Doctor dragged from plane after refusing to leave for United Employee who needed seat
- Thread starter Jon
- Start date
For the cops it most likely does. For the airline probably notwell that clears things right up
A lot of this drama could have been avoided if the United employees who had to get to Louisville had boarding passes and were already sitting in the seats when regular passenger boarding began. That was four passengers would have found someone already in their seats and United could issues apologies and vouchers etc. without having to call security to remove a guy from a seat.
This is a PR disaster.
This is a PR disaster.
Better yet, they could rent them a car - it's only a 4.5 hour drive from Chicago to Louisville.
Forcing paid passengers off a flight for their own employees just shows how United views their customers.
There's no need to beat someone up when you can slam their head into a seat/armrest and knock them out cold.
I don't know how he got back on the plane other than he was running, likely combative - having been knocked unconscious with a concussion.
You try to remove someone who is resisting from a seated postion in tight area and see if you or them don't hit your head on something. The only question on the police revolves around care for the guy.
Depends on how they were scheduled with regard to mandatory crew rest. If they were supposed to operate a flight out of Louisville in less than 12 hours or so, the airline might have decided it was better to inconvenience 4 paying passengers out of Chicago than 50 out of Louisville the next morning.
While I agree, I'm guessing the employees were needed for operations due to the unavailability of another crew so they had to deadhead them to Louisville. Renting a car probably would not have given them enough crew rest time to be eligible to fly or maybe violated some internal work or union rule.
Regardless, United chose to screw the customers for the benefit of their employees due to poor planning.
You can rationalize it all you want, but it's obvious that United made a poor choice here and deserves the shellacking they're receiving.
they could have kept offering more for the 4 seats too. i imagine $1,500 X 4 would have gotten them the seats and a lot less headaches
United created the situation and could have handled it differently. The guy probably did not expect this to happen. Now that we know it will I guess we can all just comply without protest immediately. My problem with that is that I am not a child who should just obey without question when I am no danger to anyone. Security could have reasoned with the man, and United could have reasoned with him before that or found someone less resistant, but then that would make them less powerful, wouldn't it? And make no mistake that this was about power. Brute force, as a matter of fact.
I'd have taken the $800 if it was offered in portraits of Ben Franklin instead of a voucher. I've used Delta's vouchers in the past. If it's anything like that experience, nothing short of cash is getting me to accept that offer.
I'm not condoning United's behavior, just pointing out that it is not "for their employees" as much as it was "for their operations".
United should have upped the ante and got some more passengers to bite. They usually give the payout as a voucher so it is basically "funny money" for UAL; even if it was cash it would be worth a few thousand dollars to make sure they had a crew available for the flight out of Louisville.
I recently took a trip starting in Charlottesville, via Dulles to someplace overseas.
The United puddle jumper was broken (this flight has about a 60% on-time departure rate, and, if delayed, is usually 1.5 hours late), so United put me (and a British gentleman) in a cab. 80 miles and $150 (United paid, not me) later I was at Dulles.
Coming back home, same thing. Plane broke, and I rode to Charlottesville.
That cannot be a good business model.
But if the plane is broken, I have no interest in crashing on time. I'd rather get there safely, even if late.
I would do it for $800 cash plus a free hotel stay, luxury suite of course and a steak dinner.
Yeah, leaving Reno last year with 4-6" of snow and ice on the wings (early bird flight so it had sat all night) and people began complaining about the length of deicing. I turned to my wife and said something similar to your last lines.
Something tells me United stockholders are not going to be happy when they realize their dividends are cut due to the millions paid out to the passenger, his lawyers and their own lawyers.
I guess next time, when flying to Birmingham and they ask for volunteers, I better jump up and volunteer for the sake of everyone else on the plane. I'll make the sacrifice, I suppose.
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