Let me ask you one question: how would you feel if this happened to you? You’ve bought the item (in this case, a flight), paid for it, have it in your possession - and then the seller comes along and says sorry, it’s not yours, it belongs to a “better” owner that the seller has belatedly chosen so you have to give it back. I’m just surprised no one has fought back before.
blah blah lotsa useless words because this ceased being about any kind of right vs wrong the instant the first video was uploaded to YouTube. Perception becomes reality, as UAL is going to find out when they sign the check.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should...................
Dao’s lawsuit against United will, as demonstrated in debate in previous threads, devolve to the details of the carriage contract on the ticket.
Once United called the TSA and Chicago Transit Police, the matter was out of their hands. It is the Chicago cops who put the beating on Dao.
I still don’t understand though why United doesn’t give its local managers a bit more flexibility to offer higher rewards, to entice that last passenger to get off the plane....
Speaking of reality, this flight was not overbooked. It was full, but the airline sold only as many seats on the flight as were available.
Everything else in this article that flows from the premise that this flight was overbooked is pure bloviation.
The problem is that United pulled paying customers off the flight due to a crew scheduling problem.
That's why they've changed crew scheduling so that a dead-heading crew needs to be at the gate at least 60 minutes prior to the departure time so that they can bump paying passengers before they're seated on the airplane.
Dao violated no part of United's Contract of Carriage. United violated their own Contract of Carriage by physically removing Dao from his seat and because of this they will pay through the nose.
As well they should.
The author and the airline industry seem to confuse airline tickets with lottery tickets.
It is the manner of the removal that is the problem.
They should have gotten actual police officers to remove Dao, not security guards with no experience and no arrest powers.
UAL probably thought that the officers who responded were police officers. Unfortunately, they weren’t.
Right. Say it again: "It wasn't oversold." That is a tremendously important point.
So that the airline could serve many more passengers, it bumped Dao, along with three other willing customers.
Really reaching here. United has a responsibility to serve many passengers in many cities. That is a corporate matter. They were pretty clearly failing at doing that, since they didn't have personnel in the right places and didn't have a good way to get their personnel to where they were needed. Beating your paying customers unconscious so that you can provide good customer support must be something they teach at Harvard Business School. In the real world, it's a "no-no".
I fly a few dozen times annually and have never seen a single passenger removed. This hype by the old media is a single passenger incident out of millions that fly annually. It is not representative of how passengers are treated. However, it is representative of how the old media is ready to attack and vilify any large private business.
The author of the article is incompetent and wrong.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA the writer of this needs to look and see the 10s of MILLIONS of lost revenues, and Brand Value that United has lost over this... This writer is an IDIOT.
United could have been 100% within its legal rights to do what it did, but if you think they were right to do to.. you sir, well you sir are an idiot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c
I blame the pilot.. .
zoooom
I normally take a company’s side as I am a capitalist, not crony, but true Milton Friedman capitalism.
However, even if Dao had his license suspended and even if he scammed this, it is BS.
Factually innacurate.
the airlines have been limited as to how much they can offer. 400% of your one-way fare, $1350 maximum.
Otherwise, yes, the proper solution is to require them to keep raising the offer until there are takers.
Sleazy (if legal) stratagems should be costly tp the perpetrators, even if said perps have the ability to get away with such.
This takes the cake for the most flawed analysis proposed thus far. Simply based on economics, takes no account for the actual contract in place, nor for the history that is behind the various clauses in that contract regarding denial of boarding and the limit on required compensation (to protect the airlines) created in the aftermath of a Nader lawsuit decades ago.
No, the supersaver ticket did not have a different contract of carriage, it was just bought at a different time when the free market price allowed the passenger to save money. Likely limitations on cancelling the ticket or changing the reservation, but “reservation for space” was not disadvantaged, and once he was boarded United could only remove him for violations of its Rule 21, not even argued by United.
If United wanted to come up with a contract that clearly stated up front all the economic justifications this author suggests - it could do so. Likely would see a loss of ticket sales.
Someone should ask him what HE would do if he was dragged off a plane to give space for a non-paying ticket.
Amazing...this cr@p came from a Reason contributor?
Whether they should have had the right to bump him at that stage with the airport police goons—it was an idiotic PR and business move.
Obviously.
bkmk
I guess we will find out who was right and who is wrong when we see if the passenger writes a check to United Airlines or if United airlines writes a check to the passenger.