Many of you guys probably already saw the video from last night of a man being dragged through the aisle of the United plane because it was overbooked. He was randomly selected to get bumped to the next flight and, after refusing, was carried out by security. United issued the following:
Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked. After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate. We apologize for the overbook situation. Further details on the removed customer should be directed to authorities.
While this PR nightmare is unfolding, UAL is up 0.85% on the day as of right now. **How does that add up?** Wouldn't this event discourage consumers from flying United for the fear of that kind of treatment? I get that United isn't tossing people off planes left and right, but if they would treat their customers like that, it gives some indication of what could happen on a United flight.
On a separate note, I love that the internet is eating this up. My one dream in life is to get turned into a finance twitter meme.
I don't understand why they a) let people board until the situation was resolved or b) not just up the voucher until they got 4 people to give up their seat.
United is going to pay up for this. Like assaulting and dragging a customer off while it's recorded is just bad PR. And while the contract of carriage gives them the right to do this, the court of public opinion is about to buttfuck the airline.
Can't answer (a), but for (b): they (and other airlines) have been pulling their overbooking bullshit successfully for a while now. I suppose the $800 offer (or whatever it was) has worked in the past. I doubt they foresaw a PR shitstorm like this. Hindsight is 20/20, they obviously would opt to up their vouchers after the fact.
Not defending them by any means, just addressing your point.
The memes wont stop for at least a year. #Harambe
quite exotic. sad.
I've never heard anyone say anything positive about United, so I tend to avoid them. United screwed up by overbooking the flight and should have sweetened the pot so that people would voluntarily give up their seats. Instead, they called the cops on one of their customers because the guy did not want to give up what he had paid for.
The video is brutual. United is going to be paying a lot more than whatever the voucher would have been to get that one more voluntary passenger to take the bump.
So stupid.
I kind of wish another airline would get in on this with their Twitter like Delta did the last time when United turned those ladies in leggings down.
https://twitter.com/Delta/status/846393226890280966?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw…
They intentionally overbooked the flight. Most airlines do on a lot of flights. Having said that, this was obviously not the way to handle a situation where no one on an overbooked flight wants to give up their seat.
When you agree to their terms and conditions, you are essentially agreeing that you are going to pay them money, but they have every right not to necessarily provide you the service. Kinda seems like an industry-changing lawsuit might come out of this.
...like a contract has to be legally valid to be enforceable type of thing?
How could they possibly think this was a good idea?
I mean I get that maybe morons work as gate agents, but you'd think the pilot would have been the voice of reason.
Everyone had to leave the plane so they could clean up the blood. Just an utter disaster.
You'd think one person out of the crew + gate agents + other airport employees would have an ounce of reason...
+1 I can't believe no one was the voice of reason to handle this situation much better. It's like they were all 12 working at United.
While I understand and agree with @TNA" sentiments, why is no one questioning a grown man throwing such a tantrum that he has to be dragged out of a plane? I mean I get that the dude paid for his flight and had patients to see but how did he expect this to end? Like, once security came through, why didn't he simply get up and leave? To me, both sides of this are pretty ridiculous.
Supposedly the guy was a doctor and needed to get back to his hospital.
I hear You and per the contract of carriage he is wrong. But you don't let people board until you get enough volunteers.
I would have demanded compensation and just gotten off the plane because I realize when I'm fighting an immovable force. Seconds cops get involved you should just comply. You'll never win.
That being said, dude got knocked out and dragged off the plane, lifeless, while people were terrified. This is a PR disaster and the dude is going to sue and will win.
United should have offered someone $2k to get bumped and moved on with the flight. Instead they went by the letter of the law, fucked a doctor up and no will pay out the nose.
lol I get MS for saying a guy should've been rational and complied with security, perfect.
Totally agreed. Though they did offer till up to 800 bucks, it doesn't give them the excuse to just randomly pick a passenger to kick out.
People do dumb things for the sake of principle. I'm presuming he was pissed off, knew he had the moral high ground, and knew the further along it went, the worse the airline looked. Maybe part of him also hoped they would give up with him, and put it in the 'too hard basket'? Both are perfectly reasonable depending on your state of mind.
You serious? Why should he get off the plane? If I had paid for my ticket and was stilling in my seat there is absolutely no chance in hell I'd be getting off that flight unless physically removed. I don't get why you think he should get stand up and take it.
You don't get why I think a grown adult should comply with airport security? Okay.
I can't believe the voucher was only $800. Seems so low.
