United Airlines is a terrible business

[FallenApple]

It seems that they don't know how to run their own business. From their policies that allows for the possibility of an incident like this, to their handling of the situation once it happened.

At this point, they probably wish that they can pay the guy 20 million dollars to make the problem go away. It's interesting to see how this would all play out.

 

[Dr.D]

I wonder if it is simply a follow up on the TSA treatment of passengers? I've been manhandled pretty badly by them, to the point that I rarely fly these days and dread it when I do. The whole airline industry is in severe need of some real competition.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

They initially called it overbooking, but the four seats involved were for employees. It's not clear if these empoyees were just getting free flights, were traveling to staff other planes or some combination. Either way, it's not overbooking.

Dr. Dao was more severely injured than originally reported.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/us/united-passenger-david-dao-chicago.html?_r=0

 

[Borg]

I think that the overbooking is being used incorrectly in this case. My understanding is that the four employees were being transited to the other city in order to serve on a flight departing from there. Transits like that are pretty routine but I haven't heard of that many passengers being removed from a flight before.

As for Dr. Dao, I consider his actions to be extremely childish. Four people were removed from that flight - I wonder why the other three weren't injured? People get bumped from flights all of the time but he chose to fight with four officers while trying to hang on to his seat like a child that doesn't want to give up a toy. His face was injured when the officers had to pull so hard that when he lost his grip on the seat, he got slammed into a seat on the other side of the aisle. His injuries are a result of his own behavior from resisting when it was clear that they weren't going to take no for an answer.

 

[xxChrisxx]

As for Dr. Dao, I consider his actions to be extremely childish. Four people were removed from that flight - I wonder why the other three weren't injured? People get bumped from flights all of the time but he chose to fight with four officers while trying to hang on to his seat like a child that doesn't want to give up a toy. His face was injured when the officers had to pull so hard that when he lost his grip on the seat, he got slammed into a seat on the other side of the aisle. His injuries are a result of his own behavior from resisting when it was clear that they weren't going to take no for an answer.

This line of thinking strikes me as very odd. It's not as though he was abusing the staff, or getting drunk and urinating in the isle or acting with a lack of decorum. He was being stubborn after he was told to leave. It doesn't matter how stubborn a customer is being, you can't manhandle them in a way that causes injury. If it's clear he's not going to play ball, then the most pragmatic thing to do is select another passenger and increase their level of compensation.

They can then take the moral highround that the passenger who refused to be removed was being a PITA.

The series of events that occurred is indicative of people who act like automatons. My orders are to remove you. You are not complying. MOAR FORCE!

The result is a PR disaster that ultimately does far more damage than being tactful.

 

[Borg]

I am not saying that the situation couldn't have been handled better by United. However, this would have never happened to myself since I would have acted like an adult and complied with the https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract.aspx that are written on the ticket. No, I wouldn't have liked it but, like the other three passengers who were bumped, I wouldn't be injured and all over YouTube either. He's an adult and should have acted like one.

 

[russ_watters]

I wonder if it is simply a follow up on the TSA treatment of passengers?

It could be. I think our post-911 security situation has ratcheted up the tension and seriousness of security and airline personnel, such that their tolerance level/tact has dropped below what is reasonable.

 

[russ_watters]

This line of thinking strikes me as very odd. It's not as though he was abusing the staff, or getting drunk and urinating in the isle or acting with a lack of decorum. He was being stubborn after he was told to leave. It doesn't matter how stubborn a customer is being, you can't manhandle them in a way that causes injury. If it's clear he's not going to play ball, then the most pragmatic thing to do is select another passenger and increase their level of compensation.

In hindsight, the most pragmatic thing to do would have been to not do random selections, but to increase the compensation until 4 people volunteered. But it isn't just about this flight/passenger: United and other airlines bump thousands of people a year. Upping the bid until someone bites would cost them millions of dollars a year.

But you can't pick another passenger; that's rewarding the stubbornness, which only encourages more.

I'm sure the jury is going to reward this J.A. handsomely, but from a legal perspective he was near totally in the wrong. The airline procedure is set and the airline followed it. What they neglected was trying a little harder to explain it to him. But once he's been bumped from the flight, he is essentially trespassing on the plane and has to be removed, by force if necessary.

The result is a PR disaster that ultimately does far more damage than being tactful.

I agree, but unfortunately the message that is going to win-out here is something that seems to be spreading in the US: that childishly resisting authority/realities you don't like is a good/useful thing. And that's a pretty bad thing.

