Easiest would be to tell him “Sir, according to the contract you signed when you purchased your ticket, you have been randomly selected to be deplaned. If you leave now, you will be compensated in $x amount, if you refuse to give up your seat, you will be charged another $y for it.”
If he refuses, you charge him the surcharge, and randomly select another passenger. Done.
No blood, no screaming, no 2 1/2 hour delay, no PR nightmare, no possible lawsuits.
I guess they should have offered passengers 830 million dollars to give up their seat.
In your legal and contracting expertise, are the two phrases/concepts entirely interchangeable in contracts?
If Walmart arbitrarily decided to take back a TV that a customer had already paid for because one of their employees wanted it, and refused to compensate him reasonably for his trouble, then called the cops and said he was a shoplifter, yes I’d say they’re absolutely responsible for anything that happens after that.
UA didn’t break any contract, they didn’t resort to violence, they didn’t call in anyone to use violence, and they are under no obligation to base any payments on the supposed hour rates of any employees. Have you got any evidence at all to back your silly claims?
I take it you are going to ignore the difference between the two situations, no matter how many times it is explained to you?
Except they weren’t resolving a “financial dispute,” they were removing a trespasser.
Regardless of the sequence of events that led up to the situation, the fact is that the moment the crew told him that he wasn’t flying that day, the fuckhead in question no longer had any legal permission to be on the plane. It doesn’t matter if he felt inconvenienced, it doesn’t matter if he felt he was in the right–that’s something you settle later, in court, not on the spot. At the moment you’re told by the owner (or agents thereof) of the plane that you’re no longer allowed on, then you get your ass off as soon as you safely can, and if you refuse, you’re a trespasser.
The thing that is going to sink United over this is that it was crew members who needed seats. Businesses should favor customers over employees. This is like a restaurant telling the people at a table to leave because the waiters need to sit there so they can have dinner. The only time United should kick a passenger out of his seat for a crew member is if the passenger is sitting in the cockpit.
Except that’s not what happened here, because once you buy a TV it’s yours, but an airline ticket only gives you a revocable license, not an ownership interest.
Don’t use shitty and irrelevant analogies, okay?
We don’t know this. There have been legal opinions by posters and in cites in this thread on both sides.
You still have no idea what the contract is between the airline and the passenger, do you?
And those that can afford it can ignore the rules others have to embrace.
It doesn’t even matter if they broke a contract or not. If they did, that’s the sort of thing you settle later on, in court. The law doesn’t recognize self-help as a remedy, even if you really really really feel that you’re in the right.
It’s still their plane, so you get off when they tell you to get off–since the question of ownership of the plane is (usually) the one thing that can be settled quickly and on the spot in a way that doesn’t cause mass chaos (assuming everyone acts like an adult–and when that doesn’t happen, the blame for that lies solely with whatever fuckhead decided not to act like an adult), that’s what things default to in the moment. If they did so in a manner that’s inconsistent with the contract or with their other legal obligations, then you take care of that in court and if the court finds for you, you’ll be awarded damages.
Really? How is it you suppose those crews get to where you need them to be when you need them to be there?
Magic.
The discussion has been covering the leadup and aftermath of the incident, including the situation the airline put themselves in and their decisions before boarding started, and including potential lawsuits and such going forward – not just the actions immediately prior to the passenger being dragged off the plane.
There shouldn’t be any discussion about that, because none of us have the information needed to form a meaningful opinion about it. “I don’t know but I’m going to spout off my uninformed opinion anyway” is the kind of shit that led to people thinking it was okay to vote for Orange Hitler.
That’s the only thing any of us know anything about, though, so it’s the only valid, meaningful discussion surrounding all this.
Not a binary choice between “no compensation” and “$830 million”.
I personally believe once they started talking “thousands” instead of “hundreds”, they get their volunteers summarily. There is an account that after the $800 vouchers were offered, one passenger volunteered to deboard for $1600, and was refused.
Some of us disagree. It’s okay – we can still be decent people and disagree on things like this.