Posted on 04/18/2017 5:06:52 AM PDT by pabianice
“A flicker of uncharacteristic sanity at UMass. “
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Until the last paragraph.
.
He had no right to act like a bleedin’ revolutionary!
“”United is exhibiting a profound ability to do stupid at every opportunity. Reportedly, some guy was asleep laying across three seats which included this couples two seats. So, United staff, instead of waking this guy up and telling him to sit up in his assigned seat. Tells the couple to go wake him up and tell him to get out of their seats. It’s not the passengers responsibility to police seat assignments””
Is this part of the story in the thread? I didn’t see anything like that.
“After all, United approached this overbooked flight in the same way that airlines across the country do every day.”
No it didn’t.
A. 1. The overbooked condition did not exist for the flight. It was full but in fact was not overbooked. 2. Overbooked conditions, when it is an overbooked condition, are almost always handled at the gate, before boarding begins, by offering incentives to passengers BEFORE passengers board the plane, not after.
B. 1. The contract terms of service of a United ticket provide for involuntary failure to be boarded, and overbooking is given as a possible reason it may be applied. But the flight was not overbooked and the passenger was in fact not denied boarding; they were boarded to their rserved seat. 2. The contract terms of service of a United ticket provide for involuntary removal of a passenger after they are boarded. To resolve an overbooked or merely “full flight” condition is not a condition permitting that in United’s own terms of service.
C. United has a number of discrepancies in its own written terms of service that apply to every ticket, and rules it provides its staff on every operations matter. Involuntary removal of passengers is one of those areas of discrepancy. Even though it contravenes United’s own terms of service that apply to every ticket, United’s staff apparently did not contravene what their rule book says they can do.
D. In law, contract law will prevail over an employee operations manual.
“Despite the media’s best efforts to create a narrative, Dao was not an innocent doctor assaulted for trying to get to his patients.”
It is not relevant, legally. United should not have been trying to remove the passenger involuntarily in the first place; they were not on legal grounds to do so, by their own terms of service. Why the passenger did not want to deplane, voluntarily or involuntarily is irrelevant. His right to not agree to it was all the reason he needed.
You may be right (or not). But, either way, removing someone from a plane due to a mistaken policy is a minor issue, in the grand scheme of things. Give United a small fine. Let the public exact its revenge in the form of poor sales.
“When you board a boat or ship the captain is THE authority.”
That authority is not that of a dictator. When you buy a ticket for a boat, a ship OR a plain, that ticket is/represents a contract and there are, in the fine print, terms of service that not only obligate the passenger, but the crew, including the captain. The captain’s authority to tell a passenger to do anything the captain wants is limited to the terms and conditions agreed to. In the case at hand, involuntarily removing a boarded passenger from the plane must meet United’s own terms and conditions. The conditions in this case did not meet those terms.
“It looks to me like this was planned with the purpose of a lawsuit.”
You are in total error. His name was picked at random after everyone was boarded, and he had nothing to do with his name being selected; ergo he could not have been planning a lawsuit when he boarded.
“If that is true, then those responsible for the decision to bump him should be punished accordingly.”
United’s terms of service say that for reasons of the plane being overbooked IS NOT one of the reasons given for involuntarily removing a passenger. It’s basic contract law and it’s really dumb when you violate a really one-sided contract you wrote.
The law does not mandate airlines carry, gratis, their own or any other airlines additional, non-working staff, at the expense of booked and boarded passengers on the plane. Just like overbooking, that condition is (a) what the airlines not the law merely want to do and (b) what is supposed to be accounted for BEFORE passengers are boarded.
They only selected him and bounced him from the plane because he is Asian. /s
One blogger - a United airline pilot, also suggested that the gate attendant in charge could have told the pilot to announce to the boarded plane that unless more passengers volunteered to accept the money offered to take another flight, that the flight would be cancelled altogether. I think that might have scared up some volunteers, but have no idea if it would have not resulted in a PR headache of a different kind for United.
I’ve never disagreed with you before, but there’s always a first. I strongly disagree this time.
Toward the beginning of all this I read an article by a law prof written for a legal journal. He carefully walked through all United’s applicable Terms of Service. Here are the highlights.
At the gate, United had a free hand. They could have denied boarding for any number of reasons. They could have told Dao the plane was overbooked. [It wasn’t.] He’d have had no recourse; he’d just be high and dry.
Once United issued his boarding pass and allowed him to be seated, their own ToS limited the reasons they could kick him off. What it comes down to is disruptive behavior. Dao would need to be drunk, disorderly, making threats, etc. None of those conditions applied; Dao was sitting quietly in his seat, minding his own business.
Munoz, the CEO of United, has admitted Dao did nothing to warrant or justify being kicked off. Much less did this non-aggressive 69 yo man deserve the excessive force that was used on him. United screwed up. For that they will pay, as well they should.
After Dao dug his feet in, all United did was call the airport police. Anything that occurred after that point was out of its control, and was the responsibility of the police department.
I agree.
You are partially correct. His name was chosen at random and he had been peacefully removed from the plane. However, he got back on (somehow, perhaps with his boarding pass) and was recorded by the passenger behind him talking with his lawyer as they were coming for him. The news is not giving you the whole story.
“Buying an airplane ticket is not like buying a shirt. Airplane tickets are not, and cannot be, a guarantee of transport. There are 100s of reasons why an airline will not be able to transport the ticket holder. They cannot guarantee timeliness. They cannot guarantee delivery. They cannot even guarantee directness. With a shirt, if you are holding it, and you paid for it, it is yours. With an airline ticket, all you are really getting is a general promise to try to get you there on time.”
You make good points about what an airline ticket does not guarantee you. However, none of those things have anything to do with the context of the matter of the United passenger. You’re comparing apples and oranges, trying to make one look like the other. It’s not the same.
What you are guaranteed with the ticket is what the carrier’s own terms of service say. And United’s terms of service while permitting involuntary removal of a boarded passenger gives all kinds of reasons for which it is permitted. To resolve an overbooked condition is not one of them.
They are partner airlines and Republic was operating the flight for United.
The United Pilots Union has gone to great lengths to clarify that they had nothing to do with this. The captain was not involved.
I thought the captain was the one in charge of the plane?
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