This incident is an example where everyone behaved extremely poorly. United - probably though organizational incompetence - dealt with passengers unfairly and handled the situation very stupidly. The gentleman who got bumped acted like an idiot (and broke the law, though United is, in their first wise move of the incident, not pressing charged) by not following the orders of the crew. The only people I cannot say for sure did not screw up were the security guys who dragged him out, only because the video faily to show how hard the man fought back, but it sure looks awful.
So the weird phenomenon is that people want to choose a side. To my mind - and I’m not being arrogant here, really, it’s just my nature - it’s very clear that there is no right side here, at least if we limit our choices to Mr. Bump and United as a collective group. The airline practice of overbooking and bumping people is, to use a technical term, absofuckingly stupid. Disobeying an aircraft crew’s orders is dangerous, illegal, and stupid. Really there is no side a person should want to take here. But humans have an instinctive propensity to take sides.
I mean, this blew up on Facebook threads a-plenty. I had this conversation.
Some Guy: United is awful and this man should get a $100 trillion settlement
Me: Everyone acted poorly here. United is just incompetent and stupid, but the man should have gotten off the plane
Some Other Guy: Are you crazy???!? He had every right not to leave!
Me: No, no he didn’t. It’s common sense and the law. You do wha tthe crew tells you.
Some Lady: You didn’t read the article or see the video!
Me: Yes I did… sheesh.
People love to take sides. It’s just a thing. If a soccer game is on TV, I - who know nothing about soccer and don’t know much about it - will start cheering for one team or the other, possibly depending on the color of their uniforms.
I think part of the vehemence is that it highlights conservative hypocrisy on the topic of the free market. Supposedly ‘the magic of the free market’ sets reasonable prices through market forces, and it’s bad to set limits on it. But if you get to a situation where an airline might have to spend more than 1% of what it considers a reasonable hourly rate for a person’s time* to resolve a situation, then they resort to having the police beat a man instead of using market forces. I think a lot of people don’t consciously realize it, but when you have big, rich companies using state violence to avoid paying tiny amounts of money, it taps a deeper emotional undercurrent.
in the other thread, I looked up compensation for United Airline’s CEO and found a figure from 2014 of $11.3 million per year, which works out to $5650 per hour. So through the magic of the free market, United Airlines financial analysis says that it would be completely reasonable to pay each person $113,000 for a 20-hour delay, which is far more than they offered in the scenario before resorting to beating a man. By choosing to pay that much money to an individual, they show that the free market considers that kind of money per hour reasonable.
How do you account for the blood on his face in this picture if he wasn’t beaten? Was it just spontaneous unexplained bleeding? Or why is he laying limp while the thugs dragged him off the plane in this shot? Was he just taking a nap? What non-beating action that was not in accordance with Chicago Department of Aviation procedures was the officer in charge suspended for? And yes, I hold United Airline accountable for the actions of people that they chose to bring in to resolve the situation. When you start bringing in armed enforcers instead of offering money, you’re choosing to resort to violence, you don’t get to wash your hands of responsibility if the violence you chose to use turns out uglier than you’d like.
Airline overbooking policies and police use of force are both topics that could get heated on their own, and here they are, fused together. And add in a dash of generic customer service disputes, in which some people will be predisposed to believe the business and others the customer. (For example, when I heard that he tried to use the fact that he was a doctor to get out of the situation, I heard “I’m better than THOSE PEOPLE because I’m an IMPORTANT PERSON with a PRESTIGIOUS JOB,” not “my patients will suffer, please extend your grace and mercy to them o kind and merciful airline.” Do I know what he was actually thinking? Nope.)
The terms “beating” and “violence” require intent to inflict injury and pain. The officers used force to extract the man from his seat, but I don’t see that they intended to cause physical injury or pain; there’s no disputing that he was seriously injured when his face struck the armrest, but that appears to have been an unfortunate accident.
Go to YouTube and search for “united overbook”; there are plenty of copies of the actual videos that you can watch, no need to read a second-hand account.
Related to this is the widespread and irrational phenomenon of airline-bashing. It seems that almost everyone loves to engage in kneejerk RO against airlines: how service is deteriorating, how they are sneakily making us pay more, how they bump us from overbooked flights and lose our luggage all the time, etc. etc. When the actual statistics show that airline travel is substantially better in every respect than it has been in the past: much cheaper, safer and more efficient than it has ever been. And airline pricing strategies (e.g. unbundled no-frills pricing, offering minimal inclusive services with a basic ticket price as cheap as possible) simply reflect what the vast majority of consumers have shown that they actually want, despite what they may say they want.
And one of the efficiencies relates to this topic: Denial of boarding due to overbooking is much less prevalent than it used to be, even as more people fly and there are fewer empty seats.
This is yet another source of ire – it very much is not “common sense” that one can be randomly deplaned after boarding (or for the nitpickers, after taking a seat). Maybe it’s more known among those that fly often … but even among frequent flyers, I doubt all that many knew this could happen.