To answer your question, prices moves for i) market factors and ii) company specific factors. The price may have increased due to market factors, but declined (in relative terms) due to company specific factors. In other words, if it wasn't for the horrible treatment of their customers, UAL would be up by more than 0.85% today.
well put.
Right now UAL is up 1.51% while the Dow and S&P are up 0.25% and 0.30% respectively, and we're still waiting for the 3:30 ramp ;). Which market factors would you be referring to?
How's the airline industry doing? Also, you may have noticed the use of certain qualifiers, such as 'may' and 'if.' That was intentional. Don't feel compelled to do a deep dive into the factors driving the movement. Just explaining how such movement could (key) occur rationally.
Just to clarify guys, the flight wasn't overbooked, United needed the seats for their employees...... Makes the whole thing so much worse
I think that's the only way it makes sense though. Like if the flight was overbooked because there were too many passengers, then United doesn't really gain anything by kicking off 4 passengers for 4 new passengers. It only makes sense if they had to kick people off for 4 deadheads to get to some airport otherwise that other plane won't be able to take off or w/e.
Ah good old Corporate entitlements
They were transporting 4 people who had to work the next day out of the destination airport. The most bizzare part of this whole thing was that the woman who was shrieking in that video was the only person who said anything that even resembled logic. She suggested they make the employees rent a car and drive.
here's a solution:
don't give seats to everyone, therefore not letting anyone on the plane who hasn't gotten their seat.
example: I sell 108 tickets for a 100 seat plane.
first 90 passengers to check in get assigned a seat.
4 people are employees.
14 people need assigned seats, yet only 6 open seats remain. put those people in standby awaiting seat assignment. take the first 6 people who checked in and put them on the plane. give last call for anyone who was assigned a seat but isn't there yet, if they don't make it, give their seat to someone on standby.
not that complicated.
They offered him $800 to get off the plane. Maybe if they offered to anyone else they would've found a taker. You would think that they would have a better system for this shit.
Wonder what's gonna happen when it's time to evacuate Earth? Elon and Bezos better have some pretty solid special ops guys lined up...
Bezos will be fine floating around in his Hindenburg 2.0's
Wow that video is a little horrifying. United seems like a pretty shitty airline
You can't tell from the video, but he got a pretty nice cut on his face sometime during the 're-accommodation,' blood going everywhere. What a nightmare.
Holy shit. I can't believe some users above are saying the guy was at fault...kind of mind blowing
United's new seating chart
Hahahaha omg too much
So if someone from the Fight Club zone wants to take a piss, he has to pass through First Class?
I'm not going to be flying United in a long time....
I'm not normally the kind of person to get worked up by something like this, but I have to admit that I was pretty angry after I saw the video. Expecting it to be just another video of something that the Internet has over exaggerated and allowed to go viral, I was pretty shocked by how legitimately bad the incident looked. The fact that neither the officers, the flight crew, or anyone else seemed to realize how bad this would look on video before it happened is pretty mind blowing to me. In the age of social media, it's not about whether something is legal, it's about whether people will think it was ethical. Key distinction that anyone in a customer-facing role should think about.
Additionally, it's my personal opinion that the entire practice of overbooking is unethical and should be illegal. Something about charging people for something that you might or might not be able to give them just doesn't seem right to me. The fact that in this case, said something (i.e. the airplane seat) was given to them, only to be clawed back against their will really emphasizes the issues involved with this practice.
On a side note, Bloomberg pointed out that JetBlue and Virgin America never overbook, so if you're like me and are worried about something like this happening to you, then fly one of those airlines.
man i wish i were that guy. they had to clear the plane while they clear up the blood from dragging him out. he'll probably get either free flights for life or a multi-million dollar settlement.
next time i fly united, i hope they get overbooked and beat the shit out of me.
Haha, I'm sort of with you on this. So upset with United on this and other issues that I might never fly with them again though.
http://postgradproblems.com/im-beyond-jealous-of-that-dude-who-got-his-…
Was fucking shocked when I saw the video but this guy just made the quickest buck of his life. The media firestorm is unreal, if this guy wasn't rich already...he will be now.
The UAL CEO is now defending his employees. The employees themselves may have been following protocol but there is something very wrong about how it is protocol to remove a paying passenger by force. It is very unamerican, in fact. If I had a personal obligation like a wedding or funeral or a professional obligation like a pitch, then there's NFW I would take a voucher to catch a flight that leaves the next day and I doubt any of you would. No one can or should have to plan for something like not getting on a flight b/c the airline has to make room for its employees. US airlines are pathetic and are examples for why we need more competition in any industry.
