Even on the ground, with the doors open? I think that’s giving the crew more power than the situation requires. It does not create an unsafe situation to not follow flight crew orders while parked at the gate. (It may set an unwanted precedent, but that’s a different issue.)
eta: I mean, from a standpoint where it is a Federal Crime to not follow the orders. Seems a bit much in that situation.
Bolding mine. As far as I’ve heard this is still just a claim made by the passenger. I wouldn’t put it past someone in that situation to make something like that up to try and garner sympathy and keep their seat.
A man chooses. A slave obeys.
This is just like that yoga pants non-scandal from a couple weeks ago. People have no idea what the rules are and have a freakout when they are inconvenienced because corporations or something.
I’ll split a hair here:
“*It is advisable and sensible that you obey the orders of the flight crew.” *-- I agree.
“It is common sense that you obey the orders of the flight crew.” – I disagree, because to me, invoking “common sense” is saying “this is something all people already know”.
…
Also, the statement “It is common sense that you obey the orders of the flight crew” can not be an absolute. There are limits upon what the flight crew can ask of passengers (e.g. “Swallow this cyanide capsule NOW! Captain’s orders!”).
I think it’s indeed shitty and bad customer service to ask him to leave, but United has that right. And the plane is private property. The police/security/whatever they were didn’t seem to have much finesse in executing the removal, but the passenger’s reaction escalated the situation.
If one does not want to obey the orders of the aircrew, rent a car. The rules are there for a reason.
It is to laugh. Spare me the hysterics.
Yeah, I just saw that in the other thread. Given the dirt being dug up on him, I wonder if, while technically still a Dr., he is actually practicing/licensed and the part about having patients to see the next day was a lie. Who knows.
People have very strong, very deeply rooted emotional reactions to law enforcement in general, both reflexively critical and reflexively defensive. This is especially so when the authorities are called to reign in disorder, rather than prevent violence or theft.
Corporate power is also deeply polarizing on some core emotional level.
That said, I’m not sure I agree with the OP’s characterization of the thread. A large number of posters are taking positions of nuanced agreement with some of the points raised by each side, despite the fact that fence-sitters are incentivized to sit it out…
“Stop hitting yourself”? If his face hit the armrest, it was because he was being dragged by the security guards.
Yes; it’s one Thing to know “Overbooking happens, but I will be asked, at the Counter during check-in, if I want to give up my seat in Exchange for compensation” *; and quite another to read “A doctor (with patients to see) was already on board the plane, and was told to go off (instead of looking for a volunteer) and when he insisted on his right to be transported, Police was called”.
That means that not just customers who do threaten the safety or who are obnoxious drunks etc., but customers who simply demand their right are thrown out on a clause hidden somewhere in the fine print - and it could happen apparently to any Flyer (there is something about the Computer choosing passengers to kick off at random).
You are continuing to spread misinformation.
Violence: “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy.” IOW, there must be an intent to injure.
Beating: “an act of striking with repeated blows so as to injure or damage.” As with the definition of violence, the phrase ‘so as to injure’ connotes intent to injure.
I will agree that the officer was sloppy/careless in yanking the guy out of his seat and immediately releasing his grip, thereby letting the guy’s head slam into the armrest - but I don’t believe the officer intended to injure him. This was not violence or a beating - just sloppy manhandling. There are plenty of real victims of police violence out there (see e.g. rough rides, Abner Louima, or the civil rights movement); characterizing the present incidence as “violence” or a “beating” does a disservice to those victims.
This is an IMHO thread speculating about why there is so much intensity in the debate. The purpose of this board is for people to give their opinions about topics, and what I posted is directly related to the topic of the thread. Criticizing me for posting my opinion on a IMHO thread is more than a little bizarre, even if you use words like ‘spin’ instead of opinion and call it a ‘theme’.
No, I am continuing to accurately and truthfully discuss a disturbing incident. Slamming someone’s head into an armrest hard enough to make them bleed, then dragging them off the plane is violence whether you want to believe it or not.
The material you quoted doesn’t include ‘intent’ anywhere, it just states that the force is used so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Also the page you linked to includes another definition as “intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force”, which also fits the situation. Citing dictionary definitions is bad enough, but when someone is citing dictionary definitions that agree with me and not with them, it’s just crazy. And that’s all of the semantics arguments I’m going to bother with in this thread, since they just become incredibly pointless.
