Posted on 04/13/2017 5:10:20 AM PDT by Eric Pode of Croydon
Edited on 04/13/2017 7:04:23 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
One of the recurring themes of this blog is “how companies, particularly those used to having control over their customers adapt/not to the new world of communications, the new world of technology that empowers the individual.”
Yes, you do know exactly where this is going.
My name is Sarah A. Hoyt, and I fly. I don’t fly often — anymore — and I don’t fly with much degree of enjoyment because I was always rather afraid of flying. (Afraid is not the right term. I hate not being in control.)
But there was a time I flew more and with greater enjoyment. This was around 99 to 2000 when for various reasons, we and the boys flew (tourism, mostly) about six times a year, return trips. (So, twelve times a year.)
I don’t know if you remember those days? You checked your luggage in, the planes were on time more often than not. If not on time, they tried to compensate and be nice to you.
Unfortunately 9/11 changed that. But I think the change was deeper than we think. It wasn’t just that the airlines, suddenly faced with multiple delays and fewer passengers took the exactly wrong tactic to make themselves profitable again: charge for ALL the things, make the seats so small that when someone reclines, they’re in the lap of the people behind, etc. No. It was that this change was aided, abetted, directed by an authoritarian type of mentality.
I can’t prove it, but I think part of it was all the bail outs from government to the airlines. The other part was that well… the entire flying experience became more authoritarian. You have to submit to being checked from head to toe to even get aboard (and yet, as usual, I flew with both liquids and blades I didn’t know I was carrying last week. It’s kabuki.)
Along with this came the airlines ability to remove/accuse of interference or threats or terrorism anyone who argues too loudly with any of its employees. We’ve all heard stories of people removed/locked up/etc simply because they wouldn’t or couldn’t obey instructions.
I remember the woman handcuffed to the airport bench who died through lack of meds, the same lack that was causing her to act psychotic.
I think the ability to get away with mistreating passengers (and call the police on passengers if they complain) and getting away with some egregious abuses that people tolerate because “well, who knows, next time it could be a threat” has corrupted airline culture.
I think what happened to the United Passenger was not only predictable, but inevitable. Once airlines get used to the idea that you’re “cattle” to be herded and told what to do, arbitrarily, and that if you refuse to pay for extras you’re negligible, you have set up the conditions in which a passenger, sooner or later will get abused and the abuse will get filmed.
As with publishing, we have an industry that has a monopoly and is told by the government it is “vital” and given subsidies to prove it. (Well, publishing hasn’t been, I think, but you get the point.)
Because the employees have full authority and can back it up by accusing their passengers of terrorism/denying them boarding/creating trouble, they’ve got into this mentality where the passenger is NOT their customer, but simply widgets to be moved around, ordered about and treated, generally, like things of no account.
Which explains why our airline travel is rapidly coming to mimic the qualities of Soviet travel in its hey day.
I rarely fly these days. In the last 9 years, we’ve retrenched our financial position so often we’re now out of trenchers. Also, frankly, I hate flying these days. You have to get there an hour and a half ahead of time, and half the time the flight will be changed/delayed/strange. The strange part usually involves distributing my family around the airplane like a kid’s thrown marbles, seemingly for fun. (Like last week, when Dan and I were separated and another couple were equally separated for no reason either of us could figure out. — we traded.) This is a problem for me, because I have severe mid-range deafness. Yes, at a noisy con, if I smile and nod when you tell me that you just grilled your neighbor with garlic, it’s because I have no idea what you said. So, in a noisy plane? I have no idea what the attendants are telling me at any given time. I have no idea what the announcements are. Usually I look at Dan/Robert/Marshall and they translate. And yes, there have been one or two situations in which flight attendants thought I was being obtuse on purpose, but fortunately not escalating to violence, as I rarely travel alone.
So, it’s not a pleasurable experience. The reasons I do it these days are to attend cons; to accompany Dan on a business trip; to see our aging/ailing relatives (yes, we know eventually we’ll arrive too late. We’re too far away. But we try.
And every time I travel, the flight is overbooked and they ask for volunteers. Sometimes I’m really tempted, because, say, a voucher for 1k would pay a trip to see my parents. BUT what good does it do me to arrive, say, at Liberty con on Sunday, then turn around and come back.
I swear until yesterday I did not know you could get INVOLUNTARILY bumped, and the idea fills me with dread. The reasons I travel, I’ll still have to travel, but it has the potential of nullifying the entire reason I am even there.
For now, everyone who is reporting on the UAL incident is saying the “doctor involved” has a shady past. This is TO AN EXTENT TRUE. Kind of. He had some problems, some of them apparently resulting from PTSD (his treatment at the hands of the airline must REALLY have helped that) that led him into shady behavior AFTER which he did everything in his power to clean up his act.
The interesting thing here is where the Louisville newspaper reporting on him found his name to do the background check. It wasn’t in early reports, and it was only in possession of the airline.
Did the airline give the name to the newspaper? I don’t know. I wish I could say it was unthinkable.
However, the behavior of various people coming out at the same time to defend United and to tarnish in any way the reputation of the man they were caught abusing, reminded me of the incident when I posted Frontiers of Insanity post.
