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Crew travel priority over paying pax?

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Crew travel priority over paying pax?

Old 11th Apr 2017, 10:25
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The police had no option, he had to come off peacefully or forcibly. He chose the harder of the two. The scene and injuries were indeed very unfortunate. If he wasn't in a confined space surrounded by people he might have been tasered or sprayed.

Are you kidding?? He was a law abiding passenger sat in his seat minding his own business. So it is acceptable to assault him because United have made a mess?? Let them (United) stew in their own juice.... A situation entirely of their own making...
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 10:48
  #22 (permalink)  
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I accept pax should be forced to offload for security/behavioural reasons, but violent force just because someone has f*cked up at the gate, applied to someone picked at random for offloading? No, not on. Who made the decision as to who was to be the victim? Random selection? This guy will be paid out millions.
I've been on a flight where we had to offload, to do with hot'n high at WAN. Took so long to pick the first ten, and offload ( no arguments, everyone did as asked) , that the pilot then came on and said, as the temp had just gone up another 3 degrees in the interim, (summer morning)we had to offload another ten . Just about the whole flight stood up to volunteer :-) :-)
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 11:31
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I wouldn't be tootling around in the back seat of a King Air, too scared that there had been a party in the trailer park last night or that the food stamps were a day late.
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 11:52
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Originally Posted by DJ737
Agreed, being asked to do something by Airline, Security or the Police and refusing to comply isn't going to end well for the person concerned and not just in the US, The person concerned obviously failed the "attitude test" applied by the airline and/or the police.
Oh balderdash!

The policeman (or whatever he was) should first have established that the captain had a lawful reason to have the passenger removed. You can't just say to a passing policeman "these people in front of me in the queue won't let me pass - please forcefully remove them!".

United had no legal basis for removing the passenger, either under title 14-250 or under their own CoC. They claimed the flight was "Oversold", but it wasn't - it was just fully booked. Positioning flights by company aircrew don't qualify as confirmed, reserved seats so they weren't "Oversold" within the meaning of the regulation.

I do get it that they had a problem needing to deploy aircrew, but there were lots of ways to solve that and gratuitously throwing already-boarded passengers off an aeroplane (in violation of the title 14 regs and their own conditions of carriage) is frankly not a solution that any rational company should be considering.
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 13:23
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Positioning flights by company aircrew don't qualify as confirmed, reserved seat
Really? In a couple of airlines with which I am very familiar, positioning crew (to operate a flight or who are returning to base after an operation) are booked as "must go" status. The space is confirmed and pity help any ground staff who offload crew in those circumstances. The required number of seats are blocked with the saleable inventory reduced accordingly. It is therefore possible to still overbook a flight based on the reduced inventory.
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 13:50
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They literally could have offered someone a hundred thousand bucks or even multiples of that for the seat and got off cheaply looking at the PR disaster this has become.
Hindsight is such a wonderful thing and I'm sure United are going to regret this for a long time to come, what with litigation and people voting with their feet choosing other carriers.

But, I have a simple question. They must have known at the gate about the numbers, why didn't they sort this out before the passengers boarded?
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 13:52
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Originally Posted by Ken Borough
Really? In a couple of airlines with which I am very familiar, positioning crew (to operate a flight or who are returning to base after an operation) are booked as "must go" status. The space is confirmed and pity help any ground staff who offload crew in those circumstances. The required number of seats are blocked with the saleable inventory reduced accordingly. It is therefore possible to still overbook a flight based on the reduced inventory.
I should have been clearer in what I was saying - what I meant was:

Unbooked and late-arriving company aircrew needing positioning flights don't qualify as confirmed, reserved seats

If the positioning flights are booked at a time when there are seats available then I have no problem with them being given the highest priority. But that's not what happened here.

PDR
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 13:55
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Originally Posted by Evanelpus
But, I have a simple question. They must have known at the gate about the numbers, why didn't they sort this out before the passengers boarded?
Some parts of the press are suggesting that these four just arrived unannounced at the gate, after most of the Pax had boarded, showed some paperwork and demanded seats.

I really, really hope this isn't true!

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Old 11th Apr 2017, 14:16
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Some parts of the press are suggesting that these four just arrived unannounced at the gate, after most of the Pax had boarded, showed some paperwork and demanded seats.
Oh dear, oh dear.

Were they United crew? the reason I ask is that I'm sure I've seen elsewhere they were from DH. Is that an airline or does that stand for dead heading?

I hear the compensation numbers rising as I type!
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 14:43
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Originally Posted by Evanelpus
Oh dear, oh dear.

Were they United crew? the reason I ask is that I'm sure I've seen elsewhere they were from DH. Is that an airline or does that stand for dead heading?

I hear the compensation numbers rising as I type!
I believe the abbreviation DH is being used to mean "dead heading".

PDR
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 16:58
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DH is dead heading. The flight was however operated by Republic who also operate flights for AA and DL.
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 20:12
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I have no issue with UA offloading someone due to needing to get a crew member to another location and presumably avoid inconveniencing hundreds of pax as opposed to 1 or 2... that is logical. The execution/escalation was poor however but not a big surprise considering the way U.S. law enforcement conduct themselves generally (I'm sure there are good police in the U.S. but many need re-training). I'm just surprised the police didn't shoot him, that would have been less surprising for the U.S. Just watching Sunrise and damn commentators on there talking about overbooking, etc. which it wasn't... stupid presenters should shut up and not make things up if they don't know what they're talking about. This will not play well for UA however, despite the inaccuracies sprouted by TV presenters.
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 23:21
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DH=dickheads - United that is !
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Old 11th Apr 2017, 23:40
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I imagine United has the equivalent of an 'Airline Duty Manager' for that port. If so, they have not managed the on load of the crew and offload of the pax well.
If the paxing crew presenting at the gate was a surprise to the gate staff / duty manager then that is poor communication within the Airline. Either way staffing levels and poor training will be at the root of it. A calm, well trained, experienced person in authority at the gate would have prevented this escalating to the point where security was required.
Ensuring that staff are calm, well trained and experienced requires mature executive management decisions that value those traits.
Does executive management recognise and value these unquantifiable traits? If not, there is the root cause of the problem and the cost is now slightly more 'quantifiable '.
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Old 12th Apr 2017, 00:09
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And airlines will continue to overbook and undercater because some mathematician or accountant thinks its a great idea. And it will ensure bloated executive bonuses can and will continue.
NPS anyone.
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Old 12th Apr 2017, 00:15
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What about the other pax who, upon hearing that the bloke was a doctor with patients booked at his destination, just sat there, albeit "expressing" horror at what was happening.

