Don't fly United

[Anonymous]

United has a lot problems here, so does the Chicago PD for this happening. However, there comes a point when the passenger has to take a little responsibility for this. No matter how unfair it was he was kicked off the plane (and it was unfair, wrong, and completely mishandled), if he has been chosen to removed from the plane eventually he needed to understand that it was going to be him no matter how wrong, terrible, or bad it was for him. They were not going to take someone off in his place because he refused to obey the order to deplane. He needed to get off the plane before it got physical.

The people who 'arrested' or removed him, or whatever the right word is did a lousy job of it. But under the circumstances facing him ultimately he ran out of alternatives. He either had to get off the plane and take out his anger and frustration with someone in authority at UA at the airport, or risk being hurt, arrested, and/or several other bad outcomes on top of those. There are other threads on this site that detail people being removed from planes for bad, wrong, or immoral reasons, not many of those people took the dispute to the point that the airline had to physically remove them from the flight.

I hate what happened, but both sides have some blame to share for it to get to this place, 90% United, 10% passenger.

I hope the passenger gets just compensation for his injuries, and I hope others don't put themselves at risk for being hurt like he did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll be the first to call BS on this guy needing to see patients. Unless he's traveling home and has appointments, I think folks are under the false impression that he's so special that he flies to see his patients.

I'd like to be proven wrong. Just kidding, nobody like's being proven wrong.

His bio should be out shortly I'd imagine.

Um, the whole point was that he was flying home and had patients scheduled for today.

He shouldn't have been flying home on the same day he had appointments, that's really not that responsible. Especially flying during the spring months which can have hell-storm weather leading to delays.

Book smart, but maybe not too street smart.

Yes! Down with the little people who fly home from vacations on Sundays in order to go to work on Monday. Oh wait, that was 99% of the plane's passengers...

If I have an event I _must_ be at, I always fly a day earlier than normal just to account for flight delays. For example, I'll do this if I'm speaking at a conference or I'm in someone's wedding.

I don't need to do this often since it's usually not that bad if I arrive a day late..

So if you are speaking at a conference on a Thursday morning, you leave on a Tuesday, just in case there are flight delays? If so, my god, you have got to unclench. That's a ridiculous thing to do, and it's EXTRA ridiculous to expect other people to pay for an extra night of hotel just in case there are delays in travel. Leaving the afternoon before should have been plenty of time.

That said, it's like a 6 hour drive, max, to Louisville from Chicago. Me, I would've taken the $800 and rented a car, if I needed to get home so bad, but I completely understand why this guy did not want to get up. This sort of thing should have been sorted out well before the plane was fully boarded.

No, but if I'm speaking Thursday morning, I don't grab the 4:00 flight on Wednesday. I get in to my hotel and if work is needed to be done, sit in my room and do it. It's asking for it if I wait until its too late.

[Anonymous]

I was involved in a situation like this with Independence Air. They boarded too many people, and someone had to go. They picked someone who was going to see her dying father. She was crying and wouldn't leave. Finally, my husband and I insisted that we get off instead. They gave us 10 free passes!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
No, but if I'm speaking Thursday morning, I don't grab the 4:00 flight on Wednesday. I get in to my hotel and if work is needed to be done, sit in my room and do it. It's asking for it if I wait until its too late.

Same here. The only time I'll cut it closer is if there are really frequent flights, like to NYC and Boston, since they have flights every 1-1.5 hours on the Shuttle, and Amtrak as back-up plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was involved in a situation like this with Independence Air. They boarded too many people, and someone had to go. They picked someone who was going to see her dying father. She was crying and wouldn't leave. Finally, my husband and I insisted that we get off instead. They gave us 10 free passes!

You are a great person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:United has a lot problems here, so does the Chicago PD for this happening. However, there comes a point when the passenger has to take a little responsibility for this. No matter how unfair it was he was kicked off the plane (and it was unfair, wrong, and completely mishandled), if he has been chosen to removed from the plane eventually he needed to understand that it was going to be him no matter how wrong, terrible, or bad it was for him. They were not going to take someone off in his place because he refused to obey the order to deplane. He needed to get off the plane before it got physical.

