But just yesterday, United’s stock price was up by 1.5% or something like that! And the pro-United folks were saying, looky here, all is well!
Who was right, the market yesterday, or the market today? I get so confused.
Seriously, whichever side of this debate you’re on, arguing that a one-day movement in stock prices reflects public judgment about an event is iffy at best. That’s as true of today’s drop as yesterday’s jump.
Yeah, all the “OMG UNITED IZ DA EVILZZZ!” have been strictly on an emotional basis. That’s what’s so frustrating to read.
This grown man threw a temper tantrum and refused to get off of the plane, when offered (more than) reasonable compensation, and it was adhering strictly to the terms of the contract when he purchased the ticket, and he was selected without prejudice / bias. (Meaning randomly, not bringing race into it)
After he kept refusing to move, what was the airline to do? If they move on to the next person, and that person sees that the tactic worked, why wouldn’t they do the same? And the next?
If it’s true that the people who actually removed him from the airplane were employees of the airport and not United, I don’t see where he has a case against the airline (outside of a settlement strictly as a PR move, but given the statements the CEO has made, I don’t necessarily see that happening).
Now, the airport might have an indemnification agreement with the airlines, stating that any cause of action / lawsuit that transpires on an airline’s property (read: plane) will have all costs reimbursed to the airport by the airline, but, so long as United employees never put hands on the man, there’s really nothing that makes the airline culpable.
It isn’t senseless; it’s literally what many people in this thread are suggesting as the solution. What word would you use to describe escalating compensation beyond an arbitrary limit? “Uncapped” seems like the dictionary definition for this concept.
I don’t have any clue what worker’s salaries have to do with this. The basis of comparison ought to be the price of the ticket: as others have posted, the going rate for a one-way leg on this route seems to be roughly in the $100-250 range. Offering compensation that is a few times larger than the cost of the product is pretty reasonable. If you get a crappy candy bar, I’d expect that the manufacturer would offer you compensation that would likely be valued at a few bucks, maybe ten at the most – not some random percentage of a Hershey’s employee’s wages.
And none of this has anything to do with being “against basic capitalism and market principles,” no more so than the people arguing “for basic capitalism and market principles” have some undefined but objectionable quality that I may wish to label them with.
I don’t think it’s been mentioned so far during this thread, but I’ve been amused for twenty years now by this site:
http://www.untied.com/main.shtml
Read the link carefully: that’s not United. This is a complaint site created a couple of decades ago by a dissatisfied United customer. Suffice it to say that UA does not approve of the site, and over the years they’ve taken several legal steps to try to make it go away.
That will have to be built in to whatever changes in procedure and protocol emerge from this incident. The status quo is now untenable.
Don’t even have to have a price increase. Just pick your ticket contract when you buy (same price either way). One contract allows bumping, including involuntary bumping. The other says once you buy the ticket, you cannot cancel it for any refund and have to buy a new one if you miss the flight.
I’m pretty sure it is called full-fare economy.
ETA: not literally bump proof, of course, but the odds are very, very low.
Of course.
They can… but they will have to later justify their actions.
I believe that is the case but I am not a lawyer.
Chicago aviation department police. Of course, the Chicago police have a bit of a reputation for bias and brutality.
They were on an airplane. No one had a gun. Even the freakin’ cops didn’t have a gun.
And no, it wasn’t justified, that’s why we have courts and lawsuits, for sorting this sort of thing out after the fact.
Also - at least one of the cops is on suspension pending an investigation for excessive use of force.
The cops who manhandled him should have their authority to be cops called into question because they couldn’t handle a simple situation.
The airline should have its authority called into question because its employees couldn’t handle a simple situation.
This wasn’t an in-flight emergency and no one was endangered in this circumstance. Escalation to violence and bloodshed was uncalled for.
His name is David Dao and he’s a real doctor. He’s of Vietnamese origin. He’s a real MD (internal medicine).
But hey, let’s attack the bloodied, dragged out of the airplane guy for being a foreigner, old, and any other reason we can think of. I’m sure the internet will shortly find every shortcoming this man has ever had and there will be new reasons to attack him.
See above. He’s a real doctor. Apparently he’s not a saint, but nothing I’ve seen on him so far justifies injuring him and dragging him on his back down the aisle of an airplane. HE didn’t get violent, and wasn’t threatening anyone else. The police handled this situation very badly.
