Obviously I understand law enforcement getting involved in an unsafe situation… but this was only “unsafe” because the airline decided that they’d rather involve law enforcement than pay more money. It’s essentially government subsidizing airlines by guaranteeing them an ejection of overbooked passengers who aren’t willing to take a relatively low payout. This should have been the airline’s problem to fix, not law enforcement’s. Imagine if there was a law that law enforcement wouldn’t cooperate with solving overbooking issues – then the airline would be forced to come up with another situation (likely involving larger offers of compensation).
Yes, he shouldn’t have done that. I suppose I should make sure to criticize Eric Garner every time I challenge law enforcement’s treatment of him, right?
[QUOTE=Machine Elf]
Hardly. Ever miss a flight? It typically costs just $50-$100 to rebook on a later flight; you don’t have to book a whole new flight for full fare.
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I’ve never missed a flight, no, I’m a responsible adult. If I did and the airline told me I had to pay for a seat on another plane, I’d suck it up and pay. Giving people a pass on missing a flight is stupid. Perhaps they should stop doing that sort of thing. Then I won’t have to pay more, what with me being a person who, knowing how to use a clock, has never missed a single one of the 500 flights or so I’ve been booked on.
A system whereby you let people miss flights and take other flights paying nominal fees, and make up for that stupidity that overbooking flights and causing responsible people to have to miss flights, is really, really stupid. You buy a ticket, show up on time or you lose your place. Why is that a hard system to implement?
So you are upset that the law was called instead of submitting to blackmail?
If you’d like to discuss this reasonably, let me know. If you’re just going to continue with a series of weird games (or whatever it is you’re trying to do), I’m not interested.
Again, IANAL, but I believe you need standing in order for a court to allow a lawsuit to go forward. The man-child doctor may file suit, and when everyone shows up in court, UA’s lawyer will move for dismissal on the grounds that the plaintiff lacks standing. He was indeed injured, but it was not caused by UA’s overbooking policy, or their request for him to leave the plane under his own power. The evidence in support of this is the two people before him who were also subjected to UA’s overbooking policy, and were also requested to leave the plane under their own power, but did not suffer any injury whatsoever.
FWIW, there appeared to be a whole bunch of people on the plane who were aghast at this guy being dragged off against his will - but I didn’t see a goddam one of them volunteering to walk off the plane instead of that guy.
I imagine the airline has studied this and figured out that $800 is, roughly speaking, the optimal stopping point for their interests. Remember, they’re not trying to make everyone happy - they’re trying to make money. If someone has to be ordered off of the plane, the airline will be OK; it’s not worth $4000 to them to make absolutely everyone happy.
I expect you’ll find the policies at other airlines to be remarkably similar.
I’m sure it’s all about money – but by law enforcement guaranteeing that they will cooperate with “solving” overbooking problems, local authorities are essentially subsidizing this policy by giving the airline a (violent) ‘out’. If law enforcement only got involved when there was actual unsafe situations not caused by the airline’s own mistakes (i.e. overbooking), then the airlines would have to change their policies to resolve them peacefully.
I was on a flight once where they needed 3 volunteers for a later flight. I think this was a Christmas Eve flight. IRC, the reason for the bump was weight – too much luggage. I cant remember where I was going but I think it was ski country and a lot of people were carried skis.
But they upped the bidding until a group of 5 agreed if they would bump them all. The final offer was $1000 per person, passes to the first class lounge and first class seating on the new flight. They didn’t even have an overnight wait, the next flight left in a few hours.
One of my worst flight experiences came from ALMOST being bumped ( I think ). Basically I was called to the counter and the agent asked to see my boarding pass. I handed it over and she took it from me and instructed me to sit down. No explanation and she refused to answer any questions. I was in tears. I had a complicated personal issue going on and I was convinced that the person I was going to see would think I bailed and was making excuses if I told him I was bumped.
Turns out that I got my boarding pass back a half hour later with no explanation but I STILL get pissed off whenever I remember.
I don’t think the person who posted this:
gets to define “reasonable discussion”.
How unsafe is sneaking onto a plane?
My take, as someone who traveled a shit-ton for many years:
The airline’s business is no more important than any of the paying customers on that flight. We paid good money to use their services, and should have the reasonable expectation that we will get what we paid for. Certain things come up-- weather, mechanical problems, etc., which can obviously throw a monkey wrench into the mix. But if they can’t figure out how to get their own employees to work sites until after they’ve fully boarded a plane, then hell yes this should become an auction to open a seat up. $400 isn’t enough to get someone to come off? Up it goes to $800. $800 isn’t enough? Up it goes to $1000. And on and on until someone bites.
Customer pays for a service, business can’t deliver, it shouldn’t be up to the customer to make sure the business is able to keep things running smoothly. “Oh no, we don’t know what to do!! Let’s call the cops and have them take care of it!!” isn’t a good way to run your business. It’s called being lazy and an asshole.
Feel free to change “beaten” (and somehow, even if it wasn’t perfectly clear how, he did get bloody and suddenly unresponsive) to “manhandled”.
This occurred (reportedly) after the overbooking and calling of law enforcement, and is therefore irrelevant to my point. I’m inclined to have some empathy for someone who was just manhandled (or beaten) to the point of a bloody mouth and possible unconsciousness and who may still be utterly terrified and disoriented. Your level of empathy may very.
But feel free to point out all the mistakes Eric Garner made after several cops started to wrestle with him. After all, what’s most important is that a terrified guy might have made some mistakes, not that a possibly flawed policy might have resorted to violence far earlier than necessary.
As a side note, it is less than a 5 hour trip from Chicago to Louisville KY. I just put Louisville in to my Uber app and it came back with a price of $319.
Off topic, but why did they have trouble getting people to agree to take $800 to take another flight? Chicago to Louisville is a five hour drive, a person could’ve taken the money and just rented a car if they didn’t want to wait for another flight.
Of course I’m sure there are tons of restrictions on that $800.
Edit, beaten to the question.
BTW, the article said that the passenger involved was screaming-not the other passengers.
There was a video, and I heard other passengers screaming.
The airline offred $800 each to four passengers, which is $3200. For a lot less than that, United could have chartered light plane and flown their employees to Louisville, and everyone would have been happy.
I’m amazed that no passengers took the offer. I’d have come running, if an airline offered me $400 and accommodations to delay my flight, unless I had an onward connection, and who make connections in Louisville to a place you can’t fly to from Chicago?
Well, the video that you can watch for yourself quite clearly shows several other passengers doing what could be described as “screaming” as well. For pete’s sake, the man had his face slammed into an arm rest and was bleeding from the mouth simply because United didn’t know how to get their own employees to Louisville without resorting to law enforcement.
The people behind this were lazy assholes.
Vouchers, not cash.
Still, if they were offering an $800 voucher and a free hotel, I’m guessing they’d exchange the hotel for a free car rental.