Nice evasion there.
Do you believe in absolutes in all things, or only some?
Why on earth would you engage in such low conjecture? OK, you disagree with his actions, I get it, but this is totally unnecessary and just piling on.
I think the answer is surprisingly simple.
We don’t discuss anything anymore, we set our belief, seek out those who agree with us and insult those who don’t.
Closely tied to the above is the notion of fairness. There seem to be multiple and distinct definitions of fairness. One is procedural fairness, or is the process fair? Two is the shared sacrifice version of fairness, or is everyone affected and treated equally? Last is share the spoils, or does everyone get a share. (Note, there appear to be more but these are the big ones for this discussion. Jonathan Haidt has some interesting work in this area)
For the purposes of the thread in question, the last one doesn’t matter very much while the first two are directly on point. What happens is one side, using the definition of procedural fairness starts arguing with the other side, who is depending on the shared sacrifice definition of fairness, talk right past each other. They do so because the answer is obvious if you accept their starting point. Since the other side isn’t accepting the obvious, there must be a reason that the other side disagrees and the reason must be evil.
For example, in this thread **Pantastic **writes:
That is clearly a shared sacrifice argument in that the airlines and big business are always screwing the little guy.
Contrast that to RickJay who says:
which is clearly a procedural fairness argument.
And so each side screams at the other because they are starting with different definitions.
This is, as far as I can tell, the biggest problem in politics in the U.S. these days. Each side is arguing using different definitions of fair and cannot understand the other side.
Slee
I agree that part of the ‘you must follow the rules argument’ has at least the potential to become a bootstrap, which seems to be how UAL was using it in effect*. Such rules are written with safety in mind. Where safety is not really at issue, only by very elastic stretching in this case, it comes to seem more like an excuse.
That said my own opinion does not particularly support refusing to leave even if UAL is using a law intended for safety as a pretext to enforce its decision in a commercial dispute. And even those cops who are not on power trips and don’t have their heads up their asses, and there are some in neither category, are challenged to be thrown into a situation where they have to really think** rather than just carry out simple rules.
Given that, I personally would have gotten off (having flown UAL that day for a family emergency where it would have really been a problem if I’ve had to wait till the next day). But I would have communicated my opinion very fully to all involved, and called a lawyer later (not clear UAL was within its rights actually to bump paying passengers for employees, or to kick people off planes rather than prevent them getting on, I’d have investigated with a lawyer and made a major fuss after the fact).
*to the extent it was a really conscious strategy as opposed to just stupidity, the latter is always preferred explanation without clear evidence otherwise.
**a least some small % of cops would be smart enough to really assess the situation critically take the UAL person aside and ask them ‘you’re sure you can’t solve this by offering somebody else more to get off voluntarily?’ and demand to talk to a UAL person able to say ‘no we can’t’ as opposed to ‘I’m not allowed to decide that’. But most cops just don’t have the mental wherewithal to do that.
Those aren’t just two different forms of argument, but again Pantastic’s is a characterization of the other side of left/right which is simply not accepted by the other side. I would argue not so to any reasonably neutral person either, to reach the bar of ‘very consistent’ position of free market conservatives that corporations should be allowed to use govt power to avoid free market outcomes when it comes to their dealings with individuals.
There are authoritarian leaning people on the right who don’t actually care much about free markets, if in favor of them at all, but part of a political coalition including pro free market people. In that sense maybe there’s a ‘consistent’ inconsistency but the same kind you get from any philosophically heterogeneous political coalition.
Whatever the real dividing lines and motivations of people with strong views on an incident like this, it’s really not people strongly in favor of free markets strongly backing airlines using the police, and laws intended to preserve safety, to settle their contract disputes with passengers. That’s just ridiculous, really.
That said there’s more to it than that. There’s the general view of authority and govt’s position in ‘maintaining order’ as Richard Parker referred to, tend to be prickly and emotional issues, but IME not predictably left/right ones, or not until some other symbol is attached to the same underlying issue via a particular incident. But the people likely to strongly back UAL IMO are very unlikely to be people strongly focused on how markets should work. But despite the nominal perennial top billing of ‘jobs’ or ‘the economy’ as political issues, most people IME are not very focused on how markets should work.