The airline business is a customer service business. The passenger was boarded. His luggage was on board. The UAL manager came aboard and demanded four volunteers to deboard. When no one volunteered he ordered four passengers to be taken off the plane randomly. The 69 year old man was the third passenger ORDERED OFF the plane. He refused. The Manager called law enforcement and had the man violently removed.
You are telling me that UAL has no clue how many crew members they have to move around the country BEFORE they board the passengers? I call piss poor management on UAL’s side. I hope they have to pay dearly for this atrocity. How dare a US company treat its customers this way!
Note: I have no problem with the airlines informing passengers BEFORE they board that they have to take a later flight (which in this case was 22 hours later). If the passenger manages to negotiate a “deal” more power to that passenger.
Spoken like someone who has no clue what it takes to move 2.2 million people around the USA on planes daily and who has an entitled mentality.
There are millions of moving parts to make this happen day in and day out with yesterday overlapping on today and so forth. If the airlines didn’t have a lot of leeway to change the passenger manifest as needed they not only could not get these millions of people per day to their destinations they would have far less available flights, long waiting lists, and sky high ticket prices. Pun intended.
Over 40,000 people were bumped from flights last year and that doesn’t include the people who chose to volunteer and take the loot and hotel room. It’s the normal everyday course of business.
Oh, and the captain did NOT have the man violently removed, he ordered his flight crew to offer him the deal and they asked nicely 3 times before calling for the airport security to escort him off the plane. Leaving the plane was NOT AN OPTION for this perp. There was no violence involved that the perp did not start himself. He was the violent one; not the security people just doing a routine job of escorting a combative petulant passenger who will likely never fly another commercial flight in this country again due to his trouble making ways.
I hope the airlines get a big settlement FROM him and the police charge him with preventing ships movement or in this case; airline movement or even kidnapping or hijacking which is what he did when he refused to leave the plane like an adult. Instead he chose to be a petulant child, toddler even, and faked such a commotion garnering your pity which he most certainly does not deserve from anyone. Scorn is what he really deserves. Scorn and nice long gray bar hotel stay.
I hope the airlines all band together to fight this to the end and win. Otherwise you will not like what happens to flying on all the airlines in the future if you can even afford to at $2000 per round trip ticket. They may even start to segregate business class fliers from the general population which I’m sure the business fliers would appreciate. They would still pay the normal rate whereas the gen pop will pay the higher rates and forget about frequent flier miles, peanuts, a pillow, or the ability to carry on anything larger than a wallet. Luggage will be an extra $500 for anything larger than 1’ x 1’ x 2’. That’s the kind of things you will get if you want the level of service you seem to expect.
I’m blown away at how spoiled we Americans have become. It’s time we paid the price for this.