Posted on 04/12/2017 8:51:15 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
The adage about a picture being worth a thousand words never seemed as true as it did Monday when a video clip shot around the Internet showing a passenger being violently removed from a United Airlines plane in Chicago for refusing to be “voluntarily” bumped from the flight.
United no doubt will expend thousands of words explaining or apologizing for this incident in the coming days and weeks. It won’t help. The video is just too raw.
Indeed, the airline’s initial response to the publicity has left it covered in shame.
United’s PR department first issued a statement explaining blandly that the Chicago-to-Louisville flight late Sunday was overbooked, and that “after our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate. We apologize for the overbook situation. Further details on the removed customer should be directed to authorities.”
United CEO Oscar Munoz then made things worse with a statement of Orwellian doublespeak. “This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United,” he said. “I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers,” whatever that means.
According to CNBC, Munoz followed up Monday evening with a letter to employees defending the airline’s ground staff and describing the passenger as “disruptive and belligerent.” He said the airline agents “were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security Officers to assist in removing the customer from the flight.”
But Munoz, whose version of the episode appears to come from the playbook of how to dig oneself into an ever deeper hole, also undermined the argument that the flight was overbooked. He related that “after the flight was fully boarded,” gate agents “were approached by crewmembers that were told they needed to board the flight.” The implication is that the crew members heading to Louisville were late in arriving, that every passenger held a paid ticket and had been properly boarded, and that only belatedly did United decide to pull passengers off the plane to make room for the crew.
It’s unclear from United’s contract of carriage how either its rule regarding “refusal of transport” (Rule 21) or “denied boarding compensation” (Rule 25) applies to a passenger already seated and instructed to deplane to make room for a company employee rather than another paying passenger.
Whether United had “no choice” but to forcibly eject the passenger also is questionable, as presumably the airline could have transported its crew members to Louisville either by road (a five-hour drive) or by chartering another aircraft. In any event, Munoz in his letter asserts that “treating our customers and each other with respect and dignity is at the core of who we are.”
Plainly this was a botched job in countless ways and at multiple levels. Reports indicate the flight was the last one to Louisville on Sunday, and that United offered passengers an $800 voucher plus overnight accommodations and an alternative flight leaving Monday afternoon in order to free up four seats for a flight crew needing to reach Louisville.
When the voluntary offer failed, four passengers evidently were chosen at random to be involuntarily bumped. This happened after the plane had been loaded, which is certainly an unusual wrinkle in the annals of passenger treatment. One couple went quietly, but another passenger objected. Before being dragged off the plane, he reportedly identified himself as a doctor with patients to see Monday. When he refused to go, the ground staff summoned airport police, who physically manhandled him out of his seat and dragged him, bloodied, down the aisle as several other passengers documented the event on their smartphones.
What sort of training United offers its personnel to manage such episodes isn’t known, but plainly it stinks.
What’s even more important is what this episode says about the terms and conditions of air travel in the United States.
To begin with, the law allows air carriers to overbook flights — that is, sell more tickets than they have seats for. That’s plainly a situation that benefits the airlines almost exclusively, because it tends to ensure that every seat will be filled even at the cost of leaving some passengers behind. How many businesses do you know of that can sell you a good or service, accept payment and then withdraw that good or service unilaterally for their own purposes — much less by force?
Passengers bumped involuntarily have rights to compensation, but the airlines have great latitude to set their own priority rules for bumping travelers. Typically it’s those paying the lowest fares, lacking membership in a frequent-flyer program, or checking in late who are most at risk. Bumpees who are going to be more than two hours late to a domestic destination are entitled to compensation of 400 percent of their one-way fare, up to $1,350, plus the value of their ticket.
These rules, obviously, are in dire need of upgrading to suit modern conditions. The Department of Transportation acknowledges in its outline of passenger rights that some passengers may be more amenable to voluntary bumping than others, or more flexible in their travel plans: “Almost any planeload of airline passengers includes some people with urgent travel needs and others who may be more concerned about the cost of their tickets than about getting to their destination on time.” The agency encourages airlines to “negotiate with their passengers for mutually acceptable compensation” in order to secure needed seats.
As Daniel Gross observed at Slate.com, airlines have squeezed their overbooking privilege until it screams for mercy, even as they’re consistently flying fuller planes. In the most recent boom-and-bust airline cycle, the industry “load factor” — the percentage of seats filled — bottomed out at 72.21 percent in February 2009, in the teeth of a crushing recession, but more recently has run in the mid-80s. That appears to be as high as it’s been in this century and may be an absolute limit, because some routes will never run at 100 percent.
