> If a guy goes in a coffee-shop and disturbs the place and the police show up and they beat him and they deny him basic rights, would that person sue the coffee shop or the police? The police, of course.

Isn't a closer analogy: "A guy goes into a coffee-shop and pays for a coffee, and sits down quietly at a table, and the coffee-shop owner asks him to leave before he has drunk his coffee because he wants his staff to use that table, and the guy refuses, so the coffee shop owner calls the police, and they beat him"

Actually, I'm quite happy with the industry. The safety record of the industry is nothing less than astonishing. I can live with non-safety-related fubar. When the safety goes sideways, then I'll start to worry. btw, and apropos of safety and boycotting, an interesting read is the comments thread on the story today about this incident in the Grauniad where commenters are boasting about abandoning UAL and happily taking their business to THY and KAL.

No, I am afraid you are being idealistic. There are often things that happen without the captains consent. There is no suggestion that the captain consented to any of this being executed in the manner it was. The captain may have been doing the "walk around" for all I know. Even if it were the case that he ordered the course of action, it is highly unlikely that he oversaw its execution. I think you need put the " lawful command and other utterances of self importance" handbook back into your back pocket until such time as it is properly needed, and use management skills to resolve an otherwise difficult situation. That is achieved just as effectively by supporting other people under your charge to do the same.

How much would you pay to have a positive television commercial such as this watched by a millions and millions of people not only across the US but across the world? I live in London England and most of my friends have seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRqomRdNUrI

This story is massive in Britain, and I suspect everywhere. It is a catastrophic disaster for the airline industry in general, and obviously for UA in particular.
I must admit that I'm astonished to see that a number of professionals such as West Coast (did you ever tell us which al you fly for?) believe that what happened was okay.
I find that more shocking than anything else about this sordid matter.
Here's a good piece in the "Economist".

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulli...n/tw/te/bl/ed/

Had they offered a million dollars to anyone to volunteer to leave the plane it would have been money saved.

I see that a couple of proponents of violence applied to passengers now try to justify the actions because the passenger concerned has a "record", only since uncovered? Are these proponents saying that he therefore deserved everything that happened to him? Are they saying that his sentences, whatever they may have been, were insufficient punishment and in their opinions, were not spent? I doubt any court of law would agree.

Strange that UAL were quite happy in the first instance to take his money, in advance, for a flight ticket.

His alleged belligerence appears only to have occurred once he was about to be forcibly removed from the aircraft. No doubt had his request not to "volunteer" to defer his ticket been taken notice of, he would have sat totally quietly.

To try to make out that he was going to compromise the safety of the aircraft is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

Gun Foot Shoot!
There is much hyperbole being spouted here but also countered by many common sense observations and many incorrect assumptions!
The Captain has ultimate authority only when the doors are closed otherwise he is generally the conduit for operational instructions from Operations.
That the situation was shockingly handled is beyond question and reaffirms my wariness of US attitudes and enforcement protocols. Plus how can the airline "suddenly" discover it needed to position 4! crew members ?..
In europe I could not begin to imagine this situation occurring. I have had to manage offloads on several occasions but always from a safety/inebriated, aircraft performance/MTOW, tech angle. Positioning crew will NEVER trump a fare paying passenger. Spare Jump/crew seats can be authorised but thats it. If the crew cannot be accommodated then the airline will charter to postion the crew as required.
This disgraceful mismanaged event was matched only by the defensive arrogance of an uncaring remote corporation.

West Coast & Airbubba,
It seems to me you are deeply down into the weeds trying to justify what has happened in this incident as being OK from the cockpit viewpoint. I think you both need to take a look at it from a much higher level.

There is a rule of business that applies and it is blind to whatever business you are in, the airline business isn't exempt. Simply stated, "A company's reputation in the eye's of its customers is built over years and years of demonstrated customer satisfaction. But, reputation that developed and was built over those years can be lost in a blink of an eye when customer satisfaction, either perceived or real is lost."

While you are defending an event based on complex rules or regulations, some of which are open for interpretation, customers who know little or nothing about the rules you are using to justify your positions, look at visual information (270 million views so far) as to what took place and conclude that it didn't need to happen.

The customers are smart enough to recognize there were better ways to handle this situation by the airline and that even the way it was handled, created the entire situation. Turning the episode over to the authorities to solve was a huge mistake.