Actually, I could argue all parties involved handled this badly.
How: because there’s no law says they can’t.
Why: because it makes sense from a number of perspectives.
They can only sell that seat once per flight. If someone doesn’t show, they like having someone ready to fill that seat so that they don’t collect $0 for it.
It’s also how they let you re-book a flight on short notice for $50-$100. If they couldn’t resell your seat, having to miss your flight would have to be ‘tough luck, no takes back.’ It takes overbooking on their part, which gives the airline flexibility, to allow this policy on re-booking, which gives the passenger flexibility.
So in a way, it’s a more or less even exchange between passengers and the airline - or between the passengers in one role, and the passengers in another.
Where the deal breaks down is when the airline decides to involuntarily bump people from a plane, rather than keep offering more money until someone accepts. (Daniel Gross at Slate’s Moneybox blog had a pretty good discussion of why $800 just isn’t enough to compensate most air travelers these days for missing a flight, especially when it means they’ll get to their destination almost a full day later.) I’d like to see them be required to up the bidding until enough people voluntarily agree to be bumped from the flight.
Or use a system like Delta’s, where passengers give their price for being bumped at the time that they book their flight.
Looking at a few tv reports.
CNN is reporting that because it was involuntary deboarding, Federal regulations permit the passengers to demand payment, and in the case because they would not be arriving until the next day, it would be $1,350. The passengers could demand that in cash at the time.
United knows this, of course, but was trying to get it done on the cheap.
Another program had an interview with the passenger right in front of the man. That passenger said that the police were basically just ordering the man – not talking to him – and he really didn’t like the police officers’ attitudes.
CNN’s aviation expert commented that she’s seen airline crew come up to a gate personnel and say that they need to be on the flight, so the gate person will just deny boarding to normal customers.
Quick question.
Is the Doctor facing any charges?
Was he arrested and arraigned?
<shrug> … That’s how people, collectively, tick. Impressions matter. Emotions matter.
I think reasonable people can disagree on this point. It’s a matter of opinion.
It was not the passengers’ responsibility to adequately staff the Louisville airport to accomplish United’s business requirements.
Most corporations have a division, often called ‘Human Resources’ or the like, to hire sufficient staff located in in the proper areas to accomplish the tasks needed by the corporation.
If a corporation utterly fails at this aspect of their functionality and does not hire the staff necessary at the proper locations to operate their core business, that corporation will likely fail. This is normal and expected, as the competently run corporations will out-compete those who fail at the very basics of staffing.
Someone posted upthread that United said publicly that they would not be pressing charges. I am having trouble confirming that online.
Meanwhile, the best I can find quickly:
Thank you bordelond.
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
But it is also within the company’s rights to invoke the clause when such an instance takes place.
I’m not approaching this from a “Wow, they are doing a great job running a business!” perspective; I’m approaching it from a “legal / they are fully entitled to do this” perspective.
As someone who has a family member who worked in the airline business, and an attorney, I can attest that, yes, unfortunately, this happens more often than people think, and that’s why they have those clauses built in to the fine print.
End of the day, had they not had that language built in to the contract than a great number more people would have been inconvenienced. Keep in mind, three of the four people selected left willingly.
Does United deserve poor word of mouth from those three, for kicking them off the flight? Absolutely. Word could’ve spread that they are not a reliable carrier, and people would have voted with their wallets.
Was this man within his rights to act as he did? No. He did not adhere to his terms of the contract. When people are protesting in the streets illegally, are the cops within their rights to take them into custody, or do they just get to keep doing what they are doing?
God, this response makes me sound like an authoritarian (which I’m not), but this man acted poorly, (in part) leading to the horrible events. Had United not overbooked their flight, it wouldn’t have happened, but similarly, if the man would have complied with the terms of the contract, it would not have either.
Fault United for overbooking, but they are not the ones who hurt the man. It was the airport police who removed him from the plane.
What is the source of your expertise of the airline industry such that you expect that the main reason that airlines do not have emergency standby crews waiting around at all airports just in case something happens, to be a sign of incompetent management?
Do you assume that this is common practice by most or all airlines except for United? That is, to maintain standby crews at most or all the airports served by the airline to obviate the need to move a crew to different airports to address unexpected contingencies?