the rules will lead to future costs which will be a net harm to all the consumers, and thus will be inhumane treatment. It's inhumane to reduce people's standard of living by forcing them to pay unnecessarily higher prices.

this is not an isolated incident, but rather is a particularly public instance of a widespread problem across corporate America.

How many times each day does corporate America drag a passenger kicking-and-screaming from a plane? each month? year? How is this a "widespread problem"? Corporate America is doing a good job of avoiding such incidents as this. With all the cameras now everywhere recording everything, it's almost a miracle that we have so few cases of this.

People are more important than a few thousand dollars, . . .

Which is why that guy should have got off the plane willingly. He has now reduced the standard of living to millions of Americans, costing them millions of dollars, not just a few thousand.

. . . and if you cannot trust your staff to make decisions about such sums of cash, then you sure as shit should not be entrusting them with the welfare of your customers.

The good decisions now cannot be made, because the problem can no longer be addressed with a moderate solution, whoever makes the decisions, because a thoughtless knee-jerk solution is the only kind possible now.

In addition to this passenger, the many apologists for him are to blame for the higher cost which will now be paid, and thus the lower standard of living society will suffer because they put one crybaby ahead of the public good.

You really are a vile misanthrope.

I sincerely hope that you are not now, or ever, placed in any position of authority whatsoever.

agreed

 

[laughing dog]

Please stop babbling.

I'm not. If he had not hit the armrest across from the seat things play out a lot different and he possibly could be looking at charges. It was a big gamble for him.

Please stop your babbling.

 

[jab]

In an article 2016 somewhere I read that the CEO of United, instead, used private planes rather than the company's airline when travelling about. If it was so important that staff of United were needed to be at some destination they could of at least bummed a lift from the CEO so to speak.

agreed

 

[laughing dog]

thanks Artemus
"From the letter that United CEO Oscar Munzo sent to employees the day after the incident (emphasis mine):
Quote Originally Posted by Oscar Munzo
'On Sunday, April 9, after United Express Flight 3411 was fully boarded, United's gate agents were approached by crewmembers that were told they needed to board the flight."
The claim that no one is boarded until the door is closed or the plane backs out of the gate is total bullshit fabricated by apologists trying to defend the reprehensible behavior of United Airlines and the police who dragged the guy out. That has been made abundantly clear by personal-rights law professors, aviation-law attorneys, and even the CEO of the company itself. At this point it is just willful ignorance to claim otherwise."

And there are other lawyers that have said different. But as I said, United wins very little fighting this in court. Winning thousands from the Dr wouldn't do them any good. However it has been several weeks and they haven't settled yet.

On what basis would any sane jury of the doctor's peers award UA anything?

 

[coloradoatheist]

And there are other lawyers that have said different. But as I said, United wins very little fighting this in court. Winning thousands from the Dr wouldn't do them any good. However it has been several weeks and they haven't settled yet.

On what basis would any sane jury of the doctor's peers award UA anything?

Is the definition of sane anyone who agrees with you? While more in the minority there are definitely a lot of people out there whose personal opinion was for United and a lot against. It would come down to several things in court and jury selection.

 

[jab]

My position has little to do with whether the public was worse off. I'm arguing that there's no evidence whatsoever that United absolutely had to get the crew in question on the flight in question.

United, Loren, and (apparently) you are claiming that there was no other option than to drag passengers off the plane so that their employees could get to their next gig on time. That this doctor was impeding the airline's flight operations.

There is nothing to back up that claim.

There were other "options" -- but the least costly was to remove 4 passengers. And the least costly is the best choice, for the benefit of the public/consumers generally.

We can assume the profit-seeking company will generally choose the least costly option.

But this is turning out not to be the least costly option after all. As has been pointed out several times in its own thread, United seems to have assumed its practices could violate its own, self-composed contract with its customer as it chose. WRONG, whoops: breaking the law is sometimes the least costly option, true, for a corporation--until it gets caught. Even libertarians believe, I understand, that the government should enforce contracts between private parties.

 

[Ford]

At this point I have to believe that you're being deliberately intellectually dishonest.

There's no "the crew doesn't get there" at all. Chicago is a big city with two major airports and several flights to Louisville on a daily basis. There was no chance that the crew simply wouldn't be able to make it to Louisville. If all the planes were suddenly grounded they could still rent a car and get to Louisville the same night.

1) Airlines use their own flights to move crew about, they don't stick them on other people's flights.

2) Chicago is big. Louisville isn't. There are 7 flights/day. At the time in question there were three left, the actual flight, a code-share on American an hour later and the second United flight (which we know was at least scheduled to be full as they couldn't rebook him on it) 3 hours later, most likely too late.

Nor can I find any other United flight arriving in Louisville in the time period in question.

Again, deliberately intellectually dishonest.


1) Airlines routinely put their crews on other airlines' flights.

2) "most likely too late" Too late for what? We can all look up the flights out of Louisville. They start departing early in the morning and continue throughout the day and into the evening.


Without any evidence, you've decided that the crew in question had to be on one of those early flights. You know that there's no evidence for this, yet you continue to act as if that were the case.

 

[DBT]

They should have upped the inducement to passengers to the point where, if generous enough, people would be quite willing to take the offer. It would have been far cheaper in terms of both money and customer good will than the situation they are now in.

A gate agent/manager isn't going to challenge years worth of both United's policy and the airlines as a whole policy on a random Sunday night on the belief of an improbably event. Can you see them calling up the manager and saying, "I believe one of the people that the computer has picked to IDB will resist and to get that person out we'll have to throw them against the arm rest?" The manager would say no.

What hurt more for your scenario in this case was needing four seats instead of one. If it was only one I believe they might have gone higher. But no airline had a procedure that said always find someone voluntarily.

But they did make some offer of money and hotel vouchers to the passengers in return for vacating their seats, but nobody wanted to take what they offered. They simply didn't offer enough to make it worthwhile.
But there is always a point where the offer is just too good to refuse. The airline decision maker simply didn't offer enough to make it too good to refuse. Had they upped the reward to that point, people would have taken the offer and it would still have been cheaper for the airline than the current litigation costs.

 

[jab]

The other option which should have be done was that the pilot gets out and investigates and makes a final stance. If he says that he doesn't believe the passenger in a position to comply with flight attendants instructions he can be kicked. Or they canel the flight.

No, the other options have already been explained several times. Putting the crew on a later flight. Putting the crew on another airline's flight. Putting them in a cab to catch a flight out of Midway. Renting them a car for the 4 1/2 hour drive to Louisville.

All these options could have been explored before making the decision to forcibly remove passengers from an airplane.

Of course, we don't know what time the crew's next flight was scheduled to leave Louisville, leaving the question of "rest rules" unanswered and unanswerable for the time being. If it was the first flight the next morning, then the delay caused by the fracas guaranteed that they would not be able to comply with the rules, thus stranding that flight as well. Since that flight apparently took off on time the next day, I think we can safely say they weren't that crew.

good observation, since the flight the 4 of them got on was delayed 2 hours.