 

[256bits]

This line of thinking strikes me as very odd. It's not as though he was abusing the staff, or getting drunk and urinating in the isle or acting with a lack of decorum. He was being stubborn after he was told to leave. It doesn't matter how stubborn a customer is being, you can't manhandle them in a way that causes injury. If it's clear he's not going to play ball, then the most pragmatic thing to do is select another passenger and increase their level of compensation.

Totally agree.
Thing is, the passenger was not denied boarding at the gate - he was already on the plane and was given his seat selection.
Terms and conditions of UA don't say anything about un-boarding - ie taking back what was already given and agreed to.
A lawsuit could come down to the actual particular meaning of a word, and whether or not industry practice has any actual basis in law.
Rule 21 - Refusal of Transport. What item in that list did the passenger breach?

It seems that UA then attempted to break their own terms of contract and tried to "involuntarily" remove him from the flight, for their own economic interests only.
Being not successful, they called in the Chicago Airport Security, whose actions led to the world wide attention.
Apparently, the Security over-extended the means by which they "convinced" the passenger that he must leave.
Most likely the Security were simply told by a UA personnel that there was a passenger on board who needs removal, and they acted as they should have under the limited information, by removing him.
Perhaps, hopefully, they will not be so keen to act before seeking explanations beforehand. Acting as enforcers of profit for the airline should not be their motivation.

In the end, bad PR, compensation for the traumatized passengers who witnessed the encounter, a potentially expensive lawsuit, and several employees who aren't too

 

[russ_watters]

Totally agree.
Thing is, the passenger was not denied boarding at the gate - he was already on the plane and was given his seat selection.
Terms and conditions of UA don't say anything about un-boarding - ie taking back what was already given and agreed to.

I don't know what your logic is here, but your conclusion is really, really wrong. Bumping often happens when the plane is already boarding, because that's when they know it is actually overbooked! It's a musical chairs game, where the last one on is left without a seat -- except that that's when the dance begins.

A passenger has very few rights when on the plane, and being on the plane is itself not among them. The terms are here:
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx

A lawsuit could come down to the actual particular meaning of a word, and whether or not industry practice has any actual basis in law.

As with most personal injury claims, it will come down to the sympathetic jury vs the big meanie company - which is probably United, the company that runs the airport and also the private security company if that's where they came from. Unfortunately, in the USA you don't have to be right to win a lawsuit, you only have to be sympathetic. Remember, this is the country that awarded a woman $2 million for essentially claiming that she was too stupid to know that hot coffee could burn her:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

Rule 21 - Refusal of Transport. What item in that list did the passenger breach?

These:

Safety – Whenever refusal or removal of a Passenger may be necessary for the safety of such Passenger or other Passengers or members of the crew including, but not limited to:

1. Passengers whose conduct is disorderly, offensive, abusive, or violent;
2. Passengers who fail to comply with or interfere with the duties of the members of the flight crew, federal regulations, or security directives;
3. 
   
4. Passengers who, through and as a result of their conduct, cause a disturbance such that the captain or member of the cockpit crew must leave the cockpit in order to attend to the disturbance;

Um:

...compensation for the traumatized passengers who witnessed the encounter...

Stop this country, I want off.

 

[256bits]

Stop this country, I want off.

Ha Ha.

http://fortune.com/2017/04/12/united-airlines-passenger-dragged-compensation/

United Airlines says it will compensate the cost of tickets for every passenger on Flight 3411, where a man was forcibly removed and dragged earlier this week, according to CNBC.

I was under the understanding that the brutal details ie blood, would have had to be cleaned up before departure. To do so, all the passengers would have to have debarked. UA would have to be admitting that the passengers were not likely to be conducive to be seeing the evidence of the mess while in air - in other words, minimize the reminder of a horrific scene of violence.

Did that plane actually take off to its destination? Eventually, yes, but still an unscheduled delay for UA.
Was the 4 person crew able to meet their timetable for duty rest for that scheduled flight that started this whole thing?
If they did not make it, the whole episode was totally unnecessary.
Someone forgot their customer training that day, and rather than diffuse the situation, they managed to escalate it, to the whole companies disadvantage, and to all its other employees and shareholders.

This is one main point . Security should not be used for economic reasons.
Some in Chicago voice the same opinion.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ual-passenger-idUSKBN17F1WT

At a later city council aviation committee meeting, Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans said the department was investigating the incident and reviewing its training. Chicago Alderman Michael Zalewski, head of the committee, called the incident a nightmare that should have been avoidable.