This was a time when my blog got on a good day about 100 hits, but within hours of my putting up a post critical of Frontier, we had a bonafide Frontier apologist, casting aspersions on my character and acting like I was crazy and “entitled.” (BTW if you want a glimpse into how crazy and authoritarian airlines have got, that experience is a good example. And it’s not even the worst we’ve had. The absolute worst was 9? years ago when flying back from Chattanooga took us on a tour of the US, including overnight in Chicago and bringing us home too late to go through the mandatory parent interview to get #2 son into a dual college/high school program. Fortunately Older Son ably filled in for us, and we just had to go in and sign papers after.)
This same comment about being “entitled” was left by a United Employee on a post of mine on FB yesterday. He said I didn’t understand the trouble with trying to subdue a planeful of entitled and unruly people.
I don’t like the term “entitled.” It is too often used by people who think they have authority over you to tell you to fall in place. Yes, I know, you do get “entitled” people, who demand safe spaces and think life should be “fair” like an eternal kindergarten. But there are better terms for them, like “infantile” and “full of hubris.”
In the context of the airline, let’s dissect “entitled.” You’re d*mn right I’m entitled. When you pay for a service, you are entitled to that service. It is known as “contract”. And I don’t really care if the government says it’s legal for them to drop people involuntarily. The government is no arbiter of morals. The truth is that in any other industry, if I pay for something I’m ENTITLED to it. And if people revoke it after payment, it’s called fraud and there are all kinds of ugly consequences.
Just because the government thinks airlines are “essential” and enables ugly behavior, it doesn’t make it RIGHT.
Entitled? Damn right I’m entitled. When I pay for something, I bought it, and it’s mine, whether it’s a service or a physical thing. This is known as property rights, and — as such — is the cornerstone of the civilized society we used to be.
Again, I didn’t know until this week that airlines could just refuse boarding at will. I still need to fly, but the idea that it can be arbitrarily denied because of someone else’s priority or someone else’s **** up does not make me love it more. I always assumed they just offered more and more money until SOMEONE took it.
Yeah, yeah, I know “overbooking is why flights are so cheap.” Is it? Is it really? I don’t know what the rate of missing/not being there for flights is. I’ve missed ONE flight in my entire life. It would seem to me that having passengers on standby would take care of that. SURELY if you’re actually compensating people for giving up their seats — and playing fair with compensation. I’ve heard rumors United Airlines vouchers are useless — it costs you more than one or two empty seats.
The only time another … ah… company denied me the right to a service I paid for, it was the post office, who told me I couldn’t have the mailbox where the previous owners had had it, under the porch, but must have it down seventeen steps, at street level, because their UNION didn’t want them to have to climb that many steps.
In both cases, both institutions were heavily subsidized and protected by government. In both cases, service is/was lousy. In both cases the person being served wasn’t viewed as the CUSTOMER or the person who actually kept them in business.
I fully expect airlines to say that passengers must “build in” days to their travel, to insure they get there in time. I mean, the post office told me — when I pointed out having the box on the street, in a street with pedestrian traffic was asking for theft — that I should have anything important and certainly not checks sent to me. (Which explains why they’re increasingly Spam Mail.)
What I say is that if I need to build in hotels for an extra night at each end, then their flights must be WAY cheaper.
In the end this is the problem with the game of authoritanism and subtraction of services the airlines play. Sooner or later, you’ve subtracted everything, and frankly Greyhound starts sounding good.
And then, perhaps, government decides you’re not essential anymore and stops subsidizing you. Or you have to learn to subsist on package-carrying only. OR — and it’s already happening — an airline that actually believes their customers are their customers and deserve to be treated as human beings comes into being and sends you into bankruptcy.
What I know is that right now, where we are, United COMPLETELY misunderstands their position. From their half-hearted excuses, to the letter their CEO sent to employees telling them they had done nothing wrong and the passenger was a poopy head, they completely fail to understand that the public in whose court of opinion they’re being tried are those same widgets they’ve been pushing around and mistreating for YEARS.
Frankly, just in terms of how closely packed together we were last week, I have enough of a hate-in for them to last me for years.
United has been very close to my “no, not even if it’s half the price” list. Now they’re firmly on it. I’m sure I’m not alone.
And that in the end is what happens when you forget who actually PAYS you and who you’re SUPPOSED to serve. At some point, you subtract enough — like, assuring them you’ll actually transport them for money — that you find you no longer have customers.
It’s a great way to go out of business. And all for lack of understanding that they’re selling SOMETHING and not in charge of ordering people around to suit the airline’s convenience.
NO ONE is entitled to your business. NO ONE is entitled to play bait and switch with you. And companies who think they are and can will eventually be “rewarded” with disappearance. It might take some time, but it’s inevitable.
The way to stay in business is to offer what your customers want and to be nice to them while providing it.
An idea so crazy it might just work out.
Human beings are emotional creatures. It is easy to manipulate them to do all sorts of things that will cost them in the end.
I’m not prone to emotional responses, but I am very rare in that regard. I feel for people who have had their dignity utterly trampled and then lash out. It’s like antagonizing a bear with a cattle prod and then blaming the bear when he takes a swipe at you.
