patrick.net

Fucking White Male says

United will most definitely lose business due to the poor publicity

Probably not much from the people who are living close to united hub airports flying domestically

Fucking White Male says

Other airlines will take advantage and up their customer service to do so.

Short of eliminating policy of overbooking flights, i doubt we will see any great improvement of service from unionized workers, many of whom are hag-like in appearance and demeanor.

One things Middle East airlines got going for them is good looking, pleasant service air hostesses. Getting a job as air hostess is very competitive, like it was in the US long time back

Really, most international carriers esp from Asian countries are like this

Fucking White Male says

The doctor will get a nice settlement.

They will raise fees on other travelers to pay it...no real sweat off their back

Fucking White Male says

United will change their internal policies to prevent this from happening again.

Short of not overbooking flights, not sure any policy they can come up with to prevent this situation will have teeth.

Maybe they have to offer a lot more money and 50k-100k points in top of it and accommodations in a nicer hotel with a 200 bucks/day food stipend

MMR says

P N Dr Lo R says

It's perfectly acceptable to remove a man with disrespect and complete disregard for dignity--wonder how they would have handled a woman? Gloria Steinam? A black woman?

I have a hard time believing that the random selection of passengers was really random

CNBC mentioned that passengers with the lowest priced tickets get targeted first.

Act like big baby, get settlement.

APOCALYPSEFUCK_is_ADORABLE says

It's not like they ass raped him and decapitated him and raped the wet stump.

I mean, United Airlines would be well within their rights since they own the plane, you figured the guy would appreciate getting a break.

WTF. He already paid to rent the seat. It was his seat, his right to stay in there till the end of the flight.

APOCALYPSEFUCK_is_ADORABLE says

It's not like they ass raped him and decapitated him and raped the wet stump.

I mean, United Airlines would be well within their rights since they own the plane, you figured the guy would appreciate getting a break.

Welcome to patnet, Mr. Gorsuch

Strategist says

CNBC mentioned that passengers with the lowest priced tickets get targeted first.

which they should.

I may be way off base here and probably because I am an old fuck, 60yrs...but if I may say, does anyone have any dignity left? If I'm in a place of business (or on a plane) and the owners don't want me there and are willing to refund my money (if I have prepaid), I would just leave and take my business elsewhere. I can't imagine someone like my father getting dragged off a plane. He'd just leave with dignity. I can't imagine putting myself in a position where I'm going to get draggged out of a place of business kicking and screaming or whatever...especially in front of my kids. I see people cheering him on as if it's a form of protest. It just looks foolish to me. Or maybe playing the victim is now the COOL thing to do. If I play the victim, that's admitting that I accept that people have power over me.

If I'm in a place of business (or on a plane) and the owners don't want me there and are willing to refund my money (if I have prepaid), I would just leave and take my business elsewhere.

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That works at McDonalds, you just go next door to Buger king

But most people don't fly on a whim. I know if I've taken holiday to go on a flight, commuted to the airport, checked my bags, groped by TSA for an hour,,,I'm not going to just walk off the plane, as a matter of principle.

errc says

But most people don't fly on a whim. I know if I've taken holiday to go on a flight, commuted to the airport, checked my bags, groped by TSA for an hour,,,I'm not going to just walk off the plane, as a matter of principle.

Exactly the point I was trying to make about dignity and the value of it in todays world.

Reminder: Airlines are repeatedly bailed out, make deals to keep their executive's golden parachutes while cutting pay and pensions for the employees, pay a fraction of the gas tax everybody else has to pay, gets their security and infrastructure subsidized by the taxpayer.

It's the most corporate socialist industry in America, maybe the second after the MIC.

They could at least have offered to stuff him into overhead baggage.

Also, he was Korean, they could have just told him they were taking him to NORTH Korea, instead, and he would have run out of the plane by himself. United just has no tact.

Lashkar_i_Trumpi says

Reminder: Airlines are repeatedly bailed out, make deals to keep their executive's golden parachutes while cutting pay and pensions for the employees, pay a fraction of the gas tax everybody else has to pay, gets their security and infrastructure subsidized by the taxpayer.

It's the most corporate socialist industry in America, maybe the second after the MIC.