I don't know why some people on this thread don't get this PoV. Some actually question the doctor standing ground for his professional commitments.
Interesting twist. https://www.ft.com/content/12f87b1a-89d8-3e1d-8262-0a879dd1d625
It is completely outrageous and he being a doctor the people should respect his values.
So ashamed of not only the airline, but the other passengers on board that didn't do anything to help the situation. Guy is getting his ass dragged out in the most inappropriate and devastating way and not one passenger stands up to at least lessen the impact.
what would you suggest the passengers do?
Not expecting the passengers to start a brawl and fight security but at least verbally telling the officers to take it down a notch or expressing some concern.
Bust out a smartphone and Snapchat or Tweet out a video.
Getting dragged off by the dick would have been more devastating.
The CEO is a fucking moron. I'm sure the policy does not state that fucking up a passenger is the allowed extreme if they won't move. Calling security is the last and final solution, not the 2nd one you jump to after a voucher. Any adult with a modicum of intelligence should have know a better solution was possible.
And look what happened. Everyone had at least a two hour delay because they had to clean blood off the plane. Furthermore, I'm sure plenty of passengers could claim emotional trauma from seeing a fellow passenger get black bagged.
United compound fucked up (props to wags). The legging issue and now this. Time to retrain your people.
I literally am shocked he CEO is effectively giving this story legs instead of doing everything to squash it.
Yea he needs to pay this guy so this goes away ASAP and release nothing but remorseful statements and be done with it.
The US needs a passager bill of rights. It's pretty absurd what seems to be happening more times than not.
Like he's Courtney Love in '93?
This scandal has not (yet) been translated into any quantifiable repercussions. The Domino's Pizza scandal, where two employees were caught marinating orders with human organic matter, had little effect on Domino's stock price. Conversely, volkswagen's recent scandal was slapped with massive fines, immediately chipping away at the bottom line and the stock tumbled as a result. A boycott may be imminent, but let's face it, who's boycotting Domino's Pizza? (I'm not)
Edit: The behaviour on behalf of the airline is absolutely diabolical.
United stock dropped by 4%?
Yup so did Dominos, and picked up shortly after that. Tesla did too when Trump won, igniting fear that green tech would suffer - and picked up shortly after. The market always tries to put on a price on human sentiment but it is my personal opinion that this whole story will blow over after a few cat videos and people will forget what they were boycotting (As a European, I've said about Ryanair, "never again" for their frightening lack of customer care. I'm flying ryanair tomorrow)
Nonetheless! I could be wrong! I hope I am. Lets see.
does this mean my United status will actually be worth something now??
I can understand why the doctor refused to get out of his seat. He's a doctor, and was flying to see patients the next day. Opportunity cost of missing out on those patients must have been significantly more than $800, and probably also more than the mere ~$1,300 less price of a replacement ticket that he was entitled to per DoT regs.
Airline should just have kept upping the $ til some other passengers had decided to take the money. Or hired a car to drive their employees to Louisville.
I can understand the initial refusal but once security rolls through it's time to move on. At that point there was no way he'd stay on that flight.
I mean if we are just going by results, this guy is gonna get a 6-7 figure settlement and be able to fly free 1st class United (if that's even a thing) for the rest of his life. Sounds like he made exactly the right decision, albeit in hindsight. Either way, in this case (as in so many others), the court of public opinion cuts way deeper than actual laws, and hey, maybe it even helps to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Bet your ass every boarding agent/group(?) from Atlanta to Zimbabwe is quadruple checking for overbookings now, and every passenger is gonna hold the fuck out, just waiting for the same thing to potentially happen again.
hindsight is 20/20. If we're going with results I'd do what this guy did 1000% of the time but that is irrelevant beforehand.
fair point, and i absolutely agree that when security shows up, it's time to cut your losses and move on. Ain't nobody on here actually trying to be some champion of the "anti-police state" movement.
edit: but maybe this guy illustrates a bigger point, that just BC the cops show up doesn't mean it's actually game over, heck maybe this even teaches people to understand their "rights" or "freedoms", I just think if you're not a middle aged white guy or a pregnant woman, it tends not to work out for you if you're the one not cooperating.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: United is consistently the worst, most poorly organized airline I have ever had the misfortune of using and I pray to god that I shall never be in such dire straits that I would need to use them in this lifetime
it happens all the time in african countries hehe welcome to the 3 rd world United airlines
Since I apparently live under a rock and just got caught up about the news regarding this situation... I thought it might be worth pointing out that the situation with this Doctor refusing to give up his paid seat with preference for United Airline's own employees is oddly similar to the bus incident with Claudette Colvin.
