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United Airlines violently drags a doctor off a plane so employee could take his seat

Why do you fly United?


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aznpxdd

Member
Really blows my mind that they thought this was the appropriate way to resolve this issue. I mean, really...dragging a bleeding passenger off his seat...dafaq...what year is this.

Hope United gets what's coming to them this round.
 

Korey

Member
Redditor gives eye witness account of doctor being violently removed from United plane
my comment reposted from a previously deleted thread:

I was on this flight and want to add a few things to give some extra context. This was extremely hard to watch and children were crying during and after the event.

When the manager came on the plane to start telling people to get off someone said they would take another flight (the next day at 2:55 in the afternoon) for $1600 and she laughed in their face.

The security part is accurate, but what you did not see is that after this initial incident they lost the man in the terminal. He ran back on to the plane covered in blood shaking and saying that he had to get home over and over. I wonder if he did not have a concussion at this point. They then kicked everybody off the plane to get him off a second time and clean the blood out of the plane. This took over an hour.

All in all the incident took about two and a half hours. The united employees who were on the plane to bump the gentleman were two hostesses and two pilots of some sort.

This was very poorly handled by United and I will definitely never be flying with them again.

All of the fellow passengers so far have been on the victim's side. None have mentioned a commotion, as the authorities have tried to imply.

Other passenger accounts:
https://twitter.com/AC360/status/851600794239545345
https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10156405885621509/
 

Oh, shit, your victim-blaming blogger ranked United #2 on his list of airlines.

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/best-and-worst-airlines-2017/

Look at the comments, his own readers accuse him of being a paid shill for United.

But I'm sure the attorney advice he sought on this news story was totally reasonable, right...

giphy.gif
 
The amount of corporate dicksucking in this thread is insane, and lawl that poll. But for srs just raise the fucking incentive past $800, eventually someone will bite and if it gets higher and higher, well that's on fucking United for overbooking in the first place.
 

danm999

Member
Wow just $800 on offer and if there are no takers they get to assault someone. Civility can be bought pretty cheap huh.

What happens if they offer $1200? Do they get to start icing fools?
 

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
So can anyone confirm yet if they offered cash or just a flight voucher?

Flight vouchers were offered and no one accepted. The people who were forced to leave get cash but it's not an 'offer' because you can't refuse it.

No one was 'offered' cash but the people who are forced to leave are entitled it after the fact
 

99Luffy

Banned
I bet United was probably in the process of trying to get this guy banned from flying ever again for giving them grief. But now they cant cause of the media attention.
 
I bet United was probably in the process of trying to get this guy banned from flying ever again for giving them grief. But now they cant cause of the media attention.

They probably would've just banned him from United

But yeah I doubt this ever gets to court, United would be insane to let it get to that point
 

Nerokis

Member
This probably happens all the time, but passengers don't actually know they're being bumped for another flight crew, because the airline isn't dumb enough to do it at the last minute after the plane is 100% boarded. The airlines probably just tell passengers the flight was overbooked at the gate, not mentioning that some or all of those "overbooked" seats are being given to airline employees. Had United done this, no one would have known the difference, and we wouldn't have the awful video of the passenger being dragged down the aisle. They botched this horribly.

So overbooking law doesn't address scenarios where an airline feels a need to seat some number of employees, but has to refuse to seat (or deplane, in some instances) customers in order to do so. However, airlines regularly and deceptively shield themselves behind overbooking law in order to continue overselling tickets while also ensuring that employees can be seated whenever there is a need for it, which seems to be fairly often.

Is this a fair interpretation of what you're saying? If so, aren't the implications of that a bit bigger than this particular situation? It seems to me that would call for a broader conversation on how overbooking law has been interpreted, how it has been enforced, and the possibility that it could use some refinement or clarification.
 

captive

Joe Six-Pack: posting for the common man
I am amazed how IAH/HOU work at all with things like these.

its pretty bad. Pretty much all the airlines use similar systems. Southwest had one or two outages last year, Delta had one or two, United had one or two. Its pretty amazing shit continues to work.
 
I really thought United was going to go in an different, better route under the new CEO. Turns out the guy is a fucking moron. All big 3 carriers are lumbering giants that bought out the competition, which drives this idgaf attitude.

There is a desperate need for a disruptor in the airline industry. Something to break these flying institutions from their archaic ways and understand how the future is going to be shaped.
 

BamfMeat

Member
I really thought United was going to go in an different, better route under the new CEO. Turns out the guy is a fucking moron. All big 3 carriers are lumbering giants that bought out the competition, which drives this idgaf attitude.

There is a desperate need for a disruptor in the airline industry. Something to break these flying institutions from their archaic ways and understand how the future is going to be shaped.

That's funny you say that - they are doing things a different way, which is why they're now making record profits, whereas previously, they were operating on razor-thin margins.

For better or worse, this is the new airline industry.
 
So overbooking law doesn't address scenarios where an airline feels a need to seat some number of employees, but has to refuse to seat (or deplane, in some instances) customers in order to do so. However, airlines regularly and deceptively shield themselves behind overbooking law in order to continue overselling tickets while also ensuring that employees can be seated whenever there is a need for it, which seems to be fairly often.