United officials at the meeting apologized again and said they were reviewing all related company policies and would complete that process by April 30.

United Vice President John Slater said he was not at liberty to say who called the aviation police, but ruled out the plane's captain. United has no set policy for physically forcing passengers to deboard, he added.

"Chicago employees should not be doing the dirty work for the friendly skies airline," Chicago Alderman Edward Burke said at the meeting, adding Dao's civil rights had been violated.

 

[Dr.D]

I see overbooking as a breach of contract. When I buy a ticket to fly, I make a contract with the airline to perform a service for me at a specific date and place. They will not let me out of that contract, except under the most extreme circumstances. Why should i, a passenger, be inclined to let them out of the contract?

I understand that the airline needed to move four people from point A to point B. Would have not been better, since they knew they were oversold, to simply charter a plane and send their own on their way in luxury?

Air travel was once a real pleasure. Now, it is a most unpleasant ordeal, to be avoided if at all possible. I will certainly drive 1000 miles to avoid flying any day of the week.

 

[russ_watters]

Pilot's union trying to say it is all the Chicago Aviation Dept (security?)'s fault:

"This violent incident should never have happened and was a result of gross excessive force by Chicago Department of Aviation personnel," the union said.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/United-pilots-blast-police-David-Dao-removal.html

While that's almost true, it also never would have happened if United gate personnel and flight crew had handled it better. And either way, United can't totally separate themselves from a forceful removal they asked for, even if it was more forceful than they intended.

 

[russ_watters]

I see overbooking as a breach of contract. When I buy a ticket to fly, I make a contract with the airline to perform a service for me at a specific date and place.

You should read the contract: it's in there.

 

[OmCheeto]

I liked UA's CEO's statement;

Dear Team,

The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what happened. Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.

I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right.

It's never too late to do the right thing. I have committed to our customers and our employees that we are going to fix what's broken so this never happens again. This will include a thorough review of crew movement, our policies for incentivizing volunteers in these situations, how we handle oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforcement. We'll communicate the results of our review by April 30th.

I promise you we will do better.
Oscar

[ref]

I worked for mega corporations all of my adult life. The CEO is, IMHO, rarely aware of the minor details involved with running the company. But once a "minor detail" leads to a "MAJOR" problem, a good CEO will fix it.

So I just consider this a "teaching moment".

ps. Just checked the prices for a one way UA flight for Portland to Orlando: $122
from my rough calculations:

3000 miles
30 mpg (my truck)
100 gallons
2.50 $/gal
$250 in gas​

pps. I have no idea how airlines stay in business at these prices, nor why I didn't visit my friends in Florida this winter.

 

[RonL]

I liked UA's CEO's statement;[ref]

I worked for mega corporations all of my adult life. The CEO is, IMHO, rarely aware of the minor details involved with running the company. But once a "minor detail" leads to a "MAJOR" problem, a good CEO will fix it.

So I just consider this a "teaching moment".

ps. Just checked the prices for a one way UA flight for Portland to Orlando: $122
from my rough calculations:

3000 miles
30 mpg (my truck)
100 gallons
2.50 $/gal
$250 in gas​

pps. I have no idea how airlines stay in business at these prices, nor why I didn't visit my friends in Florida this winter.

If 200 passengers paid that price, approximately $25,000 US dollars to fly the plane one way ?

 

[OmCheeto]

If 200 passengers paid that price, approximately $25,000 US dollars to fly the plane one way ?

Economies of scale!

ps.
I just noticed this:

When there's an overbooking issue the first step is to offer an inducement to the passengers to take a later flight. On Sunday passengers were offered $400 (£322), a hotel room for the night, and a flight the following afternoon.

When no-one took the offer, the amount was upped to $800. Still no-one bit, so a manager boarded the flight and informed passengers that four people would be selected to leave the flight. [ref]​

Perhaps we've evolved(devolved?) to the point where bidding should start not from the bottom down, but the other way around:

"Who will give up their seat for $10,000?"
200 hands go up
"Who will give up their seat for $5,000?"
200 hands stay up
"Who will give up their seat for $2,500?"
100 hands stay up...​

etc. etc. etc. until you get to 4 hands.

pps.
OMG! This was a 300 mile flight.

