Federal regulations and union agreements control the time they're allowed to work and required to rest.
I'm sure some will say I'm being stubborn but there's zero way I'm going to side with United on this. This is their fuck up, and because of that, a paying customer was assaulted.
Let the passengers sort it out I say. If grandma can't physically control the window seat she's gonna have to come up off it
But it is/was all kickstarted by United. There's a lot of other ways they could have gone about this beyond what they did. Offer everyone on the flight more money to give up their spot for starters.
Let's reset for a second. If the police dragged off an employee who was flying for free would you all be cool with it?
All thes details aside, this is just completely retarded by United. Company worth tens of billions, the unwritten policy in this situation should absolutely be to just keep upping the price until someone agrees. 100+ people on that flight, I guarantee you somebody volunteers if they double the offer one more time.
But if there are 75 seats in the plane and 79 people and nobody moves what else do you do except have the escorted off by the fuzz? You can't just go into mcdonalds and refuse to leave if asked and expect to not be yanked out. How is this different?
I believe he's saying more than 800 dollars. Some other airlines basically do it auction style and keep going up until someone takes it.
Sadly just have to have low expectations when flying and hope that they airlines exceeds them. Once was on a flight delayed for over 2 hours causing me to miss 2 connections because just before our flight was about to take off American realized they needed to deadhead a pilot to Miami and we had to wait while the pilot took a shower, combed his mustache and moseyed on over from his house 30 miles away. Got a $10 food voucher.
Sure, they could have. But, under their contract of carriage, they didn't even have to do that. It's like we're forgetting this flight is slightly over an hour and goes for about $200.
And, in my opinion, if it was soooooo important for those 4 to get on the flight, they should have offered more. I think paying 1 person more than the contract says is a better option than what they're now dealing with today, wouldn't you?
They once offered I think $1200 to give up our spot on a flight. I was litterally calling my boss to see if I could take it and just show up late then next morning. Of course by the time he said yeah they had the volunteers covered. I was pissed.
I think there's a bit of a disconnect in this thread. Some are saying United is totally within their rights to do what they did, while others are saying they should have more of an ethical responsibility to not have such shitty (legal) business practices.
In hindsight, of course. I don't think they anticipated that the dude would require the police to remove him or that the police would use excessive force in doing so. But, like I said earlier, this happens all the time and it typically doesn't end up this way because most people aren't assholes.
wes tegg taking up the dblplay1212 role White Knighting for United. Next thing you know people will be White Knighting for Comcast. Upping their rate 20% for no reason is well with-in the parameters of their service agreement. Also you should know not to call between the hours of 6 AM to 8 PM.
A big part for me too, is that when the situation escalated(right or wrong), that not a single United employee or CPD officer didn't realize ridiculous what they were doing was.
I'm not white knighting for United. I hate United. Delta 'til I die. I'm just taking the position that the dude and/or the Chicago Airport Police are far more culpable in this situation than United is for doing what United does.
I can't really disagree with that as it applies to the cops, but, at the same time, you can't really just refuse to leave a plane when cops are telling you to leave it. If this were a private business location rather than an airplane, I think people wouldn't be as damning of the business owner.
That wasn't my advice at all. I said that it's definitely a case of bad optics. But, this is much more a PR problem for them than it is a legal problem.
But what if the guy being pulled off had just been released from a 20 year rape sentence? #garyfromchicago
Why did not one single other passenger go "damn, this dude really wants to stay. I'll take one for the team."?
Because he was probably being a huge cunt before the camera started rolling. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am probably biased on this one because my absolute biggest pet peeve in the universe is people acting like their time is more valuable than everyone else's, and I do (rightly or wrongly) feel that doctors are the worst about that.
Obviously not. You get your seats cleared by big dudes with guns whenever you need to fly. Sounds like a good gig to me.
Yea I know, I've taken the vouchers before on Delta. But when a manager at United sees the normal process is not going to work in this specific case, making the decision to have police physically drag an older passenger off the plane instead of first saying "ok will somebody volunteer for $1,200 and an upgrade?" is completely and utterly stupid from a business standpoint.
What's the point of a decade of extra learning, six figures of debt, and stunted wealth accumulation if you can't act like you're better than the average schmuck?
I may be wrong here, but I seriously doubt that United's specific instruction was for the police to physically drag him off of the plane. If so, I take back all that I've said and they're the worst party in the situation.
99 times out of 100, the mere arrival of the police solves the problem. And they still had a fourth passenger to identify - why would anyone get off the plane at any price if United was just going to kick it up $400 every time someone said no?
When I read this in my head I'm picturing an angry, overweight, fictitious Shock Linwood yelling that he needs to get to his doctor job.
What the police did and the decision United made are really separate. They aren't responsible for the police dragging him off but they are responsible for escalating it to that point to begin with. 100% chance the customer was being a jackass, but in the age of everyone having a camera and immediate access to the web in their hand, it just makes no sense for a business to make a decision like this.