All brought to you by the party that tells us there is too much government spending and welfare. Except corporate welfare to campaign contributors of course.

komputodo says

I can't imagine someone like my father getting dragged off a plane

I can't imagine this even happening in my father's generation (1898-1958) when everyone dressed up like they were going to church when they took a plane (or train) trip. Corporate would have seen it as a horrible example for bad publicity which is exactly what has happened in this case as it's being parodied all over the place. Even a news story started out this morning speculating that United's stock would most likely be down as a result, but no one gives a thought about things like that. I still make the point, would a woman have been treated like this? A black woman? If she had been, there'd be riots all over the country right now and the headquarters would be torched.

P N Dr Lo R says

A black woman? If she had been, there'd be riots all over the country right now and the headquarters would be torched.

If it was a Muslim woman, there would be riots all over the world right now. 100 people would have died by now, and 3 of our embassies burnt to the ground.

komputodo says

I may be way off base here and probably because I am an old fuck, 60yrs...but if I may say, does anyone have any dignity left? If I'm in a place of business (or on a plane) and the owners don't want me there and are willing to refund my money (if I have prepaid), I would just leave and take my business elsewhere. I can't imagine someone like my father getting dragged off a plane. He'd just leave with dignity.

Yes, your father is not a big baby, like this alleged doctor. Two people walked off and took the money to get bumped.

errc says

But most people don't fly on a whim. I know if I've taken holiday to go on a flight, commuted to the airport, checked my bags, groped by TSA for an hour,,,I'm not going to just walk off the plane, as a matter of principle.

I'd be checking the fine print to see if you agreed to the potential of getting bumped. I'm guessing that there is some fine print somewhere that states that this could happen.

Strategist says

If it was a Muslim woman

No one would have laid a hand on her for fear she'd explode in the process.

zzyzzx says

errc says

But most people don't fly on a whim. I know if I've taken holiday to go on a flight, commuted to the airport, checked my bags, groped by TSA for an hour,,,I'm not going to just walk off the plane, as a matter of principle.

I'd be checking the fine print to see if you agreed to the potential of getting bumped. I'm guessing that there is some fine print somewhere that states that this could happen.

Right. It's simple to say read the fine print if you were that overly thorough with everything, you'd be paralyzed by fine print details.

Lesson learned

I'm surprised they couldn't get anyone to voluntarily bump. I'd also guess that company policy would be to bump one of those employees you were so adamant about taking his seat, and then deal with that. The customer was once always right.

One thing I've noticed over time is that many people's People skills are shit. Most every situation has a solution and it can be on amicable terms for both parties.

I went through it with my VW diesel buyback. I kept boasting about how well informed I was on the whole process, yet I let myself walk into the buyback misinformed, and it cost me A LOT of time. Unnecessarily. In hindsight, I was set up to fail and they audited the entire process because there were a lot of problems. As should be assumed in what is a rather large undertaking; manufacturer buying a half million scandal cars back from their customers, using a third party to administer it, at the dealership.

At the end of the day, much suffering could have been avoided if the woman tasked with the job had even a smidgen of People Skills. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Nadene.

errc says

I'm surprised they couldn't get anyone to voluntarily bump

I would take $500 offered to be bumped almost every time. Supposedly there is a federal limit on these things though.

I would never fly for a trip that can be driven in under five hours. Seems kinda ridiculous but i guess some people really don't like driving.

errc says

I would never fly for a trip that can be driven in under five hours.

I agree. That and since I don't like to leave the Northeast it means I almost never fly.

zzyzzx says

I'd be checking the fine print to see if you agreed to the potential of getting bumped. I

If buying a 'ticket' does not guarantee you a seat on the flight, then it should not be called an airplane ticket. It should be called a lottery ticket with the chance to win an airplane ticket. That should be the bold print when you see your airfare and when you press submit payment.

P N Dr Lo R says

Strategist says

If it was a Muslim woman

No one would have laid a hand on her for fear she'd explode in the process.

I am gonna add this to my long list of reasons not to allow Muslims on planes.

zzyzzx says

I would take $500 offered to be bumped almost every time. Supposedly there is a federal limit on these things though.

There is no limit I've ever heard of. I've played let's make a deal with airlines plenty of times. If there is obviously going to be a problem being one of the first to get in gives you a lot more options. If you get ahead of the crowd you can frequently get goodies and get where you are going different way in reasonable time.

Guy was offered $1000 to voluntarily leave, but didn't take it? What a moron!

zzyzzx says

Guy was offered $1000 to voluntarily leave, but didn't take it? What a moron!

$1000 is not a lot to a doctor. And if he had patience waiting for him as stated in the article, the cost to missing the flight would be easily over ten times greater than that by the most conservative estimates.