Tighter passenger loads have coincided with an economic recovery that makes flyers more resistant to giving up hours, even days, of inconvenience, even for a few hundred bucks. As Gross pointed out, a two-hour delay in a flight could translate to a missed family event or a lost business contract.
The solution to the conflict between an airline’s desire to fill every seat and passengers’ need to get where they’re going on time is blindingly obvious: Let the market work. The Louisville doctor’s need to get home was clearly worth more to him than $800. But so was United’s need to get a crew from Chicago to Louisville. The airline decided to cheap out by not offering passengers payment that would be enough to free up more seats. Instead of paying the true value of moving its crew, it decided to impose that cost on one unfortunate passenger.
Then, as though to prove beyond doubt that it considered its passengers the expendable players in this drama, it summoned the police to do its dirty work. Something’s wrong with the intellects running United Airlines, and if there’s any justice in the world, now they’ll really pay.
Nope.
Many people do not show for a variety of reasons but, you can use the same ticket for another flight, before some deadline in the future but, you will pay a $75-$150 rebooking fee.
On a flight that short it doesn’t make sense to miss the flight because the booking fees will be nearly the price of ticket.
Like the price of a ticket from San Francisco to Las Vegas. That ticket for being herded into a cattle car is currently $57 bucks “Roundtrip” on JetBlue and it’s a horrible ride with “Nonstop”, which I always love.
Or you can take Virgin for $109 Roundtrip and who doesn’t like Virgin?
For a good kick in the ass you can Fly the Fit Club Special on United Airlines for $170 - $289 and they can even “re-accomodate” you for well, any reason at all.
If it was a west coast/east coast ticket and I had something pressing come up that had to be dealt with, I would rebook.
The author admits to being an idiot.
The second part of the statement quoted above is a clear apology for the necessity of replacing 4 paying customers with flight crew dead-heading to Louisville.
That said, United should be promising (and following up on) to revamp their booking policies. If they are deliberately setting things up so that they can charge for 100 seats on a 95 seat aircraft, that is fraud, IMO. The passengers that miss the flight (unless delayed by a late arriving flight) still pay. The customers on-board still pay.
The requirement needs to be real money paid out in the amount of the fare paid by the customer (cash is king), plus whatever "vouchers" or "credits" the airline wants to offer - starting at the base value of the fare paid, and extending to at least 10 times that value - with involuntary removal from a flight being subject to the maximum as a minimum.
I fly a LOT - 100K miles last year. I am sick of the airlines crapping on all of the passengers with their booking policies.
Here is the problem in a nutshell: They asked people to give up their seats AFTER the plane was boarded.
It’s a psychological thing. Once you are in your seat, you feel as though you are in YOUR seat and you want to get to your destination. But you don’t really “have” a seat until you are in it.
I’ve seen airlines do this sort of thing a LOT, but it is always before boarding begins. Nobody is being asked to vacate a seat. Rather, they are being asked to be refunded, with a bonus, for something they have purchased but not yet taken possession of.
The airline has every right to do what they did, but it is bad publicity when you do it the way they did it. In the end, they are the one hurt by this.
Now, if their normal MO is, in fact, to do it before boarding begins, maybe they should have bit the bullet on this one and not tried it after boarding, and tried to find another way to get the crew to their destination.
I’m sure that is a lesson they learned here.
An airline should NEVER ask a customer to vacate their seat, even if it is within the airline’s rights, unless it is a serious emergency. It’s seriously messed up. It treats people like cattle, even more than Southwest’s cattle call. Sure, passengers may be, technically, just cattle, but you make them actually feel like it at your own risk.
And once the airline insists you are to get off, and you refuse, force will be used. It is how the world works. Expect it. And don’t cry when it happens.
The airlines quit caring about their customers a long time ago. No meals, child sized seating, ugly wait staff, foul air, huge charges for any and every thing . . .
Two thoughts on this - the last and I do mean the last time I flew United, was ten years ago. (I don’t fly that much but still). I was flying back from a trip to Disneyland with my daughter and 6 year old granddaughter. I had both my soda and my granddaughter’s orange juice in my hands. My granddaughter and daughter were sound asleep, I was on the aisle with my granddaughter nestled on my right arm. My left arm still had staples from surgery two weeks earlier. The steward came around to get stuff as I we began to come to our destination. I put both on his tray and he started screaming at me (in a whisper lol). He said things that were in my opinion, threatening. He demanded that I take the soda can back because he would be coming around again with the recycling bag. I told him I would not. He about exploded. When we landed we texted my son in law who said that he couldn’t get to the gate because security was screening in passengers who were deplaning. I was sure I was going to get arrested. Not. Southwestern gives out chocolate cookies and sometimes the stewardesses sing.