The people who 'arrested' or removed him, or whatever the right word is did a lousy job of it. But under the circumstances facing him ultimately he ran out of alternatives. He either had to get off the plane and take out his anger and frustration with someone in authority at UA at the airport, or risk being hurt, arrested, and/or several other bad outcomes on top of those. There are other threads on this site that detail people being removed from planes for bad, wrong, or immoral reasons, not many of those people took the dispute to the point that the airline had to physically remove them from the flight.

I hate what happened, but both sides have some blame to share for it to get to this place, 90% United, 10% passenger.

I hope the passenger gets just compensation for his injuries, and I hope others don't put themselves at risk for being hurt like he did.

Yeah...no. If you're okay typing out a rationale that says physical harm should be expected, you do not "hate what happened" quite enough.

If he was a threat to the airline, the aircraft, or other passengers then physical removal is called for. What you're advocating is that the airline can be expected to be a threat TO its passengers. That is NOT okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have had this happen to me on Delta, they said they overbooked a flight and needed 4 seats and computer "randoMLY" picked my family of 4. We were bumped, even before we got on the plane, and we were checking in early so we weren't the last ones to arrive whatsoever. They offered us a flight 10 hours later. We were in business. Huge argument ensued. I had two small children, so spend 10 extra hours in an international airport with no where to go, then get on a 9 hour flight, hell to the no. After 2 hours of arguing, crying, negotiating, they reluctantly agreed to put us 4, in 2 seats and 2 seats in coach, with NO refund on price difference, they just beat us down, just so we could get on our original flight (why they didn't offer these coach seats to begin with is insane). We get on the flight and are on the runway, i look out my kid's window seat window and see 4 black town cars literally driving on the runway to our plane, people get out, and board our plane. Our seats apparently were for these people. F Delta.

\

Ok, this is NUTS. I can't believe they didn't refund you the difference between the business and coach seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was involved in a situation like this with Independence Air. They boarded too many people, and someone had to go. They picked someone who was going to see her dying father. She was crying and wouldn't leave. Finally, my husband and I insisted that we get off instead. They gave us 10 free passes!

You are a great person.

Agreed. Blessings to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:United has a lot problems here, so does the Chicago PD for this happening. However, there comes a point when the passenger has to take a little responsibility for this. No matter how unfair it was he was kicked off the plane (and it was unfair, wrong, and completely mishandled), if he has been chosen to removed from the plane eventually he needed to understand that it was going to be him no matter how wrong, terrible, or bad it was for him. They were not going to take someone off in his place because he refused to obey the order to deplane. He needed to get off the plane before it got physical.

The people who 'arrested' or removed him, or whatever the right word is did a lousy job of it. But under the circumstances facing him ultimately he ran out of alternatives. He either had to get off the plane and take out his anger and frustration with someone in authority at UA at the airport, or risk being hurt, arrested, and/or several other bad outcomes on top of those. There are other threads on this site that detail people being removed from planes for bad, wrong, or immoral reasons, not many of those people took the dispute to the point that the airline had to physically remove them from the flight.

I hate what happened, but both sides have some blame to share for it to get to this place, 90% United, 10% passenger.

I hope the passenger gets just compensation for his injuries, and I hope others don't put themselves at risk for being hurt like he did.

Yeah...no. If you're okay typing out a rationale that says physical harm should be expected, you do not "hate what happened" quite enough.

If he was a threat to the airline, the aircraft, or other passengers then physical removal is called for. What you're advocating is that the airline can be expected to be a threat TO its passengers. That is NOT okay.

+ 1000.

[Anonymous]

We've become a corporatocracy. Our government exists to protect and serve the interests of corporations, not its citizens. This story is just one more example of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have had this happen to me on Delta, they said they overbooked a flight and needed 4 seats and computer "randoMLY" picked my family of 4. We were bumped, even before we got on the plane, and we were checking in early so we weren't the last ones to arrive whatsoever. They offered us a flight 10 hours later. We were in business. Huge argument ensued. I had two small children, so spend 10 extra hours in an international airport with no where to go, then get on a 9 hour flight, hell to the no. After 2 hours of arguing, crying, negotiating, they reluctantly agreed to put us 4, in 2 seats and 2 seats in coach, with NO refund on price difference, they just beat us down, just so we could get on our original flight (why they didn't offer these coach seats to begin with is insane). We get on the flight and are on the runway, i look out my kid's window seat window and see 4 black town cars literally driving on the runway to our plane, people get out, and board our plane. Our seats apparently were for these people. F Delta.