This morning, at the opening bell the airline lost $1B in valuation, at closing it recovered to losing only $250M. If you are a CEO of a company that deals with individual customers, thousands of them every day, you expect to have employees that are customer oriented at the lowest level. If you are not customer oriented on the frontline, don't expect to be ever among the best providers having the best businesses.

Clay "passengers comply with lawful crew instructions"

Astonishing.
Few facts, flight was not overbooked by paying passengers.

Passengers was not denied boarding, he had not been informed about anything until he was sitting peacefully in his seat.
What world do you Clay and West live in, SkyGod world I guess, who believe this is the right way to treat a paying customer, because the airline have problems to have crew for other flights.

Is the inconvenience of the passengers who are travelling to destination X, most likely because they have a reason to be there, are their lives less important than that of the crews DH, because the airline have their own logistical issues?
Can US pilots / crew not use jump seats? Or is that below their SkyGod status?

I once saw similar situation, gate staff made a mistake and allowed a standby passenger to board, before a Captain on positioning flight had taken his seat, suddenly the aircraft was full, jump seat was also full, Captain was told to stand down, there was never a question to have a passenger removed.

This situation is down to the airlines internal crewing issues, and showing disregard for the passenger.

Options available was upping the compensation price, or taxi for the crew, was within driving distance. However UA acted cheaply here, and the result is it has cost them a fortune already, and will cost them more during the next few months.

The Coffee Shop analogy is pretty good, the passenger was not a treat and had no obligation to remove himself after he had been placed in his seat.
I am fairly sure involuntary removal is either before you board the aircraft or if you are an unruly passenger, in this case he was neither.

If you have such disregard to your paying customer, the people who pays your salary, maybe you should start flying cargo instead. You can not forcefully remove a passenger who has legally fulfilled his obligations, the breach of contract is by the UA in this case, and it would be great to see this go all the way to court, unfortunately it probably will not. But I can imagine there will come some new legislation out of this, and it will not be in favour of the airlines.

Here's an interesting example

United passenger threatened with handcuffs to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler - LA Times

Currently undergoing treatment at a Chicago hospital, according to a recent BBC News article.

I think we can guess that the Pax did not know that he HAD to obey the crew command and it looks very much like crew did not spend too long explaining the details of the Ts&Cs to him. So, the fact that he reacted badly may have been because he did not know the rules and the ones who knew the rules were so used to them - that they didn't stop to explain.

Likewise, the stock market has not waited for an explanation. Just look at their graph for the last 36 hours. All other carriers must be very grateful to United for the free lesson.

Malicious people might suspect that United, in a hole, kept digging, and employed folk to hunt for dirt about the passenger and leak it to the Press (even though any oddities in his life - we all have oddities and failures in our lives - are totally irrelevant to the rightness or wrongness of what happened).

Fortunately I'm not cynical and am sure that they did no such thing!

" As you very well know, nothing happens on any plane without the captains consent". Really, you sure about that, plane on the ground, at the ramp, doors open, no engines running, I'm not so sure.

I can see this episode being used for years into the future as a valuable training tool on how not to handle a simple situation, Basil Fawlty might even be available to star.

I'm gobsmacked at that story - how can any airline expect to remain in business if they treat their First Class passengers like that!

So the Captain is responsible for the guy getting slammed into an armrest and knocked out?

As we've seen from the responses of many of the "professional" pilots on here, the attitude from the flight deck seems to mirror the attitude of the rest of the staff at airlines in the US. If you don't have the option to fly with a company that doesn't view it's customers with contempt, as in the US, then you're pretty much stuck with using one of them unless you never go anywhere.

The CEO could have turned this disaster into a PR success:

"I was shocked and quite frankly horrified when I saw the way our passenger was treated in the video. This does not represent United Airlines or the values we hold dear. I will be personally reaching out to Dr. Dao to take whatever measures are required to make this right, and on behalf of United I want to apologize to both Dr. Dao and all of our customers, especially those on the flight in question. With immediate effect I have instructed our staff to put the following measures in place....<insert measures where passengers are more important than deadheading staff>".

Instead the maroon made it 10 times worse.

Munoz has no moral compass. His weak apology only occurred after he checked his tea leaves, Twitter, and this morning's UAL stock price. :=

I see these references used a lot in this case...

"He refused a lawful command by the crew..."

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


"The crew" in this case would be one of the pilots or flight attendants correct?

