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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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Linkark07

Banned
I'm baffled people are defending this company. The man paid for his ticket, he has all the rights to stay in the plane and his flight which he paid for it. Yet, the company doesn't care, kicks him out anyways using physical force and on top of that, the doctor is injured. And people are DEFENDING this?

Wow, just wow.

Hopefully this damages that company image and the doctor sues the hell out of them.
 

JohnsonUT

Member
I really wish I could find a version of this where I could read the small words.


Larger one that ends in 2010 before the United/Continental, US Airways/American, AirTran/Southwest, and Alaska/Virgin America mergers

HS_Airlines_Snapshot_large.jpg


Zoomable and Updated: https://www.historyshots.com/products/airlines?s=cirk
 

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
I get where the people are coming from defending United. They needed the seats to make sure another plane can fly. Piss poor fucking planning on their part and but thinking 4 people behind versus 200. I can get that.

But you don't bring out the fucking hammer ever on a paying customer who has does nothing wrong. There shouldn't even be a random selection. It should be, you keep raising the comp. 800? try 1200, offer a hotel, free flight, and refund too. Someone is going to budge. Minute you bring out the hammer on some one, you lost. It's going to cost you far more than offering up a few more Gs.
 
Can't believe people are defending the guards/airline on this. Whatever the policy may be, violently dragging this man off the plane is wretched in every way.
 
Glad they got this shit on camera. Fuck United Airlines.

This. That shit was bogus, but imagine if stuff like this wasn't recorded. One good thing about cellphones these days, it's exposing a lot of bullshit that otherwise would probably get swept under the rug. Wish my nephews phone wasn't dead when I was assulted by like 5 cops then arrested. :( I'd be in some money right now.
 

marrec

Banned
When it got to the point where security is there to remove you and they give you your last chance to do so voluntarily.. and you don't..then your wrong. He made a shitty situation as worse as it could be for everyone on that flight that got delayed due to his sense of entitlement. It sucks to get bounced but he escalated to the point of force ably being removed.

I don't know why calling in jack-booted thugs to remove passengers suddenly makes the airline right.

"Well they called security looks like I'm suddenly in the wrong in the situation, if only I was able to call my own security and balance out this equation."
 

ZPs

Member
So, Reddit has removed both of the top threads about this without an explanation. Quite odd. Note that the highest thread had over 40k upvotes.
 
When it got to the point where security is there to remove you and they give you your last chance to do so voluntarily.. and you don't..then your wrong. He made a shitty situation as worse as it could be for everyone on that flight that got delayed due to his sense of entitlement. It sucks to get bounced but he escalated to the point of force ably being removed.

No, you aren't. Conditio sine qua non. There's a direct causal relation between united fucking up and the events that followed, thus the fault rests with united. United made the situation as worse as possible by electing to escalate to the use of security instead of pursuing other avenues. The customer did absolutely nothing exceptional. This is not entitlement, this is a perfectly justifiable expectation to have the services you've paid for rendered. It sucks that no one wanted to leave, so united shoulda thought of something else instead of escalating to the point of forcibly removing a customer from the plane.
 
This is absolutely insane. I would have reacted similarly to the doctor. United has a big ol' lawsuit coming most likely.

You cannot physically penalize a paying customer for your business mistakes.
 
Never kick a doctor off a plane. I've seen enough disaster movies to know that having one onboard is preferable.

Screw flying United. No doctors, no leggings. What's next?
 

ahoyhoy

Unconfirmed Member
Dude is so entitled.

Imagine booking a flight weeks in advance, paying up front, arranging a ride to show up two hours early to the airport, waiting in line to go through invasive security measures, waiting in another line to get a seat on the plane, finding a spot in the overhead for your bag, sitting down, waiting for the idiots running thr company to figure out how to cram a few of their employees on an overbooked flight, and then after doing all that simple stuff refusing to get off a flight the night before seeing scheduled patients in order to help a company fix their own major fuck up.

Such entitlement.
 