It is all about "me"
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Old 12th Apr 2017, 02:41
  #37 (permalink)  
 
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If a police officer issues you a lawful (to them) instruction you have to comply. Three other people did, no issue. He chose not to. His decision.

I would be pretty confident that the terms of carriage for his booking allow him to be offloaded.

The policeman (or whatever he was) should first have established that the captain had a lawful reason to have the passenger removed. You can't just say to a passing policeman "these people in front of me in the queue won't let me pass - please forcefully remove them!".
Do you know they did not do that?

And airlines will continue to overbook and undercater because some mathematician or accountant thinks its a great idea
Because passengers want low fares, remove overbooking and the price goes up.

If PDR is right then it was not "overbooking" in a usual sense, only that crew could not be accommodated. Three pax got off, this guy chose not to. Perhaps another pax should have been asked.
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Old 12th Apr 2017, 02:43
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Originally Posted by PDR1
Oh balderdash!

The policeman (or whatever he was) should first have established that the captain had a lawful reason to have the passenger removed. You can't just say to a passing policeman "these people in front of me in the queue won't let me pass - please forcefully remove them!".

United had no legal basis for removing the passenger, either under title 14-250 or under their own CoC. They claimed the flight was "Oversold", but it wasn't - it was just fully booked. Positioning flights by company aircrew don't qualify as confirmed, reserved seats so they weren't "Oversold" within the meaning of the regulation.

I do get it that they had a problem needing to deploy aircrew, but there were lots of ways to solve that and gratuitously throwing already-boarded passengers off an aeroplane (in violation of the title 14 regs and their own conditions of carriage) is frankly not a solution that any rational company should be considering.
Actually, the carrier has a right like anyone else under common law to ask someone to get off their property. Working for a major carrier and having a discussion with a security department type one day I asked what our obligation was or the likelihood of being in trouble if we later, for example, found a person was not intoxicated (we never used to say that, just 'unfit for travel'). He and a Police Officer told me that an aeroplane is property like any other property and the owner of a property has the right to ask anyone to leave their property. If the person refuses to leave, it becomes a case of trespass. Common Law operates almost identically in the United States as it does in Australia. Further, if this goes to court, I don't believe the Doctor's 'standing' to sue will come from the injuries so much as loss from not being provided with something he had purchased. I don't agree with what they did but my legal understanding is that the removal of person(s) from an aircraft comes from common law rights of the airline perhaps supplemented by rules governing specific instances like entering an aircraft while intoxicated.
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Old 12th Apr 2017, 02:52
  #39 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by framer
I imagine United has the equivalent of an 'Airline Duty Manager' for that port. If so, they have not managed the on load of the crew and offload of the pax well.
If the paxing crew presenting at the gate was a surprise to the gate staff / duty manager then that is poor communication within the Airline. Either way staffing levels and poor training will be at the root of it. A calm, well trained, experienced person in authority at the gate would have prevented this escalating to the point where security was required.
Ensuring that staff are calm, well trained and experienced requires mature executive management decisions that value those traits.
Does executive management recognise and value these unquantifiable traits? If not, there is the root cause of the problem and the cost is now slightly more 'quantifiable '.
Not true. An Airport Duty Manager may well have been told of the urgent need to offload a passenger and put a crew member on at the last minute when boarding is completed. At several airline's I've worked at aircraft have been held to wait for a crew member having just been advised that someone has gone unexpectedly sick at another port and other crew might be out of hours if the replacement doesn't fly on that flight. I'm sure we've offloaded commercial passengers more than once to accommodate... very, very rarely but it has happened. Usually it's just been a case of holding the aircraft past departure time until the crew member came running up the concourse to get on board. We don't know all the circumstances and suggesting that the Airport Duty Manager had not planned well is probably not the case. At one airline I worked at, we had a crew member open a bottle of champagne on board and a piece of the metal surround broke off and shot up and struck him in the eye, the aircraft diverted and was delayed while a crew member getting to a flight about to depart for that destination was accommodated. Crew DO trump commercial pax because not having the crew member travel may inconvenience hundreds instead of one person who is offloaded. Conditions of carriage state clearly and always have that the carrier undertakes to provide the carriage but reserves the right at its absolute discretion to delay, divert, re-route the flight or flights or change the equipment or the carrier(s) involved. None of this excuses the behavior and the manner in which the removal was conducted... have to say though, if I was in the same situation I may ask why and if they insisted I would get off the aeroplane as they requested and argue it out with the manager, I wouldn't refuse to get off the aircraft. However, I would also not condone that sort of force being used which was obviously completely over the top

Last edited by AerialPerspective; 12th Apr 2017 at 02:54. Reason: added content
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Old 12th Apr 2017, 03:58
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So if it was so important to have these particular crew at that particular destination, I wonder if they may be a bit too reliant on deadheading to keep the operation running. 1 billion wiped off the share price over this little incident. One slightly used false economy going cheap on eBay anyone?
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