Do we know for a fact the doctor disobeyed a direct order to disembark from a crew member of the flight or did this escalate after a gate agent talked to him?

If it was a gate agent I don't see how he broke any law.

Hate to dissuade you of your conspiracy theory, but you need not employ anyone to find dirt, you can do it yourself. In the US many states where medical professionals are licensed have web sites to verify accreditation/good standing. All it takes for anyone interested is a few key strokes.

Whatever past this man has, is irrelevant regarding what happen in this case. It will bare no view on whatever settlement he deservedly receives.

Even eyewitnesses have come out stating that the man had not done anything wrong and had not been disruptive until UA decided to have him removed by force.

My prediction UA's CEO is living on borrowed time, UA have lost over 600 million on their share prices because of this, how funny how ignorant some SkyGods are, and how little respect they have for their paying customers.

Ridiculous
 

First, to all the supposed "professionals" who claim that it's fine to toss or drag someone off a plane, remember what business you're in and who pays your company.

Without the idiots, who you call punters and self loading freight, you'd have no work to do. This has been mentioned before. Get over it. We pay your company to transport us. We don't pay your company to abuse us or leave us stranded because your company can't put personnel in the right place at the right time through internal operations.

I'd love to see the reaction on West's face if a hostess asked him to leave a restaurant after he'd been seated, telling him that staff had to eat instead.

I pay for a ticket, show up, and expect to be taken to my destination. I don't expect to suffer because of bad planning or bad business practices on your part.

I haven't looked at schedules and don't intend to, but this idea crossed my mind.

If the flight was full of paying pax, couldn't the four have been accommodated on a competitor's flight? That's not unheard of.

Years ago, I saw a Delta captain (in uniform) board the Southwest flight I was on. I didn't ask questions, other than how are you doing? He was sitting across the aisle. He said that he'd had more pleasant days, and as soon as we reached cruise he took a nap.

Some of you forget what business you're in. That business is transporting people who have purchased tickets.

The good news for you is that people will continue to fly to get from A to B as soon as possible.

The bad news is that your attitude has already infected the traveling public, and most travelers choose based on price instead of satisfaction.

So when another company undercuts United, your alienated customers will flock there.

Serves you right.

I will be quite surprised if Munoz still has his job in a week. This is the biggest corporate PR cockup since Volkswagen and I think at this point nothing short of the CEO resigning will do. Even then United better start thinking about company wide brand perception initiatives to rehabilitate their image. If I was a large shareholder I would be demanding these changes as a start.

Munoz has had a few opportunities to stem the PR tide against them and possibly save his job and he has only muffed it with half apologies. I sort of don't get it because at that point the only big benefit in doing that is personal and corporate pride. In a customer service industry sometimes you have to say sorry for things that are beyond your control (or don't really agree with).

For those that think United's personal had the right to do what they did, you should remember that in the end result of this PR disaster, the rules are irrelevant. Besides if this happened more frequently you can be sure the rules would be changed... which might now happen anyway.

Who left this gate open? And where's my horse?

Never mind taxis or rent-a-jet, there are about 10 direct flights per day Chicago to Louisville (though not all from ORD), plus the non-direct options. Five of those flights are UA and two of which would probably have got him to his destination in time to see his morning patients.
Put yourself in this guys shoes, he was apparently agreeable to what was offered until he learned that "we'll put you on another flight" did not necessarily mean on the "next scheduled flight". In fact, it seems like they were going to put him on the 4th next available flight, or later.
How would you feel about that?

Could they have not bumped someone on the later flight that night, someone who had not yet already boarded an aircraft and occupied their seat, to get this fellow home before midnight?
Or is overbooking so frequent that cascading "bumps" is vetoed?

Did none of those other flights present acceptable options for offer to either a) the other UA passengers, or b) the DH crew?
Or is a veto of the use of opposition airlines also part of UA's policy? Probably is, right?
This for the same reason that they give travel vouchers and not cash. Who wants to give a passenger cash that he might use to sample the opposition's services.

Seems like there were lots of available and acceptable options. Just none that were listed in the passenger service manual.

This may not be relevant to the outcome in this case, but I'm interested to know more about the "randomly selected" algorithm that their computer system uses.It is far more likely that any such selection algorithm looks at such things as fare type, travelling alone, customer loyalty, etc. than that it selects randomly.
Perhaps random selection is applied to a final short-list.

