Posted on 04/10/2017 7:37:53 AM PDT by BulletBobCo
“No, this is wrong,” a woman shouts at security officers in the video.”Oh my God, look at what you did to him!”
A disturbing video was uploaded to Facebook by Audra Bridges Sunday night. It shows a full United flight sitting at a Chicago airport and bound for Louisville. But there was a problem – United had overbooked the flight, they needed four seats for their stand-by crew and no one was volunteering to give up their spot.
That problem led to a violent confrontation as security forced one passenger off the plane, who said he was a doctor and couldn’t take a later flight because he had patients to see at his hospital in the morning.
Bridges, a Louisville resident, told the Courier-Journal that United announced in the terminal Sunday night that the flight was overbooked and offered passengers $400 and a night at a hotel to give up their seat and opt for a flight at 3 p.m. on Monday. No one volunteered, and passengers boarded the flight. United told the full flight that they couldn’t take off without the four seats, then upped the offer to $800 plus a night at a hotel, but still no one volunteered.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
There is another story that said the guy told another Passenger that he just wanted to get Home, no mention of being a Doctor.
If he had to get back for Surgery, wouldn’t he have called himself a Surgeon? A Doctor could mean anything, like having a Doctorate in Women’s Studies or being Married to Joe Biden.
Just askin’
I like JetBlue. Good service.
Every passenger on that plane was likely thinking “that could’ve been me” and that’s no way to run a business. The ill will created by this action is going to hurt United badly. They’d have been far wiser to just keep upping the ante until they got their four seats, as far as passenger goodwill.
United seems to have a culture of arrogance regarding its passengers.
Won’t be flying United any time soon. Flying sucks as it is without them thinking their needs are more important than the customer’s needs.
Send in a Tomahawk.
I understand that flights do operate on very small margins, even fully booked flights.. but still, even if the offer had to be bumped the flight being an accounting sheet loss to fly, it would still be far far cheaper than the damage this will do to United’s brand.
This incident will be measured in 10s if not 100s of millions of dollars of damage to the United brand.
After all, how can you be the “friendly skies” if you are literally beating and dragging passengers off your plane for no other reason than they wouldn’t give up their paid for seat for you??
United - Fly the Ghestapo Skies.
If no one volunteers to get off, the crew can request that you get off. Not following crew requests is a felony offense.
All this is spelled out in the and agreed to when you bought your ticket.
They usually ask the people who bought their tickets most recently to leave. In this case there was a compelling interest to pick someone else other than the doctor, I agree. But if you don’t like the terms of agreement you agreed to when you bought your ticket, then don’t fly. YOU are the one breaking the agreement, not the airline.
I agree it is not good PR but having a standby flight crew on board is sometimes necessary because some of the crew may be close to over their required number of hours and need to be changed out in mid flight or for other reasons having to do with the destination. It can be a safety issue or just a scheduling issue. It’s a moot point because the airlines have the agreement in their favor.
Usually this is not a problem as they offer enough that people will volunteer to get off the plane. Only rarely is it a problem. I’ve even had the crew ask for volunteers to get off the plane so that family traveling to see a sick loved one can board. I’ve never seen this offer turned down.
Sure, the airline could abuse this, but it is not in their interest to make enemies.
Also, if they charged enough to cover for no-shows on flights, airline prices would be even more than they are now for everyone.
I totally agree. Must be more to the story. Airlines don’t kick doctors off flights if they have surgery in the morning.
Why the hell would you fly from Chicago to Louisville anyway. You can drive it in 5 hours and you don’t have to get to the airport 2 hours early, get strip searched by TSA and then run the risk of the flight being late or as in this case, getting tossed off.
Well, there *are* four who got bumped. Maybe they killed the ‘chicken’ (Doctor) at the front of the plane so the ‘monkeys’ ‘randomly selected’ at the back of the plane made the dragging-off a little less dramatic for themselves.
Now United has to pay all the passengers not to report the details of the brawl to MenSeekingMen, unless they are completely in the innocent here.
This is a brand damaging even that will cost United 10s if not 100s of Millions of dollars of damage.... this is beyond stupid... at every level.