Is this a fair interpretation of what you're saying? If so, aren't the implications of that a bit bigger than this particular situation? It seems to me that would call for a broader conversation on how overbooking law has been interpreted, how it has been enforced, and the possibility that it could use some refinement or clarification.

I'm saying that's how it likely happens. I have no evidence that airlines are doing this, though, other than this specific new story. And the only reason we know about it is because United handled it so poorly that the passengers were all seated before they decided to take seats for United employees.

What I'm saying is that passengers across the country could be denied seats involuntarily to airline personnel every day, and we just don't know about it. It would be hard to prove, because passengers don't have access to the information the airline does, and the airline isn't going to admit passengers were bumped so airline employees could take those seats; they'll just say the flight was overbooked. So while federal regulations may not allow a paying customer's seat to be taken for an airline employee, it would be difficult to enforce given the information disparity.
 

danm999

Member
I mean jokes aside this says a lot about how woeful consumer protections are in the USA. A business is able to effectively use law enforcement to assault an individual who is impeding their profit.

Even worse there are clearly individuals who defend this on a legal and moral basis usually under the guise of a lack of pragmatism on the individuals case, ignoring that pragmatism runs both ways and obviously businesses should not engage in practices which seriously jeopardise their operations (in this case, overbooking).

That's before you even get into the doctors justification for refusing to leave and that care of patients should always trump profit.
 

ColdPizza

Banned
The amount of corporate dicksucking in this thread is insane, and lawl that poll. But for srs just raise the fucking incentive past $800, eventually someone will bite and if it gets higher and higher, well that's on fucking United for overbooking in the first place.

The fact that no one budged at $800 tells you it is a joke of a going rate. It should be bumped up.
 

gamma

Member
Yeah, why? Am I not allowed to feel angry when someone gets the shit beaten out of him for trying to use a service he paid for?

Sure, but why aren't you angry at the people who beat him instead? You think the CEO should rot in prison for being an ass?
 
Why hello there, detached corporate sociopath.

It's so cold.

Just say: We sincerely regret how the situation escalated. Law enforcement shouldn't have been involved in a non-dangerous situation. Should this situation ever arise in the future, we will make sure that we have more reasonable accomodations for those inconvenienced. We've reached out to Dr. Whatever to find out how we can improve in this regard.

And then pay the dude off.
 
It's so cold.

Just say: We sincerely regret how the situation escalated. Law enforcement shouldn't have been involved in a non-dangerous situation. Should this situation ever arise in the future, we will make sure that we have more reasonable accomodations for those inconvenienced. We've reached out to Dr. Whatever to find out how we can improve in this regard.

And then pay the dude off.
Someone make this man the CEO.
 
Employees probably have some 'claim' that they need to get to the destination on time to be used on connecting flights. I'm assuming they were on work, not on a pleasure trip.

I give up with the constant emotional remarks of I'm defending the actions. I'm not. I'm doing what anyone critically trying to decipher whether there is a lawsuit against the bumping and the violence, or just excessive force. We're all going to get an answer here anyway, lawyers will be all over this. Although I did post one lawyer a few pages back saying for better or worse the lawsuit here will be around excessive force, not an airline being able to ask you to leave the cabin, because he says they can.

Why can't this shit be discussed? It'll affect the future and what people can and can't expect airlines to be able to do after the gate. Fair enough I should maybe have waited a few days, but the conversation snowballed from one or two questions to about 15 different people debating and me constantly replying to people. Isn't that what the forums exist for? I've learned some shit I didn't know and I'll be damned if it's just me who's lacking in 'knowledge' around this. While everyone can agree using physical violence is unacceptable and UA fucked up, I don't see why from that it's not reasonable to try and realize all the points they fucked up on, and some where they might not be able to be legally attacked.

I haven't seen many engaging with Syriel for this http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=233694414 Covering many attempts to discuss things objectively. Yes it's one huge post which is easy to ignore versus all of mine. However, as I said most of mine have been replying to people quoting me. Anyway, I'll give it a rest unless for a night. I genuinely did email the author of that AP article asking if they know more about the airline being able to bump in the cabin.

Actually I responded to Syriel's post with actual statute citations.

And in response to Syriel's long post (didn't want to quote to save space) on the tarmac isn't really the issue there. It's that the language implies you can be considered boarded without the doors having closed.

Additionally the other code sections simply define a boarded passenger as someone who boards a plane not when the doors close.

A plane is "in flight" when the doors close. I've seen nothing that says a passenger is only boarded when the doors close.
 
Jeez, was hard to watch that... That's bullshit what they did, poor guy

Not sure why people care so much about United losing money over this, if they fail our tax dollars will be what bails them out.

Many carriers ready to take uniteds place if they tank. Aerospace market is bigger than you realize
 

nahlakhai

Member
Not sure why people care so much about United losing money over this, if they fail our tax dollars will be what bails them out.

So lets root for them to succeed so that you feel like your tax dollars went to a good cause? Fuck United and that was before this. There have been bigger airlines that went under that weren't bailed out.
 
Not sure why people care so much about United losing money over this, if they fail our tax dollars will be what bails them out.

Well then I guess corps should just do whatever they like and we should shut up about it because my tax dollars and those poor employees, some of which were the ones who called the police on this helpless old man of almost 70.
 
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