Our son flies all the time and always flies Southwest when he can.
I’ve flown Southwest twice. Both times I swore, never again. Unfortunately, my choices are limited, so my solution is to only fly to my own kids weddings.
[I have found Southwest Airlines to have excellent customer service.]
I have been a United passanger since the merger with Continental.
But a few years ago I decided to try Southwest for a cross-country trip.
WOW!!! What an amazing difference in service! Flight crew are actually HAPPY to be doing their job.
The best part of SWA is being able to choose your own seat.
“””remove the customers so the flight crew could get on.”””
Even at this late date I have not read anywhere that it was a ‘United Flight Crew’ who needed to board the plane.
All reports seem to say it was United Employees” who needed to board.
Big difference as to the rules if it were only regular employees.
[Is United owned by the employees?]
Don’t know, but it’s about to be owned by one of its (former) passangers....
United is a public company owned by shareholders
Hotels, airlines, car rentals, etc all book with potential for overage. Trips change, get cancelled, etc, and they have carefully crafted formulas to maximize revenue/occupancy/etc. Business traveller regularly change flights do to schedule changes, etc. The airlines are going to account for those fluctuations.
Typically, they find takers for the free travel dollars, but even their max $$ in this case was only $800. That’s barely enough to cover a vacation for 2. They should have raised the level vs. demanding fliers off the plane (even before the unnecessary use of force). Someone would have responded to $1000+ a free 1st class upgrade...surely. All this to accommodate their employees, too. That’s the worst part of it. If they had simply too many paying customers, that’s one thing, but the sure disregard for customers over employees flying to the destination is utterly impossible to comprehend.
So how are the airlines losing money because of no shows?
Exactly.
They will make more on the flight due to less weight in passenger and baggage equaling less fuel expended and less cost of food/drink consumed. (assuming coach, not first class)
The over-booking appears to allow them to sell keep selling the seats for higher fares and then "re-accommodating" the cheaper fares to another flight.
United DOES NOT give "cash" when you are bumped. They give a voucher towards another flight.
I was on a jury where the city of Seattle was being sued for injuries to a two year old that fell from the top of an 8 foot slide in a city playground. The surface under the slide was asphalt.
I was one of the jurors who said, from the beginning, that you are supposed to watch your kids and this WAS in the big kids’ area. The inattentive baby sitter was the problem, not the city. And I was the driving force behind the verdict.
And the city won.
However, when I talked to the City attorney after the case was done he said to me, “Don’t worry. We’re gonna get that fixed.”
I told him he just admitted responsibility and such a statement during the trial would have reversed my decision.
Another liberal/democrat politically correct nutcase. The coverage of this incident is a red herring to cover up real problems.
Allow me to clarify:
The beaten passenger was unconscious when they got him off the plane. The beaters left him in the hallway thingy to get a gurney or wheelchair. He came to and none of the beaters were around. He then made his way back onto the plane, which still had its door open.
Nobody "let him back on the plane".
I also like Southwest. I was on one where the stewardess went thru the safety procedure talk they do and had me rolling in the aisle. She did a satire of it that was great.
I’ve had the same question for years. Can’t remember the last time I was on an “empty” plane. They’re packed to bursting. From overbooked flights I’ve certainly garnered a lot of free flight vouchers though. The last flight of the day from Denver to Cody was always a guaranteed voucher; ALWAYS overbooked (and surprise: it’s United).
Many moons ago, I booked flights for United.
Airlines overbook to maximize profits by making sure every seat is occupied for the flight. When there is an overbooking at the time of flight, they would start offering deals for passengers to take the next flight. This might be upgrades or even hotel rooms. Usually fixes the problem and it is done before boarding takes place. If no one volunteers to leave the flight they will eventually pull someone off. It is a good time to haggle with them for a better offer, like several upgrades on several flights..
Something went really wrong here that they allowed an overbooked flight to board, as it is hard to get a passenger out of a seat when settled in.
The big no no is to allow the flight to undock late, which carries severe penalties for the airlines, as their gate rental is quite specific as to when the the plan has to be clear of the gate. Once on the runway, who cares, they will let the plane sit for 5 hours but it MUST clear the gate by the allotted time. And the plane can’t leave the gate overbooked.
The attendants at the gate are the ones blamed for any late gate departures and can easily be fired so they must have panicked and brought in some muscle to remove the unlucky chosen passenger.
I’ve wondered about that myself. If I ever miss my flight I figured I would be out the money. So this is about Reselling those seats?
Agreed. That was a big sack of stupid.
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