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

[bilby]

As this is disruptive not only for passengers, but also for airlines, it likely is a beneficial change; By making it difficult for airlines to dump a passenger involuntarily, one would assume that it makes them more likely to consider other options (such as offering increased compensation in order to get volunteers), before going directly to arbitrary dumping random people.

Unless you have evidence that the number of passengers involuntarily dumped has remained the same or has increased, your assumption that things have not improved is not supported by your observation of a change in the process. It's the frequency that counts, not the methodology.

You realize most of the time it's because the passenger is wildly in the wrong? (Drunk or unwilling to take their proper seat.)

I am pretty sure that some passenger being drunk doesn't cause the airline to sell more tickets than there are seats on the plane.

And should they not be able to start boarding standbys until the boarding cutoff (usually 15 minutes) even when they know there's almost no chance the proper passenger will make it? (It happens. I've been that proper passenger who was assumed to be misconnecting. After ATC scheduled us with a -1hr connection time multiple things went just right and we made it.)

They should be allowed to sell each seat once and once only. Once sold, the seat belongs to the passenger who paid for it, whether he uses it or not.

It's not rocket science. If I buy an apple, and I haven't eaten it in what the greengrocer thinks is a reasonable time, that doesn't mean the greengrocer can sell it to someone else. Even if I throw it away, the greengrocer can't sell it to a 'standby customer' who has the right to fish it out of my compost bin.

Airlines sell seats. Once someone has bought a seat, it is their seat for the duration of the flight. If the airline sells more tickets than they have seats available, that's fraud. If the airline needs seats, but it has already sold out of seats, then the airline has to suck it up, like anyone else who wanted a seat but found that they were all gone. If the airline wants to not sell a few seats, on the off chance that they might need them, then they can do that; If they then decide to sell those seats as 'standby' seats a few minutes (or hours) before the flight, then that's fine; But they can't sell seats that they already sold. If they sold a seat, and they want it back, then they have to buy it back at the market rate - which is set by a free and fair negotiation between the airline and the people who bought seats, and which might be dramatically more than they sold it for.

Basically, the airlines need to sell their product in accordance with the same rules of commerce that apply to other vendors.

A greengrocer with 100 apples cannot sell 130 apples, in the hope that some buyers won't collect. He can't decide after the apples are all sold that he wanted some for himself, and take them back from the people who bought them; And nor can he dictate to the buyers terms under which he is allowed to buy back the apples for less than, or even the same amount as, or even a fixed amount MORE than the sale price. If he sold all the apples, and now he wants an apple, he has to negotiate a price with the new owners of the apples at which they agree to let him buy back the number he desires.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

***UPDATE***

Two of the airport security team involved in the incident with Dr. Dao have been fired, and two others have been suspended:

The Chicago Department of Aviation has fired two of its officers involved in April’s widely publicized dragging of a passenger at O’Hare International Airport, according to the city’s top watchdog.

The dragging, captured on video by another passenger and spread on social media worldwide, involved Dr. David Dao, who declined to leave a United flight to make way for traveling crew members. Dao was forcibly dragged from the flight by aviation security officers, resulting in a concussion, a broken nose and the loss of two teeth. The incident prompted a lawsuit and settlement by United, as well as changes in company procedures.


An investigation by the city’s Office of Inspector General found that three aviation security officers and one aviation security sergeant “mishandled” the situation, according to the office’s third-quarter report, released Tuesday. The investigation also found that employees had made misleading statements and “deliberately removed material facts from their reports.”

Acting on the inspector general’s findings and recommendations, the Aviation Department fired the officer who “improperly escalated the incident” and the sergeant who was involved in removing facts from an employee report, the inspector general’s office said. The other officers were suspended.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-aviation-cops-fired-20171017-story.html

This is going to trigger a million alt-right Trumpflakes with tiki torches and a Klan band led by Milo the ass clown.

Just look at this comment from a Reich wing thug:

What a joke. These guys should sue and be reinstated. The good "doctor" refused to leave, even after 3 other passengers did leave. He had it coming to him. If I was "escorting" him off the flight, he wouldn't be able to walk for a few weeks!​

 

[bilby]

***UPDATE***

Two of the airport security team involved in the incident with Dr. Dao have been fired, and two others have been suspended:

This is going to trigger a million alt-right Trumpflakes with tiki torches and a Klan band led by Milo the ass clown.