Quick wiki-history lesson tells us that Colvin was an African American woman who was asked to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus standing when there was more white-passengers than "seats designated for whites". She refused and accordingly, was arrested when the police was called...
The simple rule with Northern Hemisphere airlines:
Start with America, where the airlines are the worst, and they get better as you head East - Europe, Middle East, Far East Asia.
There are three or four airlines that get my wallet share. I've got me some nice status perks. United will never be on my list.
Aren't most of the better airlines govt subsidized and/ or owned?
I'd much rather fly Iberia, Lufthansa or British than a major US carrier. Iberia was Global Top 5 in punctuality last year, and their business class has some of the best food I've had on a plane. (Incidentally Hawaiian Airlines was top in punctuality and I admit I've never flown them). Anybow, these European majors are not gov't-owned or subsidized. Those are the major Western European carriers.
Now the Middle East, which is probably what you're thinking of. They're very good and yup many of them are gov't-run. Emirates is the big boy here, the standard-bearer, so let's run over it: the specific emirate that owns it is Dubai, which has virtually no oil, and Emirates purchases fuel on the open market. They're a way better experience than US or even European airlines and they're profitable.
Far East Asia: the two leaders here are Cathay Pacific and Singapore. Cathay is owned by Swire, Air China and the public markets. Air China is ultimately owned by the Chinese gov't but they entered Cathay's shareholding structure in 2006 - I'd long since formed my airline geographic heuristic by then. Singapore is majority-owned by Temasek which indeed is the Singapore govt's SWF but I don't think anyone here believes Temasek ownership equates to gov't subsidy.
Unfortunately, a technologically innovative and commercially vibrant market like America is stuck with probably the shittiest aviation system in the Northern Hemisphere. (These things happen: Germany's a country for and of engineers, and yet telcos and the internet there SUCK). In any case, as much as I dislike American Airlines, United's recent fuckups have reaffirmed my decision to use AA for stateside travel and no longer use UA's frequent flyer program ever again and migrate instead to Lufthansa for all my Star Alliance traveling.
I applaud the man for his courage and his stance against the tyrant that is United. If everyone just bow to authorities because the higher-ups said so, we'd never have had the revolutions that secured our peace and freedom we now enjoy. I, for one, also believe the entire overbooking nonsense should be outlawed. Maybe this incident can be a start.
Now, where can I donate to the man.
If that gets outlawed you can guarantee ticket prices are going up across the board. Also, why would you donate to the dude? He's about to get a multi million dollar settlement.
Can we talk about how he was not actively practicing medicine because he forfeited his medical license after being caught selling prespciption drugs for sex? His "I need to get home to save my patients!" story doesn't resonate with me. Is United incompetent? Yes. Should the police officer be disciplined? Definitely. But what makes me more upset is that everyone saw the commotion yet no one offered to give up their seat.
> Can we talk about...
Um, no because it's completely irrelevant.
> what makes me more upset is that everyone saw the commotion yet no one offered to give up their seat.
WT actual F? The whole point was that nobody needed to give up their seat to begin with. This was not an overbooked flight. There were exactly as many paying passengers as available seats. That UA would have liked to have four non-paying employees on the flight is irrelevant. Crew logistics are not the paying passenger's problem.
I've worked as in-flight crew. Hiring vans/taxis to drive crew to nearby airports was always an option - not necessarily a daily event, but it was reasonably common, particularly in the winter when bad weather would create total chaos when it came to crew scheduling.
There is a vast difference between being denied boarding and being forcibly deplaned. Once a paying passenger is in his seat, there aren't many legal options for the airline to force him off the plane, and most of them relate to the passenger being drunk, unruly, violent, etc. None of that applies here - all the videos and all the comments from the passengers on the plane all clearly state that he was not belligerent or violent and never raised his voice, at which point the rent-a-cops came and used violent force to drag him off the plane.
I just shake my head at the 'just do what you're told' comments. Pathetic.
Not enough seating, prepare for a beating.
When we overbook, brace for a left hook.
Can't believe that if they had to kick someone off then at least make it random, i.e. Seat number out of a hat etc.
Was there a racial aspect to this?
I've been following this story sand it's still unreal too me how poorly a seasoned management team handled this situation.
Isn't there some law about how the maximum amount they are required to offer as compensation is around $1350?
Given United's recent PR fiascos, they should have at least offered the 4-digit compensation before dragging people out.
Worst part about United is their lack of overhead compartments for carry-on luggage.
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