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Fly the Unfriendly Skies
United Airlines has a PR nightmare on its hands as a disturbing video burned up the Internet. After overbooking the flight from Chicago to Louisville, the crew chose four passengers at random to leave the flight. Passenger number three was a doctor who said he needed to treat patients in the morning, so refused to leave. The flight crew called security, which forcibly yanked him out of his seat and dragged him down the aisle.
This being 2017, several passengers recorded the whole thing on their smartphones:
@united @FoxNews @CNN not a good way to treat a Doctor trying to get to work because they overbooked pic.twitter.com/sj9oHk94Ik
— Tyler Bridges (@Tyler_Bridges) April 9, 2017
Airline staff first tried a carrot before using a stick. Before boarding, they offered passengers $400 and a hotel stay to give up their seats. Once boarded, they doubled it to $800 and said the flight wouldn’t leave until four people were gone. When no one volunteered, a computer selected four passengers at random.
With condemnation raining down on the airline, United’s CEO issued a statement:
Using the term “re-accommodate” to describe forcibly dragging a customer off a plane only fueled the online firestorm.
How should United have reacted in this situation and what can they do to fix it?
Published in Culture
Ive changed my mind and decided that I’m ready for more regulation. A LOT more! With regulation that forbids overbooking and requires excess assets to respond to changes in weather, etc, the airlines can finally charge people the price required to give them what they’re demanding.
Airlines were heavily deregulated years ago, which resulted in really low fares. I used to think that was a good thing! More people are able to fly more frequently! But low cost means people are treated like cattle, and that’s not fun – quite miserable in fact (I have my own stories). And all this has made people so very miserable, complaining all the time. Maybe we ought to give up cheap fares and go back to the days of legroom and empty seats next to us!
There is a dollar amount that gets 4 passengers out of their seats.
I was not making an argument for more regulation. I was saying this is the sort of thing that causes it. Sorry if I was unclear.
Totally true. Just go an do it.
You missed my sarcasm.
There is a lot of room for improvement with airlines’ customer service, and hopefully this will start the ball rolling. But I also want people to understand that they’re sending a real message with their wallets. But they want to complain that they’re not getting what they won’t pay for. Part of the reason the fares are cheap, is that there are so few empty seats these days – but there is a downside…..
He WAS in his own property. He had paid for that seat. And the police action, using violence to enforce a company oversight, is Fascism.
And whats wrong with the other passengers? Their standing up en mass and blocking the aisles would have ended this in an instant.
The take home lesson is that Americans have become sissies; even when a man exerts a right to self defende, half of the so-called comments on this site agree with the Fascists. Sissies, sisies, sissies.
I did not miss your sarcasm at all. It appeared to be directed at me, since you chose to build it off of my post.
Yes there is. And for whatever reason the airline chose to go with an involuntary removal instead, which is also their right. And once they made that choice, the guy they pick to remove doesn’t get to refuse. That’s what “involuntary” means. It sucks, but that’s part of life. Deal with it and move on.
Really? What do you think would have happened in that case?
And “what was wrong with the other passengers” was that none of them wanted to miss their flight – that’s why none of them took the offered compensation to voluntarily relinquish their seat either.
I understand that there are legal nuances that will come into play when this inevitably ends up in court or they agree on some undisclosed settlement amount. While that part of the situation will be solved by the lawyers, I’m much more interested in the customer service aspect of this whole thing.
This entire incident revolves around how we make space for the flight crew and how United handled it. I am positive that there is some dollar or voucher amount that would have gotten 4 people to raise their hands. Why didn’t they just keep upping the amount? I think they were at $800 already and I’d bet if they sweetened the pot to $1K you would have had more than 4 people raising their hands to leave. They may be LEGALLY obligated to only offer $800 before bumping people involuntarily or the people on the ground may not have been authorized to go above that limit, but that’s an internal United problem. The main issue for me is the way they treated one of their customers.
We also have the United CEO asking himself, “How can I make this worse?”. Gee, maybe saying established procedures were followed and the person was belligerent is the way to go! If that passenger was belligerent for any other reason than being asked to leave after boarding, you would have seen those passengers cheering when they dragged him off instead of acting horrified.
There is a level of force that is unacceptable and immoral in situations like this no matter what the regulations say, isn’t there? What is it in your opinion?
So what exactly should they done when the guy refused to get up and leave the plane? Shrug and say “ok, have a nice flight to Louisville” and leave? Some level of force was required once the guy didn’t comply. Being in enclosed conditions on an airplane makes it tougher.
They didn’t shoot him, taze him or pepper spray him – any of those would seem excessive. They physically dragged him from the plane. It’s hard to see what lesser use of force would be possible to achieve the task at hand.
Enough arguments, and a good night of sleep, have converted me. This was a man-child who just decided it was time to throw a fit. I remember when my children were children, and decided that this was the day to throw a fit. You think you’re a good parent up to that point, and then suddenly you’re one of those “awful parents” who have “no idea how to raise children.”
Looking at his actions, it reminds me so much of those “fit” days. He refused to do as he was told. As soon as they touched him, he began screaming as loud as he could scream. At first he struggled, but after the first slap (hitting his face on the arm rest) he just decided to go limp, so they dragged him to “his room” as a parent would. What really topped it off was him running back on the plane babbling incoherently. That was the moment I saw my 5-year-old daughter who refused to go to her room.