And that raises another point, some video footage seems to suggest that he was travelling with a female companion. See female running down aisle in hot pursuit.
Can we presume in such a case, if it is the case, that the offer to re-accommodate was for both him and his companion? After all, they only needed ONE more seat, or so it has been reported.

Likely jumpseating, sitting in the cabin instead of the flight deck?

If the vital crew needed so badly could have gotten seats on a different carrier and done so without displacing and inconveniencing paying customers, what would have been the difference?

Actually, it would have saved $$ as well. No comp checks, no hotel vouchers.

As it sits, United set up a catastrophic situation because of poor resource management.

Aggravated by trying to fill every seat one hundred and ten percent.

And they've dragged others into a legal situation which won't end well.

Beat the **** out of some trailer trash drunk dude who carried a garbage bag on as carry on luggage, you'll get away with it.

A doctor?

Not so much.

Stepped in dung, they have.

I was in the Regionals for 10 years doing hub flying. Weather, overbooking, crew out of position requiring paid pax to be offloaded. Very common. Sometimes we wasted so much time waiting for volunteers the flight ended up canceling anyway. People want cheap tickets and the airlines don't have crew standing by in every city.
Some are saying the crew should have taken a rental car. Are there that many people on this board who have so little knowledge of airline operations? When YOUR flight the next day is delayed for hours and everybody misses their connections and now needs hotels and re-accomodation on other flights (that are probably full) that is OK because one emerging American folk hero refused a legal order from Law Enforcement officials to deplane?

Our contract now does not allow DH in a jumpseat. Some are still tempted at times by ground staff to take one, it is a personal choice but doing so can create an expectation that undermines the contract and your fellow workers and can screw over another guy who is trying to commute. Management understands this , no longer generally done.

Uh, have you ever jumpseated on Southwest? :confused:

UAL stock largely recovered intraday.

Since Munoz took over less than 2 years ago, United's market cap has risen by US $4.5 Billion. Even counting today's blip, UAL shares are still trading near record highs, up an impressive 27% vs. last year.

Munoz has his detractors (and health issues) but somehow I don't see United's board removing him very soon.

Yes. If there's a cabin seat available, you sit there, if not on the actual JS.

If the crew getting to their destination was so important then why not charter a biz jet (or similar) to get them there rather than physically assault and cause actual bodily harm to the people that pay their salaries?

You cant JS on company business on another carrier, as in a UAL walks to the AA plane. Absolutely verboten. JS is to allow crews off duty to get themselves where they need to be, not where the company needs to send them.

And who said they had to JS? United could have, you know, bought them actual tickets.

You keep painting a picture of management having been hamstrung with no options, when in fact there were loads of unexplored options.

A poster had been enquiring about jumpseating, making sure he/she was clear the difference between JSing and DHing.

Heard that many times too last 24 hours. That is a good idea. How long will that take to arrange 30 minutes? 14 hours? Understand there are not fleets of Lear Jets with pilots sitting at every airport waiting to be chartered at a moments notice. That takes time. Once that is all arranged the crew then may be going to a hotel to start a rest period. Then the flight they are to operate on the schedule is delayed. And all the people on that flight will be delayed too and miss connections and so on. That is why DH crew scheduled to operate live flights are designated MUST RIDE and board at the highest priority above all others. It has been that way forever and the pilots on this board know this. Unfortunately it appears many people here have absolutely no idea how airlines actually operate.

About the brutality that is a problem related to Policing in America. Nobody at ORD at United got angry with the man or touched him as far as I know. After he disregarded crew instructions, multiple times (Federal Offense in the USA), the staff followed SOP and called Law Enforcement.

Let us suppose for a moment United had the contractual right to require him to leave the plane. By refusing to do so, he would then be in breach. However, this situation is also straightforward. There is no provision of contract law that allows you to enforce your rights against the other party by assaulting them.

What UA person placed a hand on the good Dr?

You do not escape criminal liability by instructing another to carry out the assault and then saying "it wasn't me".

Blah blah, Captain can throw off anyone they want blah Passenger was belligerent blah...

But isn't the problem (legally) that he was seated and not at check-in before they decided to bump him off the flight?

All the legal stuff about bumping passengers I've looked at refers to check-in and not whilst they are boarded. Considering he wasn't 'belligerent' or a 'threat to safety' before they decided to smash his face up and drag him unconscious down the isle, how can UA have a leg to stand on when this inevitably goes to court?