Just look at this comment from a Reich wing thug:

What a joke. These guys should sue and be reinstated. The good "doctor" refused to leave, even after 3 other passengers did leave. He had it coming to him. If I was "escorting" him off the flight, he wouldn't be able to walk for a few weeks!​

How dare he imagine that he was entitled to something he had bought and paid for. He's not even white!

Bloody foreigners, coming over here treating our sick, and sitting in airline seats that they paid for. There ought to be a law... and some kind of prison camp.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

BTW, for those who think this produced beneficial change:

The result now is generally if there's a passenger that needs to be removed but doesn't want to go they (airlines in general, not just United) deboard the whole plane. Everyone ends up later.

This is good. It makes it significantly more costly to the airline to try and deboard someone who doesn't want to be removed and therefore more financially viable for the airline to up the incentives to get someone to accept leaving. Once the compensation hits the $15-20,000 mark, which would be much less than this disruption to their service would cost them, they're bound to find at least one person on the plane who'll find a reason he can hang out in a hotel for one more evening.

You assume that the problem was the airline's fault. It usually isn't.

Or should the airline have to cough up a bunch more when someone got kicked by a FAM?

It is their fault. They choose to maximize their income from each flight by overselling the seats. There are certain foreseeable consequences of that decision. When their decisions inevitably lead to those foreseeable consequences, the onus should be on them to use some of they extra income they garnered leading up to those consequences to mitigate their effects.

 

[DBT]

BTW, for those who think this produced beneficial change:

The result now is generally if there's a passenger that needs to be removed but doesn't want to go they (airlines in general, not just United) deboard the whole plane. Everyone ends up later.

Wouldn't that be worse for airline customer relations than the original incident?

 

[laughing dog]

You realize most of the time it's because the passenger is wildly in the wrong? (Drunk or unwilling to take their proper seat.)

First, as others have pointed out, the passenger cannot be wildly in the wrong if they have been sold a seat and seated. It is not the passenger's fault that the airline allowed too many passengers on the plane. 2nd, why would an airline allow a drunk passenger on a plane? Third, please provide disinterested evidence that most of the time the passenger is wildly in the wrong.

I find it fascinating that you are defending a fuckwitted airline response to a self-inflicted problem. All the airlines have to do is to make an offer available that someone accepts. That solution is used all the time in a market economy, and it seems to work.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You realize most of the time it's because the passenger is wildly in the wrong? (Drunk or unwilling to take their proper seat.)

First, as others have pointed out, the passenger cannot be wildly in the wrong if they have been sold a seat and seated. It is not the passenger's fault that the airline allowed too many passengers on the plane. 2nd, why would an airline allow a drunk passenger on a plane? Third, please provide disinterested evidence that most of the time the passenger is wildly in the wrong.

I find it fascinating that you are defending a fuckwitted airline response to a self-inflicted problem. All the airlines have to do is to make an offer available that someone accepts. That solution is used all the time in a market economy, and it seems to work.

So basically the right-wing is advocating for an anti-free-market policy toward individuals enforced by violence. This supports the idea that the right-wing is more about support of the existing hierarchical structure than even its own purported ideology and we tend to see this kind of evidence over and over.

 

[coloradoatheist]

You realize most of the time it's because the passenger is wildly in the wrong? (Drunk or unwilling to take their proper seat.)

First, as others have pointed out, the passenger cannot be wildly in the wrong if they have been sold a seat and seated. It is not the passenger's fault that the airline allowed too many passengers on the plane. 2nd, why would an airline allow a drunk passenger on a plane? Third, please provide disinterested evidence that most of the time the passenger is wildly in the wrong.

I find it fascinating that you are defending a fuckwitted airline response to a self-inflicted problem. All the airlines have to do is to make an offer available that someone accepts. That solution is used all the time in a market economy, and it seems to work.

Except being bumped from a flight is normal practice and happens to thousands of people a year and even some in the situation of where they get on a plane and then have to give up their seats.

The situation with an airline is that it is more complex than other businesses and they can't do what other businesses do when they overbook, they can't queue. Waiting an hour in line at Space mountain in Disneyworld is an overbooking situation but it's solved by making people stand in line. An airline can't make people stand in line. This guy was a doctor and doctors overbook all the time too. I have waited over an hour for a doctor and sometimes even in the room inside the office.

It will be curious how many times airlines have to use the procedure Loren outlined.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

First, as others have pointed out, the passenger cannot be wildly in the wrong if they have been sold a seat and seated. It is not the passenger's fault that the airline allowed too many passengers on the plane. 2nd, why would an airline allow a drunk passenger on a plane? Third, please provide disinterested evidence that most of the time the passenger is wildly in the wrong.