Flight origin O'Hare International Airport [Chicago IL]
Destination Louisville International Airport [Kentucky]​

[ref = wiki]

And... the price is the same as the PDX to MCO flight?

hmmm...

Ah ha!

 

[RonL]

I'm surprised they didn't start in first class, might be more greedy people ready to jump at a chance to make a fast buck ?

 

[Drakkith]

I'm surprised they didn't start in first class, might be more greedy people ready to jump at a chance to make a fast buck ?

I doubt the average first class passenger is any greedier than the average passenger anywhere else on the plane.

 

[RonL]

I doubt the average first class passenger is any greedier than the average passenger anywhere else on the plane.

I should not have used the word greedy, it is sometimes confused with the good business sense to not leave any money on the table. Twice I have been in a situation of being offered compensation for overbooking or error of type on the boarding pass, the first time was cash, but I was too sick to spend the night in a compensated room and the second involved travel vouchers for future flights, which in no way could I use in the allotted time frame.
I wonder if the $800.00 was actual cash? out of all the passengers and no one accepted the offer, I think I better go and recalculate my net worth ?

 

[Choppy]

I too find it infuriating that a flight can be overbooked, or as seems to be the case here, that a passenger can be bumped off a flight at the convenience of the company. From my point of view as a passenger, I see a plane with X number of seats. Selling X + d is clearly unethical.

However, I'm just a passenger, and I don't see the bigger picture. From an airline management point of view the problem is much bigger. You don't have a single flight. You have a network of hundreds of flights. Each flight - the airplane, the pilot and copilot, the aircrew, the ground crew, and the pre-flight management is subject to strict regulation. You can't fly some flights in some weather conditions, or if there are mechanical electrical failures of certain quality control tests, or if the airport gets clogged up because of problems with another airline. Or what if one of your pilots shows up drunk? Or a flight attendant calls in sick at the last minute? You have an ethical obligation (and financial incentive) to keep the network operating with minimal disruption.

So what happens when a hail storm rolls through the airport and a takeoff is delayed to the point where the air crew have been working past the regulated number of hours they can work? You have to call in a new crew. You can either put 300 people up for a night in hotels, or bump four from another flight, fly in a ground grew and minimize the degree of inconvenience. That's the most ethical solution under circumstances you can't control.

But what about the practice of selling X + d seats? Well, the problem there, I suspect is that while customers may complain about getting bumped, they will still generally sort flight options by price. If another airline can sell 301 seats for a 300 seat flight, knowing that statistically there's a very small probability that all 301 passengers will show up on time, they can offer their flight for a cheaper price and ultimately sell more seats. So even though it's an unethical practice, it's the direct result of customer pressure.

The problem goes away if you were to sell a seat guarantee at some kind of premium... pay an extra $50 and you go to the bottom of the bump priority list. But that's not without it's problems either. Who wants to pay an extra $50 for a low probability event, which in most cases ultimately results in only a temporary inconvenience?

So while it is frustrating, I don't see it changing any time soon.

 

[Choppy]

With respect to the actual video - as usual with these viral videos involving use of force - we don't really see or hear any of the events leading up to the altercation. We see the struggle and the ensuing "carnage" but all we can really do is speculate about the lead up.

I know it's already been brought up, but without even knowing any of the details of customer-airline contracts, I'm pretty certain of one basic rule: on a plane, the pilot is in command. What he or she says goes. If the pilot asks you to deplane. You have to deplane. Sure you can argue. You have a right to a grievance with the airline. But once you've been asked to leave, your options are limited to: leave with dignity or be dragged off.

If the airline staff and security officers were doing their jobs properly this should have been blatantly clear both to the passenger in question and the other passenger who were sitting there watching.

Once the passenger refuses all reasonable attempts at a peaceful, non-physical solutions, the security officers have to escalate the use of force. It would be nice if there was another option, but at some point, the decision's been made and the guy has to come off. Based on what I saw and heard, this passenger chose to become an active resistor. At that point the man was actually putting the other passengers (not to mention the security officers) at risk. A grown man throwing a tantrum like that, even he doesn't intend to hurt anyone could easily lash out and strike another passenger. The officers had to use force to subdue him.

 

[Vanadium 50]

United Airlines is a terrible business

I agree. I have flown more than 1.9 million miles on UA, so this is from experience.

hey knew they were oversold

They were not oversold. They had 70 seats and 70 confirmed passengers with seat assignments.

Bumping often happens when the plane is already boarding, because that's when they know it is actually overbooked!