\

Ok, this is NUTS. I can't believe they didn't refund you the difference between the business and coach seats.

Believe it. And it wasn't a language issue, we are bilingual. It was just an a-hole airline issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have had this happen to me on Delta, they said they overbooked a flight and needed 4 seats and computer "randoMLY" picked my family of 4. We were bumped, even before we got on the plane, and we were checking in early so we weren't the last ones to arrive whatsoever. They offered us a flight 10 hours later. We were in business. Huge argument ensued. I had two small children, so spend 10 extra hours in an international airport with no where to go, then get on a 9 hour flight, hell to the no. After 2 hours of arguing, crying, negotiating, they reluctantly agreed to put us 4, in 2 seats and 2 seats in coach, with NO refund on price difference, they just beat us down, just so we could get on our original flight (why they didn't offer these coach seats to begin with is insane). We get on the flight and are on the runway, i look out my kid's window seat window and see 4 black town cars literally driving on the runway to our plane, people get out, and board our plane. Our seats apparently were for these people. F Delta.

You are kidding me. You paid for business class, and they bumped you to coach? I hope you wrote a letter of complaint.

Yes this really happened to me on a flight from CDG to IAD in 2015. I let my DH handle it (who is very calm and assertive in these kind of situations) while I cried big fat crocodile tears. We never got a refund. They acted at the end as if we were the problem and they were doing us such a big favor. We were 3.5 hours EARLY for our flight, we were not flying standby or late or last to check in. Every time I fly now I get nervous it will happen again.

We got dicked over for a flight from Zurich to IAD for rich people from somewhere in Africa. Same thing, they zoomed up at the last minute in limos and their many staff/servants flew coach, they flew first. Then we had to wait forever to deplane because they had to leave first and for some reason it took forever. Side note: the nanny/babysitter sat in coach with the baby and the rich mother in first class came back, stood in the aisle breastfeeding the baby, and then handed then baby back to the nanny. It was bizarre. They didn't buy a seat for the baby either.

[Anonymous]

Once a paying customer is on-board and seated there is no excuse for dragging them off the plane.
Inexcusable.
It must have been a pretty high-ranking employee that absolutely required a seat. And why didn't United know that before boarding the paing customer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nothing in either video appears to suggest that the man's head hitting the armrest across the aisle was an intentional act by the officers, but merely incidental to the man's removal from the seat and his subsequent toppling over across the aisle.

As has been said earlier in the thread, noncompliance with an officer's request, then order, will lead to use of force. If, in the course of a struggle against lawful use of force the resisting party sustains injuries, even serious/potentially life-threatening injuries merely incidental to the lawful use of force (such as a head incidentally hitting an armrest during the course of detainment), then that liability is on the resisting party...NOT the detaining officer in the course of his/her official duties.

It's no different than if, in the course of the use of lawful and non-lethal self-defense during a street encounter using a hand-to-hand technique, the offending party happens to be tripped over by the defending party and incidentally smacks his/her head on a curb, causing death by severe head injury...Courts (at least in the U.S.) generally hold that death or great bodily harm resulting incidentally to the use of non-lethal defensive methods against an offending party is not the liability of the defending party, as the defending party generally would not have reasonably known that the use of a defensive method established by law and precedent to be "non-lethal" would have resulted in death or great bodily harm.

I think part of what's disgusting about your defense of the airline and police actions here is that the police were acting at the behest of the airline, to protect their financial interests. This wasn't an unruly passenger who was a danger to others, this was a paying customer randomly selected for removal, because the airline refused to increase the incentive for being bumped. He was taken off to save the airline money, and the police were used to enforce United's corporate interests. That is disgusting, we should all be appalled, and their position is not defensible.

+1. their staffing issues were not the customers' problem. They could have put the staff on another flight, cancelled the flights those staff were needed for in lousiville, booked a freakin' uber to drive the staff from chicago to illinois, etc etc etc.

[Anonymous]

Are there regulations limiting how much the airlines can offer? I'm just curious. I have been booked for flights where they repeatedly begged people to take $200 voucher (which we all know is worthless).