Because you are right, Every single person who flies, and flies regularly in particular will think, that could have been me... and they will if they have a choice take their business elsewhere.
Just beyond stupid
Yeah, they’re all bad now. I usually try to get the first flight out of the day so that usually when things go FUBAR you most likely will still get to your destination that day. Those overnight bumps are a PITA.
I am uncertain about your post but I will say this.
That contract you mention I have read more than once. And it is ultimately up to the passenger to secure the allowable-by-law compensation. And I realize there is a difference between cold hard cash the law describes and other compensation.
The airline is clearly entitled to offer the passenger whatever enticements it can to get the passenger’s assent. Airline ‘bucks’ or notwithstanding. It is in their interest to limit the exposure. It is in the passenger’s prerogative to negotiate that.
To imply this is solely the passenger’s game isn’t really genuine in my opinion. We may differ and I certainly am not one to come down on the airline’s side, but this automatic siding with the likes of a screaming little beatch most certainly is not something to which I’d cotton. We just differ.
I fly all of the airlines. All of the airlines have really bad days. This one goes to United.
I fly all of the airlines. All of the airlines have really bad days. This one goes to United.
Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land?
Captain Oveur: I can't tell.
Rumack: You can tell me. I'm a doctor.
Captain Oveur: No. I mean I'm just not sure.
Rumack: Well, can't you take a guess?
Captain Oveur: Well, not for another two hours.
Rumack: You can't take a guess for another two hours?
This is certainly true. But I don’t feel bad for the passenger for getting physically removed, any more than I feel bad for United for whatever loss in business they get because of this.
But here’s the problem. They do this ALL THE TIME, and 99.9% of the time it works, the people picked just get up and leave — or the people say “I really need to get there because XXX”, and someone who hears that feels bad and volunteers.
They tend to offer some slight extra something to people when they are picked randomly, so they don’t usually lose those customers, and everybody else on the plane is happy not to get bumped.
BUT this guy went ballistic. We could argue that having heard him say “i’m a doctor”, they could have chosen another — but what if the next person chosen says “I’ve got important business too, I’m not taking HIS place”. And they certainly couldn’t REWARD a screaming person by letting them stay — because then you’d see a half-dozen videos about how United let some screaming passenger stay on board while they picked some other “civil” person to take the place.
So given that this almost always works, why would they go to $1000? They saved $800 bucks, probably on a few hundred flights that day, it’s 10s of thousands of dollars — and they really don’t expect passengers to become physically violent.
It’s like the debate over paying for blood. We could definitely increase the blood supply by offering to pay for blood to those who won’t donate. BUT, once you offer to pay, you’ll have to pay everybody. So it’s not $100 per pint for that extra 100,000 pints you might get, it’s more like $10,000 per pint, because you had to pay $100 for the entire million pints first.
This is certainly true. But I don’t feel bad for the passenger for getting physically removed, any more than I feel bad for United for whatever loss in business they get because of this.
But here’s the problem. They do this ALL THE TIME, and 99.9% of the time it works, the people picked just get up and leave — or the people say “I really need to get there because XXX”, and someone who hears that feels bad and volunteers.
They tend to offer some slight extra something to people when they are picked randomly, so they don’t usually lose those customers, and everybody else on the plane is happy not to get bumped.
BUT this guy went ballistic. We could argue that having heard him say “i’m a doctor”, they could have chosen another — but what if the next person chosen says “I’ve got important business too, I’m not taking HIS place”. And they certainly couldn’t REWARD a screaming person by letting them stay — because then you’d see a half-dozen videos about how United let some screaming passenger stay on board while they picked some other “civil” person to take the place.
So given that this almost always works, why would they go to $1000? They saved $800 bucks, probably on a few hundred flights that day, it’s 10s of thousands of dollars — and they really don’t expect passengers to become physically violent.
It’s like the debate over paying for blood. We could definitely increase the blood supply by offering to pay for blood to those who won’t donate. BUT, once you offer to pay, you’ll have to pay everybody. So it’s not $100 per pint for that extra 100,000 pints you might get, it’s more like $10,000 per pint, because you had to pay $100 for the entire million pints first.
Every full flight is virtually always overbooked.
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