When I get emotional, I appear quite calm, but I’m actually quite dangerous. I get this weird clarity that keeps me from acting out, unless I see it as a “final” act. So far, so good. It’s how I won in court. They tried to get me to respond emotionally. The other attorney got so frustrated that she was threatened with contempt twice by the judge.
And I was a non-attorney representing myself.
This story makes me sick. I’d like to see a total overhaul of the airline industry by removing government protections. Let the market determine which airlines fly.
Do corporations have paid trolls online?
Flying has become a pain, glad I don’t have to do it for a living. Summer vacations - I prefer to drive.
Despite the uproar over this incident I have little hope for any change. In a customer service centered airline the CEO would have been sacked as well as those morons on the ground. I expect that United will pay millions in settlements, hope the furor goes away and does nothing to improve its service
Only a small part of the reason I havent flown since 2002.
Trains and planes on time? Its a nice thought.
You're right. I was just using UAL as the current example, but a couple of recent experiences on Southwest bolster your point. Last week I flew into PBI. Flight was considerably delayed due to weather. We got in line to board, and just as we were ready to start SW announced that PBI was closed to president Trump's landing on the airfield. Another hour delay. Then we took off arrived and were not allowed to deplane for 50 minutes because our gate was busy. Now this is near midnight at a Podunk airport where no other planes landed or took off during the entire time we were help prisoner on the tarmac. They couldn't find another gate? When we finally got off we noticed that there was an enormous plane with China Airlines written on it parked not far from the terminal. The gate wasn't in use so much as they didn't want us peasants mingling with the Chinese staffers who were traveling to Mar a Lago. They lied about the reason.
Last month my kid was on a flight to New Orleans (again Southwest) and rather than land they circled for nearly three hours. When they landed the noticed a eve of emergency vehicles waiting for them - multiple fire trucks etc. they then waited on the tarmac for another hour or so and went to the gate escorted y the fire trucks. Southwest said that the brakes overheated because they had to come in fast due to wind. This was very late at night, and couldn't they come in from a different direction or a different runway? I suspect they had a potential landing gear problem and lied about that. Why else burn off fuel PRIOR to landing? So yes all airlines are arrogant and lie about stuff all the time. UAL just happens to be the one in the spotlight this time.
I wonder if you Have actually tried this.
i`have actually tried this, multiple times, in demonstrations in san francisco, in the not so distant past.
the police are quite expert at making things look like it is your fault, once things start to get physical (by their volition. also, the police will lie to you and tell you that it is illegal not to “cooperate.” you might not be “arrested” but you might be “detained” for up to 24 hours.
i am not defending them, but people who choose your option should be warned about how rough it can get if they follow your advice.
They just asked the guy to take a later flight due to unforseen circumstances and offered him $800 and a room for the night.
The Jackass wigged out on the cops and got what you get when you wig out on the cops.
You are absolutely correct. This is why, in a previous post I used the word “war” to describe this. “All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.”
When you are not one of the compliant sheep, it will not go easy for you. Just ask the Bundy family. But if nobody fights back, nothing changes. i.e. why do they do what they do? Because they can. We need to make it cost them. It’s why I NEVER go through the full body scan. It needs to cost them. And that means it will cost me. So far, it is worth the price.
If UA sticks to this defense, our boilerplate allowed us to do it, they might win in court, but it’ll be a Pyrrhic victory. Because wars like this aren’t just fought in a courtroom. They’re also fought in the court of public opinion. Someone should explain that to UA’s board.
ok, just checking, lol.
To be clear, my posts sound a lot more serious than I really feel about it. It’s a game to me. And as a Christian, in a very real way, I just see this world as The Matrix. In the end, all this stuff is utterly irrelevant, but your response to it is not.
“Ok, let’s talk legality - since when is assault legal?”
What assault?
The one by this moron on the POLICE?
This idiot, who will now get very rich for committing several crimes that would put you in jail, deserved everything that happened to him, and also should end up in jail.
First, after deboarding, he ran back down the jetway and into the cabin, screaming and yelling up and down the aisle. Crime number one. Try running down the jetway and see where you end up.
Then he plops in a seat and refuses to leave, whereupon United employees call the police. This idiot tells the police that they will have to drag him off the airplane. So they oblige. He fights back. Crime number two - assault on a police officer.
Crime number three - interfering with the operation and crew of an airliner.
Now imagine if they gave in to this criminal and left him on the plane. And they pick YOU as his replacement. I guess you would be happy with that.
And then with this criminal onboard with unstable behavior - would you be comfortable at 30,000 feet waiting for this time bomb to go off again, probably because he didn’t get a meal or free drink?
The only mistake United made was having the CEO Munoz apologize for this miscreant and throw his own employees and the police under the bus. Do you think the Chicago airport police are going to respond positively when United calls for them on the next disruptive moron?
Jail this jerk, and put him in a cell with Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice.
Legality. Yes let’s talk about a private airline using the Chicago PD for non security issues. 4 senators are opening an investigation into that as well as the fact that United likely went beyond the FAA legal boundaries for over booking.
All that needs to be said.
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