That's not what happens. Here's how it's supposed to work. Around 15 minutes before the flight starts boarding, it goes under what they call "gate control". At that point, they stop selling tickets and stop allowing people to change their flights to this one without going to the gate. Also at this point, they have N seats, M passengers with seat assignments, K passengers confirmed but without seat assignments, and L passengers on the standby list. For the flight in question N = 70, M was probably about 60, which would make K around 10, and I don't know what L was. In this case things are straightforward - print up K boarding passes and go.

Often things are more complicated - then first the M are boarded. Based on N, M and K, some number of the K are given seat assignments. The gate agent keeps a close eye on N - M - K (free seats) and K and L (the number of people she's trying to get out). At T-15, if you haven't boarded, you lose your seat assignment, so M drops and K grows. The GA continues to keep an eye on things (perhaps there are people not at the gate but connecting from a flight that has just landed) clearing passengers a few at a time as the situation with people who have seat assignments but are not there clarifies.

There is a bit of an art to this. If you have a frequent flyer and 3 non-frequent flyers who are likely to misconnect, the GA may drop three seats right away, and hold the fourth longer: the frequent flyer is likely to get off first, likely to better navigate the airport, and the airline wants to keep him happy. If after a few minutes, he's still not there, then drop him.

What if the flight is oversold (N < M + K)? Then, before boarding, the GA asks for volunteers for a given compensation. If you volunteer, you give the GA permission to reduce M or K by one - essentially, you can be moved to the top of L. This is called VDB: voluntary denied boarding. The VDB compensation is whatever you negotiate. I have received travel credits, cash, upgrades, lounge passes, hotel stays and frequent flyer miles at various times. If they can't get enough VDB's, they go to involuntary denied boarding or IDB. Here the compensation is legally mandated, and for the case in question is $1300. Cash. IDB's are reported to the DOT, so the airline has an incentive to avoid them.

In the Old Days, GAs were empowered to do whatever it took to get the flight out on time. When Continental took over...I mean merged with United, the new CEO, Jeff Smisek clamped down on this. SHARES, the reservation system, made it difficult and slow to offer any compensation other than what the computer thought was right - and ruthlessly audit any GA who offered more. It is faster to IDB passengers. To keep the compensation down, GAs were instructed to have the pax sign a statement that the deboarding was really voluntary, and they would usually receive compensation less than the IDB statutory - often as flight credits instead of cash. If the pax made a stink, the GA could give them the legally mandated IDB package, and if they still made a stink, the GA was instructed to call security.

Note that this all happens before boarding. United handles the capacity controls via boarding pass, and ensures that if there is drama, it happens off the plane.

OK, now the situation at hand. The plane was not oversold. For operational reasons, United needed 4 crew from Trans-States at SDF, otherwise they would have to cancel a flight. Inconveniencing 4 passengers by bumping them off the ORD-SDF flight was better than inconveniencing 50 (it was a flight on an Embraer 145) by cancelling the flight. So they added them to UX3411 - but they did this after the flight had gone under gate control, and according to accounts, after the flight had boarded. So the normal mechanisms didn't work. Nonetheless, the GA plowed on ahead with them as if they did - made a compensation offer, raised it once, and then did an IDB and called Chicago Aviation Security. Just as if this all happened in the boarding area. But a small aluminum tube is not the same as the boarding area.

So essentially United decided that it needed those seats, and that they didn't want to pay what the pax holding those seats thought they were worth, so they used Chicago Aviation Security to ensure they got their way. There are reports that before this happened, a passenger asked for $1600 in travel credits and was laughed at. United has travel credits on the books at 25% of their value, so the decision was made that it was worth bringing in some muscle to save the airline $400.

Passengers who fail to comply with or interfere with the duties of the members of the flight crew, federal regulations, or security directives;

The person informing the pax that he must vacate his seat should have been the GA, not any of the flight crew. The flight crew, by contract, is not allowed to handle these situations.

Because this was not an oversold situation, and the pax was actually boarded, this does not fall under Rule 25 (Denial of Boarding), but rather Rule 21 (Refusal of Transport) in the CoC. However, none of the conditions in 21 seem to apply here. It appears that United breached its own CoC.

 

[Vanadium 50]

we don't really see or hear any of the events leading up to the altercation

Some of it was filmed:

Embedded media from this media site is no longer available

(for some reason, the link doesn't appear; you need to quote it to see it)

This was described as "PAX ATTEMPTED TO STRIKE LAW ENFORCEMENT" by the Gate Agent. That's not how I would describe it.