Some people will see (their own version of) the left-right argument in every controversial incident. But you’re really shoehorning IMO. UA was using govt power for its commercial purposes. That’s either justified under the law or not. Some ‘legalists’ see it as clearly justified, I’m just not sure. But it’s nothing to do with ‘conservative hypocrisy’ unless you first assume that what ‘conservative hypocrites’ always mean by free markets is that commercial entities can make use of govt force to avoid free market outcomes. But that’s just your assumption.
I tend to think from observation of life and human nature that free markets under clear rules add a lot of value to society, and are the best way to conduct commerce as a rule (with exceptions, and eg. providing all citizens with basic needs of life, though flying is not one of them, is not commerce). So I see the basic problem here as bad rules of the market if they allow UA to get away with a price limited auction to get people to deplane voluntarily, not that markets don’t work, not that those in favor of market outcomes necessarily want bad rules and are just pretending they don’t. And even besides (legal) rules, it’s IMO obvious UA would have been better off practically, as commercial entity, to have a policy of just offering more* to avoid having to call the police on people otherwise not misbehaving and have a PR nightmare like this.
I don’t see how ‘hypocrisy’ about markets is evident in anyone’s position I’ve seen here. Seems to me the pro-UA legalists tend to either ignore UA’s option to up the ante the avoid this, or else they are super-non-believers in markets who speculate (ridiculously IMO) airlines might have to pay people $10s, $100’s K or more to deplane if they just fully used that simple market mechanism rather than standing on (possible) legalities and calling the cops.
*to the passengers at large, not first picking one target and having to offer that ‘monopoly provider’ what it would take to get him to deplane, that would be obviously stupid also.
There is a very consistent pattern that conservatives are in favor of free markets when it favors big business or rich people, but opposed to it when it favors the little guy, and this is a prime example of that philosophy in action. Airline prices, practices, and CEO salaries are justified because of “market forces”, but once the airline might have to pay more than they like to an individual for an outcome they want, it’s suddenly A-OK to bring in government force and beat the little guy into compliance.
And, again, United Airlines didn’t even offer 1% of the lowest value it can claim is a reasonable hourly rate for someone’s time. You have a company that happily pays one guy $5650 per hour, but think’s that if a regular guy doesn’t accept $800 for a day they’re justified in using violence against him. That hits some definite class warfare emotions, even if that’s not at the forefront of people’s minds.
No, beating requires only that you ‘beat’ someone, and violence requires that you use force against them. When you’re redefining words to the point that slamming a man’s head into an object hard enough to cause bleeding and disorientation doesn’t count as beating him or the use of violence, you’re not speaking in real English anymore, you’re just trying to redefine words to avoid discussing what actually happened. Ramming someone’s head into an armrest is beating them, period.
So what you’re saying is that police were using force on a man that is not in line with their own department policies, while they were doing so he “somehow” banged his face into an armrest, but it’s unreasonable to say that the police beat him? No, when the police use force on someone, and the person comes out with an injury, the police beat him, regardless of whether they try to come up with a ‘fell down the stairs’ excuse for it.
According to you, which you are free to believe, while others might disagree how ‘consistent’ that is. But that’s a general argument.
I just don’t see that in the discussion of this incidence, here, which is what this thread is about. Can you give an example from the other thread? Again from what I’ve seen of the discussion the people generally on UA’s side seem to base it on legalities without considering commercial aspects. At least a couple of them showed signs of extreme disbelief in markets*. I haven’t seen any correlation of being pro-UA with being or claiming to be pro free market.
I’m generally pro free market and might even be accused of the crime against the people of being a conservative (though not necessarily all around) and I think it’s clear UA acted stupidly, and the obvious commercially minded, solution (legally required or not) is reqroup and offer more to the crowd to get four takers when it seemed violence might result otherwise. Not doing that was brainlessness or bullheadedness: businesses are in business to make money not prove who’s right.
Again your theme seems to just be just the spin you want to put on it based on your preconceptions.
*as in ‘what if the airline have to eventually pay millions to get somebody to deplane’, which is pretty much the same as saying ‘what if airlines charged millions for the tickets to begin with’, well nobody would buy them. Likewise somebody would raise their hand to leave voluntarily long before millions were offered.
With due respect, you either did not read what I wrote carefully, or you are mispresenting what I wrote.
It is common sense that you obey the orders of the flight crew.
The reasons why that is really, really important should be quite obvious. The flight crew’s orders may be highly unfair, or stem from a really, really stupid policy of overbooking flights, but they are orders that must be obeyed. It doesn’t matter if they’re unfair, you do them. The master of the aircraft or ship is the master of the vessel, and you do as they say.
See, you’re arguing against a point I never made, thus proving my point; people want to take sides, even if there is no rational reason to do so. All parties in this incident acted poorly. Why is that so hard for people to grasp? Because they instinctively take a side.