APOCALYPSEFUCK_is_ADORABLE says

The papers say this guy is a gay drug addict.

Irrelevant. No one should be assaulted on an airplane. Furthermore, the airlines should have been legally required to keep upping the payout until someone accepted relinquishing the seat. They oversold and should not have been able to force an unwilling person to lose what he paid for, a travel arrange for a specific time to a specific place. Doing that is quite simply fraud and theft. The only criminals were the airline employees and executives.

Again, the solution is a federal law prohibiting overselling of tickets. No acceptations. This one incident justifies denying the airlines that profit mechanism.

In fact, every single penny that United Airlines made by overbooking should be awarded to this guy. Every penny.

Legally, United Airlines was within their rights to remove a passenger of their choosing, but of-course this was beyond stupid to do. It will cost them millions.

United knows the correct way to do this is to keep dangling incentives until passengers willingly give up seats. What a PR nightmare for them.

I cannot wait for the Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial spin off.

I fly on a fairly regular basis and I have no problem with what happened. People can so be so narcissistic when at the airport or on a airplane. Dr. (?) Dao looks like one of those types.

It depends. if I am flying to work, I really don't want to miss. Did they offer incentives to all and no one took and they tossed this dude at random??

Dan8267 says

Again, the solution is a federal law prohibiting overselling of tickets. No acceptations.

I don't agree. but I agree they should have upped the offer to volunteers as high as necessary.

Airlines have done this practice since forever. They just need to be willing to pay up when they screw it up. They have very sophisticated mathematical models that help them plan how many flights to have in the first place, as well as predicting how many people will change plans at the last minute or otherwise not show up.

The alternative is ticket prices being higher, if all airlines have to stop the practice of overbooking. Even from an ecological viewpoint,having planes fly as full as possible makes sense. They just blew it on the human relations end this time and hurt themselves substantially in the process. This is a self correcting error. They will avoid this type of thing at all costs in the future.

From what I was told by a neighbor of mine who works for the airline, the random selection by the computer is based on the type of ticket the passenger has. If its a cheap seat, then you have a greater chance of being selected.

I wonder why the good Doctor (?) wasn't flying first-class?

I just got back from MSP last night. There were some issues due to the weather on the east coast, but it all worked out.

BTW, if it had been me, I would have offered to give up my seat for $1,500. No later flight or hotel needed. Chicago to Louisville is not a long drive. I would take my $1,500, get a rental car and hit the road.

marcus says

Dan8267 says

Again, the solution is a federal law prohibiting overselling of tickets. No acceptations.

I don't agree. but I agree they should have upped the offer to volunteers as high as necessary.

Airlines have done this practice since forever. They just need to be willing to pay up when they screw it up. They have very sophisticated mathematical models that help them plan how many flights to have in the first place, as well as predicting how many people will change plans at the last minute or otherwise not show up.

The alternative is ticket prices being higher, if all airlines have to stop the practice of overbooking. Even from an ecological viewpoint,having planes fly as full as possible makes sense. They just blew it on the human relations end this time and hurt themselves substantially in the process. This is a self correcting error. They will avoid this type ...

Hey, Marcus actually making sense.
I'll put this in my small list of comments where Marcus actually makes sense.
I should have one for Bob, Dan and Jazz too.

Ironman says

Really? What should it be called??

I answered this question before you asked it. Try reading. It's good for the melon on your shoulders.

If you want to say that airlines can't oversell tickets then they will not have a refund class ticket. The seat is "gone" once it leaves the tarmac. So, if we want flexibility for a refundable ticket (usually higher priced as well to compensate for those who utilize the refund option), then you do have some situations where an overbook could occur. It is also hard to account for high status flyers who have options of moving flights with priority, etc... I am sure as well there is some predictive modeling going on guessing at "no shows" for typical flights (people who missed the flight but will be accommodate on a later flight, or a class fare that lets them jump to different flights). Sounds like the model was off.

Does anyone know if he was actually offered cash or just the $ amount toward a future flight? If it was indeed cash, I am surprised no one else took the offer. If it was $ amount toward a future ticket, I can see why that is less appealing by far. So, if it wasn't cash, then I would say united was not offering a fair compensation. Also, not sure why they didn't address this overbook BEFORE the plan was boarded? Most of the time I have run into these situations, the overbook was announced prior to boarding.

They need to learn the merits of electric cattle prods.