I find it fascinating that you are defending a fuckwitted airline response to a self-inflicted problem. All the airlines have to do is to make an offer available that someone accepts. That solution is used all the time in a market economy, and it seems to work.

Except being bumped from a flight is normal practice and happens to thousands of people a year and even some in the situation of where they get on a plane and then have to give up their seats.

The situation with an airline is that it is more complex than other businesses and they can't do what other businesses do when they overbook, they can't queue. Waiting an hour in line at Space mountain in Disneyworld is an overbooking situation but it's solved by making people stand in line. An airline can't make people stand in line.

So this is an excuse for allowing them to overbook? Your post sounds like a reason why airlines should not overbook. It should be against the law to sell a seat twice.

When I needed to see an eye doctor quickly, they squeezed me into the schedule, they didn't throw a person out of the room and put me in their space.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Except being bumped from a flight is normal practice and happens to thousands of people a year and even some in the situation of where they get on a plane and then have to give up their seats.

The situation with an airline is that it is more complex than other businesses and they can't do what other businesses do when they overbook, they can't queue. Waiting an hour in line at Space mountain in Disneyworld is an overbooking situation but it's solved by making people stand in line. An airline can't make people stand in line.

So this is an excuse for allowing them to overbook? Your post sounds like a reason why airlines should not overbook. It should be against the law to sell a seat twice.

When I needed to see an eye doctor quickly, they squeezed me into the schedule, they didn't throw a person out of the room and put me in their space.

No. It's the opposite. By allowing queuing it allows the business to be flexible in your case. If the law was that you couldn't never have a patient wait more than five minutes than doctors couldn't put in those rush appointments and you may be stuck waiting weeks for an appt.

 

[coloradoatheist]

We have mixed feelings about queuing strategies. Take for example merging at the construction point. The more efficient manner is to merge at the end and not further back in the road, but morally we have to get over the qualm that we someone is cheating the system by late merging. Some days you are going to be that 40th car, some days you be that first car getting in at the end.

I think this story shows the opposite of normal. Giving up the seat in that case is better overall but bad for one individual which is the opposite of how people believe on this site.

 

[laughing dog]

First, as others have pointed out, the passenger cannot be wildly in the wrong if they have been sold a seat and seated. It is not the passenger's fault that the airline allowed too many passengers on the plane. 2nd, why would an airline allow a drunk passenger on a plane? Third, please provide disinterested evidence that most of the time the passenger is wildly in the wrong.

I find it fascinating that you are defending a fuckwitted airline response to a self-inflicted problem. All the airlines have to do is to make an offer available that someone accepts. That solution is used all the time in a market economy, and it seems to work.

Except being bumped from a flight is normal practice and happens to thousands of people a year and even some in the situation of where they get on a plane and then have to give up their seats.

The situation with an airline is that it is more complex than other businesses and they can't do what other businesses do when they overbook, they can't queue. Waiting an hour in line at Space mountain in Disneyworld is an overbooking situation but it's solved by making people stand in line. An airline can't make people stand in line.

For some reason you feel "All the airlines have to do is to make an offer available that someone accepts. That solution is used all the time in a market economy, and it seems to work." is not a viable option.

This guy was a doctor and doctors overbook all the time too. I have waited over an hour for a doctor and sometimes even in the room inside the office.

Some doctors overbook. Sometimes the wait is not due to overbooking but that a particular client has a non-routine issue that takes more time to deal with. Regardless, none of that justifies United's behavior nor does it justify an airline using violence to achieve its commercial profits.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

We have mixed feelings about queuing strategies. Take for example merging at the construction point. The more efficient manner is to merge at the end and not further back in the road, but morally we have to get over the qualm that we someone is cheating the system by late merging. Some days you are going to be that 40th car, some days you be that first car getting in at the end.

I think this story shows the opposite of normal. Giving up the seat in that case is better overall but bad for one individual which is the opposite of how people believe on this site.

Yes, it's better overall but the issue is how to deal with the fact that it's bad for that one individual. The reason that something bad is happening to him is because of the business decisions made by the airlines, therefore the onus is on the airlines to compensate that individual for doing something bad to him. If they just keep raising the monetary amount of the compensation, eventually someone is going to agree to it. Someone may raise their hand at $500 or they may not get anyone raising their hand until they offer $5000. Whichever it is, their business practices led to their needing someone to agree, so it's on them to offer whatever it takes to secure this agreement.

