First off, stating your points as obvious to “Anyone with a brain” might be a tad inflammatory. There is plenty of room for reasonably intelligent people to disagree on policy.
Second, I’m one of those people. Private property right are certainly worthy of consideration but there should also be regulatory protections that prevent business from screwing customers in the name of a few more pennies. There are plenty of historical examples of business doing that, which is why we have regulations. I would argue that in this case, all questions of violence aside, regulations should exist to prevent a paying passenger from being removed from a plane.
Absolutely, which is why United is bending over backwards all apologetic-like. They want to seem like the nice guy that made a mistake. The fact that they could probably sue this jerk doesn’t help them at all.
This will probably be settled for $30K a month from now. If it hits court 3 years from now (far our of our memory), expect the real lawyers (hired by a billion dollar company) to cut these amateur’s arguments to shreds.
Inviting someone to your house for dinner and having the party go sideways, or an unruly customer in your bakery, are very different from a passenger in an aircraft being forcibly de-planed. The aircraft passenger literally has a contract that was not violated on his end. He wasn’t violent. He wasn’t a safety threat. The airline is the one that screwed up first by overbooking, then by calling in law enforcement to drag the guy off.
There are provisions in the law for plane overbooking, but again, there’s nothing there about “trespassing” or even what to do if someone refuses to de-plane due to a bumping.
Edit: Frankly, I’m surprised this never happened before. Airline bumping has been a thing forever, so it’s funny that no one before ever just refused to get up and leave.
I wish George Carlin was still alive. He’d already have a 10 minute routine that eviscerated United, the police, and Americans in general. Just the fact that the douche CEO used the word “Re-accomodated.” A made up fucking word to try to soften the indignity of being sold a service then having it denied for no goddamn reason other than because we can and fuck you if you don’t like it, terrorist.
Going to the airport isn’t like going out to dinner and there not being a table. You plan weeks, months in advance, there’s loads of money tied up in your trip, and they can just randomly decide to fuck with you because they want a few extra dollars. And you can’t do shit about it or you wind up on a terrorist watch list.
Dr Gao is a goddamn hero. He stood up for himself when the rest of us would have bowed our heads and taken it.
True, putting it your way is better than repeating those words by Telefrog, as I did; sorry. [quote=“Tortilla, post:242, topic:129243”]
Second, I’m one of those people. Private property right are certainly worthy of consideration but there should also be regulatory protections that prevent business from screwing customers in the name of a few more pennies. There are plenty of historical examples of business doing that, which is why we have regulations. I would argue that in this case, all questions of violence aside, regulations should exist to prevent a paying passenger from being removed from a plane.
[/quote]
Tend to agree but the people bumped are entitled to compensation. Obviously that system/regulations didn’t work here, but hundreds of thousands of people fly every day and it works for them.
I don’t know. Devil’s advocate and all, but really, are we so entitled these days that we think we ‘belong’ on a flight, and the airline has ‘no right’ to remove us? WTF is wrong with us? Don’t we have a ‘horrible customer experience’ thread from prior jobs where we talk about terrible customers we’ve dealt with? Jeez I was at a subway the other day and this customer was being a complete as$hole to the girl behind the counter. “I told you I didn’t want pickles, what’s wrong with you stupid idiot?” “YES I WANT A NEW SANDWICH, JESUS CHRIST”. Does that customer have the ‘right’ to get his sandwich the way he ordered it?
The problem with your thesis is the guy didn’t do any of that, he simply refused to leave.
The “entitled” entity in this case is United, who want to do whatever they want when their profit is concerned - and usually can largely because our right wing SCOTUS ensures corporate interests always prevail over consumer rights.
The legality aspect is the sideshow. People tuned in for the spectacle and the outrage, and then the CEO gave them something even better: corporate schadenfreude.
United is bending over backwards because they messed up their initial response. If they did the standard apology to begin with, it would have all blown over by now.
I don’t think that’s true in this case. The video was shocking to a lot of people and the social media response was crazy even before United fucked up the apology.
I have it on GOOD AUTHORITY from the HIGHEST RESPECTED conspiracy websites that the guy didn’t even have a valid ticket, he had just sneaked onboard the plane when nobody was watching! No wonder they dragged him off forcibly. And he clearly had a criminal past. Poor misunderstood airline treated unfairly by the SJW press…
I’m not sure. Yeah, the images were out there, but they could have distilled it down to a one-off misstep on part of the middle management (not offering more incentives etc.) and overzealous police officers. That wouldn’t nearly have the same legs as tone-deaf CEO telling you to suck it or holocaust spicer.
I’m pretty sure the regulations will be that customers can be bumped and are entitled to compensation. I don’t know for sure though. Most of the special regulations around aviation have to do with safety and security, not customer relations.
Not just that. This is an example of a company that made an obvious error (failed to have a flight crew in position) and responded by making a random person suffer (bumped from flight).
Never mind whether they were legally enabled or had no other choice. It encapsulates the sort of injustice almost all of us are familiar with: hearing the words, “Sorry, we screwed up, now you’re going to have to cover for us.” And haven’t we all wanted to respond, “Fix your own mess, don’t you dare drag me I to this!” Well, that’s how this doctor responded. And look what happened.
Ah I get ya. When you said “standard apology” I thought you meant the current standard corporate “apology” which is to not admit fault, obfuscate, and be as wishy-washy as possible.
Seems everyone is mad at the idea of overbooking flights as the root cause.
Obviously it makes economic sense to overbook, or they wouldn’t do it.
Logically, it would therefore cost more for airfares for airlines to not overbook. But as pointed upthread, we all collectively always choose to save 89 cents versus taking a more featured airline flight. Therefore, the airline that doesn’t overbook would be at a competitive disadvantage.
Therefore, we need regulations that don’t allow overbooking, therefore raise the price for all of us ‘fairly’.
Do you want to pay more, for the benefit of not being in the position of being randomly selected to get $800 of compensation and bumped to the next morning’s flight, on the off chance that everyone shows up (probably unlikely) or that no-one is willing to take the compensation voluntarily (an order of magnitude less likely)?