No, you aren't. Conditio sine qua non. There's a direct causal relation between united fucking up and the events that followed, thus the fault rests with united. United made the situation as worse as possible by electing to escalate to the use of security instead of pursuing other avenues. The customer did absolutely nothing exceptional. This is not entitlement, this is a perfectly justifiable expectation to have the services you've paid for rendered. It sucks that no one wanted to leave, so united shoulda thought of something else instead of escalating to the point of forcibly removing a customer from the plane.

Yeah I don't think it's fair to remove passengers when they did absolutely nothing wrong. United overbooked, United created the problem. They didn't have to paint this guy into a corner and I stand by him for refusing to budge when push comes to shove. United made the problem, United needed to fix it themselves while respecting their customers.
 

marrec

Banned
Yeah I don't think it's fair to remove passengers when they did absolutely nothing wrong. United overbooked, United created the problem. They didn't have to paint this guy into a corner and I stand by him for refusing to budge when push comes to shove. United made the problem, United needed to fix it themselves while respecting their customers.

We apologize but customer respect is only available with Platinum Tier ticket holders and above.
 

jabuseika

Member
Dude is so entitled.

Imagine booking a flight weeks in advance, paying up front, arranging a ride to show up two hours early to the airport, waiting in line to go through invasive security measures, waiting in another line to get a seat on the plane, finding a spot in the overhead for your bag, sitting down, waiting for the idiots running thr company to figure out how to cram a few of their employees on an overbooked flight, and then after doing all that simple stuff refusing to get off a flight the night before seeing scheduled patients in order to help a company fix their own major fuck up.

Such entitlement.

If you got thugs with badges on your side that threaten with violence, that's when you know you're right.
/s
 

mr jones

Ethnicity is not a race!
I don't see how this is defensable. At all.

He paid for a ticket. Unless he was a threat to passengers or the employees, United was in the wrong.


How anyone can argue this is baffling? You're saying that you are fine with a company selling the seat that you paid for, so they can maximize profits?

Movie theaters and event stadiums should do this,then. Think of all the money they have been leaving on the table!
 

Tonedeff

Member
When it got to the point where security is there to remove you and they give you your last chance to do so voluntarily.. and you don't..then your wrong. He made a shitty situation as worse as it could be for everyone on that flight that got delayed due to his sense of entitlement. It sucks to get bounced but he escalated to the point of force ably being removed.]

Uh, I agree with this mostly. Motherfuckers were a little rough as fuck, but these fucking planes ain't public transport.
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
The man paid for his ticket, he has all the rights to stay in the plane and his flight which he paid for it.

See that's the thing..he doesn't have any rights to stay in the plane when asked to leave.
None whatsoever.
They have every right to forcibly remove him when he refuses.


United created a shitty shitty scenario and he chose to make it the worst possible outcome.
They should look at how to ensure it doesn't happen again, He should accept he made the situation drastically worse
 

Aselith

Member
Explain exactly why that makes me a scumbag? They have a right to remove anyone, for any reason. It is their business. A shitty, horrible move, but their right as a private entity. How on earth does correctly asserting that they have that -legal- right make anyone a scumbag?

You know how people call lawyers scumbags? Yeah, this is why. You can fall with in the law and still be acting like a scumbag. In fact, holding to the letter of the law and taking it as far as you possibly can despite how it hurts other people is Scumbag 101.

But don't worry all you have to do is stop and you won't be tainted by association!

Just stop.

Stop.
 
How the hell is that voluntary? bullshit attitude and behaviour by United. Will never fly with them and will try to disuade people I meet from using them.

Bloodydrake: Bullshit. It may be within the letter of the law, but it is just another example where the law lacks sufficient clarity. Obviously, the law is wrong in this instance. If they have instances when they need to transport employees for covering other flights, then they need to build some redundancy into their seet allocation for employers, rather than max out their number of passengers and kick them off when they need to tranport their own...
 

marrec

Banned
United created a shitty shitty scenario and he chose to make it the worst possible outcome.
They should look at how to ensure it doesn't happen again, He should accept he made the situation drastically worse

No you keep getting this wrong. United chose to make it the worst possible outcome. Some dude trying to get home to his job isn't worth this shit United.
 

slider

Member
Dude is so entitled.

