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posted by on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the customer-relations dept.

NPR reports

Passengers on a United Express flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., were horrified when a man was forcibly removed--violently wrenched from his seat and physically dragged down the aisle. [...] Videos of the scene have prompted calls to boycott United Airlines.

[...] The Chicago Department of Aviation [...] says the actions of the security officers were "not condoned by the Department" and that one individual has been placed on leave pending a review.

[...] Passengers had already boarded on Sunday evening [April 10] at O'Hare International Airport when United asked for volunteers to take another flight the next day to make room for four United staff members who needed seats.

The airline offered $400 and a free hotel, passenger Audra D. Bridges told the Louisville Courier-Journal. When no one volunteered, the offer was doubled to $800. When there were still no bites, the airline selected four passengers to leave the flight--including the man in the video and his wife.

"They told him he had been selected randomly to be taken off the flight", Bridges said.

[...] The man said he was a doctor and that he "needed to work at the hospital the next day", passenger Jayse D. Anspach said.

[...] Both Bridges and Anspach posted videos of three security officers, who appear to be wearing the uniforms of Chicago aviation police, wrenching the man out of his seat, prompting wails. His face appeared to strike an armrest. Then they dragged his limp body down the aisle.

Footage shows the man was bleeding from the mouth as they dragged him away. His glasses were askew and his shirt was riding up over his belly.

"It looked like he was knocked out, because he went limp and quiet and they dragged him out of the plane like a rag doll", Anspach wrote.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:44PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:44PM (#492876) Journal

    Those four crew could have flown, 45 minutes, or driven 4 hours. The result of coercing a doctor to volunteer to be re-accomodated, resulted in a 2 hour delay. So that is 2 hours and 45 minutes. Maybe the United crew should have just driven.

    What happened here is that United is unwilling to pay the true cost of transporting its crew.

    Different travelers value their missed flight differently. If I am going to Disney World, then $800 plus free overnight hotel might not be quite enough. One park day pass $130 ish, or $172 for park hopper. One night missed at resort about $200 ish for moderate resorts. Plus one day of vacation.

    For some travelers the cost of a missed flight might be a missed family event (wedding, funeral, or combination wedding/funeral). It might mean a missed business contract.

    For some travelers, say going on a cruise, if you miss your flight and don't get to the cruise on time, you've missed the entire vacation. The cost of the entire cruise.

    I realize this is now an overbooking situation. But United was using the normal procedure for overbooking. Effectively treating this as over booking. If a football stadium or theater owner sold more tickets than they had seats, they would be in jail. But airlines bribed congress to allow them to over book. (Or involuntarily bump passengers with "compensation".) The problem is that the compensation may be out of touch with what it costs the bumped traveler.

    Maybe the airline should be required to effectively auction for a volunteer. Anyone want to get off for $1,000? Anyone for $1,200? Anyone for $1,400? If you remain seated hoping for more money, you risk that someone else will volunteer at any point. So it seems like a system that would be fair. If nobody volunteers until they reach some absurdly high price, then that is the true market value those people place on being bumped. If someone jumps for only $800, then great.

    I later read that four high school students later got off the plane because they were traumatized from the bloodied doctor who was kindly "reaccomodated" by the police. So now there were more open seats. And the doctor got to fly after being beaten up, er, I mean reaccomodated. And I'm sure those four students didn't get any benefits or perks for getting off the plane.

    Let's not forget: United Breaks Guitars.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:47PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:47PM (#492879) Journal

    Meant to say: I realize this is NOT an overbooking situation
    Ugh!

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:16PM (#492989)

    ...and, for the $3200 they were offering, I'm betting that the airline could have found someone with a private plane who would have ferried the 4 employees the 300 miles.

    I'm also betting that this wouldn't have happened with Southwest, where the employees are empowered to make customers happy.

    Note also that before becoming United's CEO, the current chump had no previous experience running a service-providing outfit.
    His prior gigs were with outfits that manufacture sugar-water and he happened to be on the airline's board of directors when the sitting CEO bailed out before he could be kicked out.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:50PM

    by SDRefugee (4477) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:50PM (#493012)

    AND the trouble is, today, when you get bumped, you don't get COLD HARD CASH via airline check or greenbacks, you get a fucking voucher for future travel ON THAT AIRLINE... I suppose that would tolerable for somebody who flies a LOT, but for people like me who have flown ONCE in the last 15 years on my own dime, that "voucher" is worthless to me, UNLESS its able to be sold.. then who knows.... Back in the 80s, a friend and I flew from San Diego to Las Vegas over a weekend. On the way back, the plane was overbooked. They offered getting volunteers on the next flight and a $300 payment. I leaped at the chance, but my friend was worried he'd be stuck overnight.. I took the offer, got a check handed to me at the gate checkin counter for $300 and got put on a flight with another airline which got me back to San Diego about an hour after friends flight...

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