 

[Dr.D]

pax?

 

[Vanadium 50]

pax = passenger

 

[rootone]

If there was such a desperate need for seats available for moving staff,
it might have been an idea to charter a light airplane to do that job, 16 seater or so.

 

[Borg]

I have flown more than 1.9 million miles on UA, so this is from experience.

It saddens me because my mother worked as a ticket and gate agent for United and it used to be well respected. As a result, I flew quite a bit on United as a kid in the 60's and 70's and still do whenever I fly. I also heard many stories first hand of how passengers behaved. God help the agents when a flight has to be cancelled.

 

[Vanadium 50]

it might have been an idea to charter a light airplane

They didn't need to do that. They could have simply increased their offer. There was an AA flight; they could have put one of the crew on that. There was a second UX flight, also full, but they could have offered VDB compensation there. But all of these cost money (much less than chartering a plane, of course). It's better for the airlines bottom line to simply use Chicago Aviation Security.

 

[256bits]

UA certainly knows how to stay in the news.
How to handle a stowaway in the overhead bin.

flight attendants quickly corralled the scorpion and flushed it down an airplane toilet.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/health/scorpion-united-airlines-flight-trnd/index.html

 

[Dr.D]

They didn't need to do that. They could have simply increased their offer. There was an AA flight; they could have put one of the crew on that. There was a second UX flight, also full, but they could have offered VDB compensation there. But all of these cost money (much less than chartering a plane, of course). It's better for the airlines bottom line to simply use Chicago Aviation Security.

In arriving at your bottom line figure, I think you may have neglected to include the cost of all the adverse publicity they have gotten.

 

[Nugatory]

I am not saying that the situation couldn't have been handled better by United. However, this would have never happened to myself since I would have acted like an adult and complied with the https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract.aspx that are written on the ticket.

Without taking a position on who could have handled it better... it is not clear that Dr. Dao was violating the rules of carriage.

The contract allows United to cancel a reservation and not let you on the plane because they need the seat for someone else. But is the general language about cancelling reservations in section 5, and especially section 5G, intended to allow removing a passenger who has already been boarded and seated in their properly assigned seat? Probably not, because if it were we wouldn't have Section 21 which enumerates the specific reasons for which a boarded and seated passenger may be involuntarily removed, none of which apply in this case. (And to the extent that the contract language is ambiguous, the ambiguity must be resolved against the party who drafted it).
.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

They didn't need to do that. They could have simply increased their offer.

Agreed. I think it's fairly clear they may have had a right to do what they did according to policy, but that doesn't make it a good business decision. Proper compensation from the beginning and even a much better/quicker apology from the CEO would have nipped this PR disaster in the bud. Sometimes I don't understand how these big shot business minds don't learn these lessons about customer treatment and public relations. Don't they spend millions hiring PR specialists. What the heck was the advice from them? Suddenly video capture, social media and mob mentality is a new thing to them?

 

[FallenApple]

I've heard that they lost around 250 million dollars due to this fiasco. Seriously, what did they think was going to happen?

Dr. Dao is obviously going to emerge rich out of all this. But I feel sorry for the shareholders, some of whom may have their retirement/family funds tied into the company.

 

[FallenApple]

I think that the overbooking is being used incorrectly in this case. My understanding is that the four employees were being transited to the other city in order to serve on a flight departing from there. Transits like that are pretty routine but I haven't heard of that many passengers being removed from a flight before.

As for Dr. Dao, I consider his actions to be extremely childish. Four people were removed from that flight - I wonder why the other three weren't injured? People get bumped from flights all of the time but he chose to fight with four officers while trying to hang on to his seat like a child that doesn't want to give up a toy. His face was injured when the officers had to pull so hard that when he lost his grip on the seat, he got slammed into a seat on the other side of the aisle. His injuries are a result of his own behavior from resisting when it was clear that they weren't going to take no for an answer.

His actions may have been childish, but when there are thousands of flights, eventually someone like this would show up. United should have known this and should have taken extreme caution to not arouse the anger of social media with actions that are generally highly disapproved of by the public.

And also, the CEO's initial tweet was ridiculous. Yes the security's actions were within the company's set procedures but he didn't have to mention that; it just made them look worse. People now believe that its wasn't just the actions of a lone buffoon, but the entire company as a whole.