Imagine booking a flight weeks in advance, paying up front, arranging a ride to show up two hours early to the airport, waiting in line to go through invasive security measures, waiting in another line to get a seat on the plane, finding a spot in the overhead for your bag, sitting down, waiting for the idiots running thr company to figure out how to cram a few of their employees on an overbooked flight, and then after doing all that simple stuff refusing to get off a flight the night before seeing scheduled patients in order to help a company fix their own major fuck up.

Such entitlement.

Glad someone noted that. Entitled? When he's paid for the flight? And then, apparently, been picked at random? That's the least entitled thing I can think of in this situation.
 
See that's the thing..he doesn't have any rights to stay in the plane when asked to leave.
None whatsoever.
They have every right to forcibly remove him when he refuses.


United created a shitty shitty scenario and he chose to make it the worst possible outcome.
They should look at how to ensure it doesn't happen again, He should accept he made the situation drastically worse
I dont think the doctor chose any of this personally. And I think a jury will be inclined to agree.
 
See that's the thing..he doesn't have any rights to stay in the plane when asked to leave.
None whatsoever.
They have every right to forcibly remove him when he refuses.


United created a shitty shitty scenario and he chose to make it the worst possible outcome.
They should look at how to ensure it doesn't happen again, He should accept he made the situation drastically worse

No. He didn't make situation worse. United escalated the situation by getting the cops to remove a man who did NOTHING wrong.
 

KingV

Member
So, they asked for volunteers, nobody wanted to leave. Then they picked 4 random seats. Guy refused to leave and cooperate with security. They want to force him, he hits his face when falling down.

Situation was handled badly, but I also get why they needed him to leave. You can't just have people refuse in a plane, otherwise everybody would just go "fuck off" when it happens to them.

They could have found alternate means for the employees... like flying them in another airline.
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
No you keep getting this wrong. United chose to make it the worst possible outcome. Some dude trying to get home to his job isn't worth this shit United.

flight isn't a public service your entitled to. its a service your offered to pay for but you must follow their rules.(within legal limits).
 
See that's the thing..he doesn't have any rights to stay in the plane when asked to leave.
None whatsoever.
They have every right to forcibly remove him when he refuses.

If thats american law, your law system sounds really fucked up. Coming from a german law graduates point of view, the man and the company signed a contract to deliver him to his destination on that specified day. Unless the plane cant fly because of storms etc. he has every right that the company still delivers him to that destination on that day.

If that wouldnt work, the doctor could sue him for the money he would lose taking another flight AND a compensation.

The airline didnt keep their part of the contract.
(Just from a point of view from german law)

Also United could argue "my private property, my rules." but the behaviour of the customer would still be justified and excused, because it was "their right" and the didnt do anything wrong.
 

KingV

Member
If thats american law, your law system sounds really fucked up. Coming from a german law graduates point of view, the man and the company signed a contract to deliver him to his destination on that specified day. Unless the plane cant fly because of storms etc. he has every right that the company still delivers him to that destination on that day.

If that wouldnt work, the doctor could sue him for the money he would lose taking another flight AND a compensation.

The airline didnt keep their part of the contract.
(Just from a point of view from german law)

In the US you just give the airline money and they take you to your destination if they want to, apparently.
 
I dont think the doctor chose any of this personally. And I think a jury will be inclined to agree.

The problem he faces with any potential civil litigation is that the Contract of Carriage he agreed to when purchasing the ticket allows for the airline to remove anyone from the flight for pretty much any reason, and has defined compensation scales.

I was just reading it, and boy is it a fucking nightmare for consumers. That said, I did learn that I could bring mini bottles of liquor in my carry-on. :)

Also, I think you can ask for a check instead of a voucher as compensation with United.
 
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