 

[coloradoatheist]

We have mixed feelings about queuing strategies. Take for example merging at the construction point. The more efficient manner is to merge at the end and not further back in the road, but morally we have to get over the qualm that we someone is cheating the system by late merging. Some days you are going to be that 40th car, some days you be that first car getting in at the end.

I think this story shows the opposite of normal. Giving up the seat in that case is better overall but bad for one individual which is the opposite of how people believe on this site.

Yes, it's better overall but the issue is how to deal with the fact that it's bad for that one individual. The reason that something bad is happening to him is because of the business decisions made by the airlines, therefore the onus is on the airlines to compensate that individual for doing something bad to him. If they just keep raising the monetary amount of the compensation, eventually someone is going to agree to it. Someone may raise their hand at $500 or they may not get anyone raising their hand until they offer $5000. Whichever it is, their business practices led to their needing someone to agree, so it's on them to offer whatever it takes to secure this agreement.

But in the policy they do have provisions for what happens to somebody. If you get bumped from a flight it spells out what happens to a customer who gets bumped. If he got bumped at the gate it says that he would have gotten X compensation for however late he was going to be. He didn't pay for his ticket right at the gate so getting bumped at the gate or in the plane made no difference in that regarding, only a mental belief.

 

[whichphilosophy]

According to one Chinese colleague in Beijing US airlines lack of consideration for Customer Welfare, understanding the circumstances and using needless force.

Chinese Airlines use these tenets constantly per this very short training video The Customer is Always Right Just 41 seconds but enough to school its US counterparts.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRi6pK6xvU

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You realize most of the time it's because the passenger is wildly in the wrong? (Drunk or unwilling to take their proper seat.)

I am pretty sure that some passenger being drunk doesn't cause the airline to sell more tickets than there are seats on the plane.

But those who are too drunk do get removed. In fact, the law requires it.

They should be allowed to sell each seat once and once only. Once sold, the seat belongs to the passenger who paid for it, whether he uses it or not.

1) Ticket prices would go up. Want that?

2) There is one airline that does work on this basis--and yet has about the highest rate of bumps. (Sometimes an airline has to substitute another plane because the first one has a mechanical issue.)

3) You didn't address the FAM issue. Should they just cancel all flights that the government tries to put an air marshall on at the last minute?

You're trying to make rules for a situation where nothing goes wrong.

A greengrocer with 100 apples cannot sell 130 apples, in the hope that some buyers won't collect. He can't decide after the apples are all sold that he wanted some for himself, and take them back from the people who bought them; And nor can he dictate to the buyers terms under which he is allowed to buy back the apples for less than, or even the same amount as, or even a fixed amount MORE than the sale price. If he sold all the apples, and now he wants an apple, he has to negotiate a price with the new owners of the apples at which they agree to let him buy back the number he desires.

You don't pre-order apples so the comparison isn't valid. The closest equivalent is you advertise the apples and don't have them--and the law understands that, that's why we have rain checks.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You don't pre-order apples so the comparison isn't valid. The closest equivalent is you advertise the apples and don't have them--and the law understands that, that's why we have rain checks.

Whether or not they are pre-ordered is irrelevant and so the analogy remains valid.

Other ticketing systems don't do the same thing, even if you pre-order, such as if you pre-order your tickets to a play. They don't kick you out of a theatre after you are there sitting in your seat because a pretty woman walked in they want to have the seat or for any other reason, unless you are violent, crying "fire fire!" or involved in some other dangerous illegal activity. They certainly do not send the police in to beat you up because it's raining.

 

[bilby]

I am pretty sure that some passenger being drunk doesn't cause the airline to sell more tickets than there are seats on the plane.

But those who are too drunk do get removed. In fact, the law requires it.

And so it should. But nobody is arguing that no passenger should ever be removed from a flight for any reason whatsoever; That's your strawman. You are trying to expand the scope of the discussion, to dilute the unreasonable case with lots of reasonable cases, in the hope that nobody will notice that the reasonableness of this particular case has not changed. It's not working, and you should stop doing that.

They should be allowed to sell each seat once and once only. Once sold, the seat belongs to the passenger who paid for it, whether he uses it or not.

1) Ticket prices would go up. Want that?

If it means that a seat I bought and paid for cannot be taken away from me through no fault of mine, other than due to unforeseeable circumstances, then yes, I would be fine with paying more. There's no law, physical nor statute, that says airline tickets must be inexpensive.

2) There is one airline that does work on this basis--and yet has about the highest rate of bumps. (Sometimes an airline has to substitute another plane because the first one has a mechanical issue.)

