Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The airline instructed the passenger to deplane. He refused. Legally, the passenger is now trespassing. He ignored instructions from law enforcement officers (police) to deplane. The police physically removed said non compliant passenger. United is certainly to blamed for overbooking. The passenger is to blame for being dragged down the aisle since he chose to ignore the legitimate instructions of law enforcement

Not for overbookig -- for giving him a seat and the removing from once seated. If United needed the seat for an employee then hey shouldn't have allowed the passenger on in the first place. Still not clear at all how they could have screwed this up. Did they just realize at the last second they needed a seat for an employee?

Anonymous wrote:The airline instructed the passenger to deplane. He refused. Legally, the passenger is now trespassing. He ignored instructions from law enforcement officers (police) to deplane. The police physically removed said non compliant passenger. United is certainly to blamed for overbooking. The passenger is to blame for being dragged down the aisle since he chose to ignore the legitimate instructions of law enforcement

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

So the passenger who refused to comply with the crew's orders is going to comply with all their other orders when he's up in the air? Is he going to put his seatbelt on when requested; not smoke, etc? How do we know that, given he's already shown he's not willing to comply with one order?

Oh FFS, you are making a textbook strawman's argument. How much is United paying you to shill on this site? Or are they simply not threatening to beat you?

How much money did the airline lose having three flight delayed 2 hours? What airplane was waiting to use that gate when the plane hadn't departed yet? Who is paying for the police or security to remove this man? Just to save $400. Because the airlines can't afford more money? Is everyone else in the plane to blame because no one else wanted to give up their seat either? Where does it end? IMO It starts and ends with United.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are regulations about how airlines choose who to bump, and the process (including compensation offers). My guess is United followed them. The person who was forcibly removed did not comply with a lawful order.

I don't work for United.. but I'm not sure why this passenger didn't just comply with the police asking him to leave. Does he also not pull over his car when police try to stop him?

This comparison is ridiculous. He did not commit a crime- he paid for the service. United is the one that overbooked the flight and then allowed everyone to board - the situation is their mistake and should not be remedied on the passanger's behalf.

Actually, he did commit a crime by failing to follow the orders of flight crew. Rule 21 of the Contract of Carriage. Federal law.

He also committed a crime by failing to comply with the orders of police, but that's a state law violation.

Anonymous wrote:The airline instructed the passenger to deplane. He refused. Legally, the passenger is now trespassing. He ignored instructions from law enforcement officers (police) to deplane. The police physically removed said non compliant passenger. United is certainly to blamed for overbooking. The passenger is to blame for being dragged down the aisle since he chose to ignore the legitimate instructions of law enforcement

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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).

I think there is. Here is a link to the regulations and it seems like they state specific maximums.

Anonymous wrote: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).

Anonymous wrote:

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 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.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

So the passenger who refused to comply with the crew's orders is going to comply with all their other orders when he's up in the air? Is he going to put his seatbelt on when requested; not smoke, etc? How do we know that, given he's already shown he's not willing to comply with one order?

Anonymous wrote:The rule in overbooking situations should be to offer a voucher of increasing value until someone says, "sold". That's what I've seen at the gate for oversold flights before. That shuold have been what they did here.

I understand they need to be profitable but the greed is leading to situations like this.

Anonymous wrote: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).