I no longer have any sympathy for him, and I would not be surprised to find out he wasn’t really a doctor needing to get to the hospital.
The market is dealing with it. People are making clear what they think of United and they will suffer mightily for it. The system works.
This.
You’d think a Dr. (he’s an internist in Elizabethtown) would have the maturity and judgement to comply when asked to leave the plane. I’d like to see a license hearing to make sure he’s still competent to practice medicine.
I’ve just read this entire comment thread, and thanks especially to Lily’s level-headed comments, my own contrarian nature, and just now hearing the “aftershock” audio of him running back onto the plane, I’ve come around to this side about 75/25. There is a lot of blame to go around – most of it on the way the airline chose to handle this, but I think he’s also a jerk/possibly unwell person. Both things can be true.
I wonder if the gate agent said “Welcome aboard” or “Have a nice flight” to him as he was invited to enter the jetway and head to his assigned seat.
Having to get off a commercial flight you’ve paid for, after you’re already sitting in your seat and you’re really wanting to get to your destination, really sucks.
When United had to remove 4 passengers from flight randomly because none of the passengers on the full plane would take the voucher deal offered, 3 of the 4 randomly selected passengers complied, took the money, and there was no incident.
One passenger chose to not comply with law enforcement’s order to get off the plane.
By taking this action this passenger had to be forcibly removed, and now we have a viral video which is not atypical of what happens to anybody in any situation (ie; justified, unjustified, fair, unfair, etc. ) when they refuse to comply with law enforcement and law enforcement personnel are put in the unpleasant and undesired position of physically forcing a grown man to comply.
Do you agree there is a point where the level of violence required would make the “task at hand” not worth achieving? I would draw that line well short of blunt force trauma. There were probably a dozen or more United employees who could, and should, have chosen from one of several alternative courses of action to avoid the counterproductive tunnel-vision that led them to use violence to “achieve the task at hand”.
For example?
How would *YOU* have gotten him off the plane?
The premise is wrong. After the series of errors by United that led up to that moment, getting him off the plane was no longer the appropriate “task at hand”. United needed to find another solution to their own problem.
I cannot find it now, but I read in a firsthand account from a passenger that while everyone was seated on the plane, one of the airline employees stepped in front of the plane with his or her laptop and said something to the effect of “I’ll ask for volunteers one more time, then I’ll let the computer pick them.” The unfriendly tone of that speech to the passengers would have raised the emotions on that plane full of people.
That was the moment when the situation became alarming to everyone. The dragging of the 69-year-old man, according to account I read, off the plane was part of a drama that was already in motion. That also may have been why the man reacted that way. He felt threatened. He didn’t know why–the situation was going fast. But he did, and I would have too.
Nothing like feeling trapped in an emotionally charged situation and having someone become belligerent like the laptop guy. That also explains, to me at least, why everyone in the plane sat so still while the poor man was dragged off the plane. I kept asking myself why didn’t some other passenger volunteer as soon as the man protested. I would have if I had been there. The belligerent tone of the person with the laptop making the decision as to who had to get off the plane explains a lot.
No the premise is exactly correct. Someone needed to come off the plane. Whether you feel that was “just” or not is immaterial.
The “United employees” were a flight crew scheduled to operate a commercial airliner out of Louisville. Flight crews are moved around under time constrained schedules and hours of service restrictions.
United is guilty of overselling the flight and not upping the voucher give away to a no brainer dollar amount.
Yes, it is absolutely bonkers that this level of police physical force was necessary for this non violent situation. However, when law enforcement shows up and orders you to comply, and you choose not to comply, the result is completely predictable.
My guess is next time United will up the voucher give away to what ever it takes to get 4 passengers off the plane.
Is there any other precedent for this type behavior on the part of the airline? Theaters that people get thrown out of once they’ve taken their seats? Restaurants? Sporting events? Hotels? Any guests been dragged out of their beds lately? Hospitals?
This overbooking-of-flights is insane to begin with. How does a normal person make plans not knowing his or her exact flight times?
This has been a bad situation that was bound to end this way at some point.
I will not fly United. Not until they have changed their management style.
When one employee of a company is rude, that is the employee’s fault. But when most of the employees are rude, that’s top management. The attitude that led to that man’s being dragged off his flight starts at the top of the company.
What happened here is that United was penny pinching, and it worked for them for a long time. Something like 90% of passengers who are “re-accommodated” do so voluntarily in exchange for credit. It’s cheaper for the airlines to force the remaining 10% people off rather than raising the incentives, and most do so grumpily, but without resisting.
After this, offering higher credits will appear to be a bargain. Particularly when legislation starts to be bandied about.
The fact that the situation got to this point shows that United screwed up and this is what is torquing people off. “The sense of Justice” seems to be that once you’re assigned a seat and let on the plane, you should keep that seat. I understand the law allows anyone to be thrown off at any time (well maybe not after the plane has taken off).
The world and the market are weighing in accordingly.
Which, is going to happen. We now live in an age where everything that happens is going to get recorded and published forever. Companies need to be ready for it.
I’ve never been interested in taking credits. I would be interested in taking cash though!