Mechanical issues are not the issue. You are trying to expand the scope of the discussion, to dilute the unreasonable case with lots of reasonable cases, in the hope that nobody will notice that the reasonableness of this particular case has not changed. It's not working, and you should stop doing that.

3) You didn't address the FAM issue. Should they just cancel all flights that the government tries to put an air marshall on at the last minute?

The government shouldn't be putting armed security personnel onto aircraft at all. If they must, then they should be in the same queue for tickets as everyone else - if the flight is full when the government picks that flight, then they should have to pick a different flight instead, or pay a ticket holder the market rate to give up their seat.

You're trying to make rules for a situation where nothing goes wrong.

No, I am not. Rules for when things GO wrong are fine as they are. I am interested in rules for when things are deliberately engineered in such a way that 'going wrong' becomes inevitable. If there are 300 seats, the airline should sell less than or equal to 300 tickets. If they sell 301 or more, then they are setting themselves up for a problem - and if the problem is of their own making, then they need to pay to fix it.

A greengrocer with 100 apples cannot sell 130 apples, in the hope that some buyers won't collect. He can't decide after the apples are all sold that he wanted some for himself, and take them back from the people who bought them; And nor can he dictate to the buyers terms under which he is allowed to buy back the apples for less than, or even the same amount as, or even a fixed amount MORE than the sale price. If he sold all the apples, and now he wants an apple, he has to negotiate a price with the new owners of the apples at which they agree to let him buy back the number he desires.

You don't pre-order apples so the comparison isn't valid. The closest equivalent is you advertise the apples and don't have them--and the law understands that, that's why we have rain checks.

"We" don't - rain checks are an American cultural phenomenon, not a law of nature.

Also, what Don2 says above^

 

[coloradoatheist]

You don't pre-order apples so the comparison isn't valid. The closest equivalent is you advertise the apples and don't have them--and the law understands that, that's why we have rain checks.

Whether or not they are pre-ordered is irrelevant and so the analogy remains valid.

Other ticketing systems don't do the same thing, even if you pre-order, such as if you pre-order your tickets to a play. They don't kick you out of a theatre after you are there sitting in your seat because a pretty woman walked in they want to have the seat or for any other reason, unless you are violent, crying "fire fire!" or involved in some other dangerous illegal activity. They certainly do not send the police in to beat you up because it's raining.

Because the issue with airlines and flights is that it's a lot more complex than most products. The issue on this flight was that the crew needed to make the Newark flight the next had to be sourced from some where because the crew scheduled had worked too much during the day and couldn't fly because of FAA rules. Very few companies have to deal with that. If the manager at McDonalds has to come in to work because a worker called in sick is there rules preventing that person from working hours the next day?

Businesses certainly will call the police when they ask you to leave their establishment.

 

[bilby]

Whether or not they are pre-ordered is irrelevant and so the analogy remains valid.

Other ticketing systems don't do the same thing, even if you pre-order, such as if you pre-order your tickets to a play. They don't kick you out of a theatre after you are there sitting in your seat because a pretty woman walked in they want to have the seat or for any other reason, unless you are violent, crying "fire fire!" or involved in some other dangerous illegal activity. They certainly do not send the police in to beat you up because it's raining.

Because the issue with airlines and flights is that it's a lot more complex than most products. The issue on this flight was that the crew needed to make the Newark flight the next had to be sourced from some where because the crew scheduled had worked too much during the day and couldn't fly because of FAA rules. Very few companies have to deal with that. If the manager at McDonalds has to come in to work because a worker called in sick is there rules preventing that person from working hours the next day?

Businesses certainly will call the police when they ask you to leave their establishment.

This is irrelevant; The company has reasons - that customers need not be concerned with - that mean that they need to take back (some of) the product that they sold. They can approach this situation reasonably, and buy back the product at whatever rate the market sets, until they have enough for their needs; Or they can be fucking arseholes, and beat the shit out of their customers if they resist the company's demand that they return the product that they already paid for.

This is no more complicated than that; The complexity (or otherwise) of their reasons for needing to buy back the product they sold has no bearing on how they should go about getting that product back from their customers.

If the FAA rules make it imperative that UA get those seats for their crew (because otherwise they risk losing millions of dollars) then that justifies UA paying up to millions of dollars (if necessary - which it likely won't be) to re-gain those seats from their customers. It does NOT justify UA beating the shit out of their customers, even if none of them will accept a million dollar offer for their seat.