Oh good. United said it was random and it really wasn’t. Quick let’s go see the CEO play word pretzel to back-up his employees some more or… they cannot claim it’s random when it really isn’t.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it was random within the set of economy plebes with no status and not other flights.
I’m honestly not surprised or even disappointed. That seems reasonable, beyond the arguably misleading statement.
Ok, I just googled “united” news and read the top 10 links. Selection process is unclear.
CNBC claims random according to witness Audra Bridges.
“Audra Bridges, a witness who posted the video to her Facebook page Sunday evening, said United management came on board the flight and used a computer to randomly select four passengers who would then be removed from that trip.”
CNN says NOT random according to United spokesperson Hobart.
USA today says random from computer. “Belligerent passenger.”
NY Times has the best writeup from the links. Their answer is that it’s unconfirmed.
"Mr. Hobart would not say whether the bumped passengers were chosen by a computer, an employee or some combination of the two. But factors can include how long a customer would have to stay at the airport before being rebooked, he said, and the airline looks to avoid separating families or leaving unaccompanied minors."
The use of a computer doesn’t preclude other factors being taken into account. I don’t think those two reports are contradictory. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it was random within the set of economy plebes with no status and no connecting flights.
To me, that’s not surprising or even unreasonable. It’s also fair to characterize that as being “random”. It is borderline misleading though, because some might think “random”, without qualification, means completely random.
I think what people don’t want to hear is that a staff member selected the passengers for petty reasons (he gave me a stink eye as he was boarding, he was fat, etc) rather than some arbitrary set of rules.
Ah, yeah. I can see that being an issue. Should have done it Survivor style, with the passengers voting. Fun for all!
Looks like journalists are digging up dirt on this guy. It’s unfortunate that whatever he did in the past should even factor into this conversation. It doesn’t have anything to do with any of this.
Classic stuff.
Obviously, this guy was scum. He must’ve deserved it somehow. In fact, he did something to make this happen. Nothing like this could ever happen to an upstanding law-abiding person like me!
It’s not so much unreasonable as it is … well you have scenario where one group has all the information and another group essentially none and very few rights to boot. It comes off like I’m United. I have a flight crew that needs to be somewhere else, and because i am so profit hungry or incompetent or both, I now have to boot off 4 people from the plane to put our employees on it. No one really knows why they just sort of stopped the voucher at 800 dollars or why they felt the need to get everyone on the plane before handling the problem so when they were booted it off, it felt literally like they were being booted off. Oh or why the CEO is spending most of his time talking about employees instead of customers.
So maybe mixed with all that, don’t use the word random in a way that makes it sound like if you turn to the left or you turn to the right you all have an equal chance of being removed when that’s not the case. And we’re talking about an industry that like Timex said, I think it was Timex, is already notorious for misleading people on what their rights are and were so bad, so bad with the way they handled boarding and unboarding their flights that an outside body had give them written instructions on providing customers the extraordinary luxuries of access to water and using the bathroom and maybe not holding everyone hostage on the runway for hours…
Unless you are in first class, flying is generally stressful. It’s also mass tran these days, so there is no requirement for only perfect peeps at top performance in stressful situations in here.
I don’t see how digging up dirt changes anything at all. if he’s taking drugs for anxiety, wouldn’t change my mind one bit.
I feel the same, especially since the videos paint a pretty genuine picture of someone that was confused, didn’t know what was going on, and ended up hurt and kicked off a plane in a manner that was not handled well at all.
I have one exception to that dirt digging though. If said person was someone who frequently scammed companies for damages, it would give me more pause on the actions in the video.
Press doing opposition research for United. How many ads are United buying on ABC?
That fair and balanced bullshit they peddle. I guess in the political world we’re in now, we can’t look at incidents anymore, we have to weigh the value of the people involved and then decide if we care about what happened.
“The innocent black child police gunned down in the street? NOT SO INNOCENT AFTER ALL. TURNS OUT HE CHEATED ON HIS SIXTH GRADE SPELLING TEST ONCE!!! DID HE DESERVE TO DIE?”
Goddamn I wish I were being satirical right now…
As someone taking serious drugs for serious anxiety, this would make me just feel worse for the guy.
Stocks drop, lose millions. All of a sudden, change of heart and apologies.
https://hub.united.com/united-express-3411-statement-oscar-munoz-2355968629.html
Yeah I’m not sure why that wasn’t his initial response.
Could also be the rule they cited for “deplaning” is wrong:
This denied boarding rule, and similar rules applying to Great Britain and the European Union, only permit denying boarding, not removing a passenger who has already boarded. The situations under which airlines are permitted to have a passenger who has already been boarded disembark are contained in a completely separate section the United’s COC entitled “Refusal of Transport.”
Rule 21, entitled “Refusal of Transport,” is very different because it clearly and expressly covers situations in which a passenger who has already boarded the plane can be removed. It states clearly: “Rule 21, Refusal of Transport, UA shall have the right to refuse to transport or shall have the RIGHT TO REMOVE FROM THE AIRCRAFT AT ANY POINT, any passenger for the following reasons.” [emphasis added]
The rule, which unlike the denied boarding rule does provide for removal “from the aircraft at any point,” lists some two dozen justifications including: unruly behavior, intoxication, inability to fit into one seat, medical problems or concerns, etc. But nowhere in the list of some two dozen reasons is there anything about over booking, the need to free up seats, the need for seats to accommodate crew members to be used on a different flight etc.
Well let’s see.
Not blaming the entire situation on the one person involved who had the least amount of power, the customer, check
Spending more time addressing customers than patting your employees on the back, check
offering an actual apology to said customer and those who witnessed the incident, check, bonus point for using the word mistreated
taking responsibility, check,
commitment to actually make changes to avoid said incident in the future, check
negative pont, calling it oversold when I thought UA said specifically it wasn’t overbooked and they only needed seats for a crew… still confusion there.
ooh double bonus points for promising to publish results of an internal review with a date even!
Yeah Mr. Munoz should have started with this.
IANAL, but I was kind of wondering about this as well. I’m curious to see how it plays out.
I’m curious how it pays out, though I doubt we’ll ever know.
Really? iPhones most other Apple products (reasonable people can disagree about the quality, but they are far more expensive than their competitors.). Tesla aren’t cheap either and there is very little about them that is low quality.
Woman’s handbag is another area where people are willing to pay for quality (or at least perceived quality/Brand appeal).
Actually, for most products there is a working market where higher quality products are routinely priced at multiple times the entry priced products. It even is true for air transportation (e.g first class). I’d argue that air travel market is one of the most rational markets out there. It is basically commodity move me from point A to point B, quickly. Consumers are armed with a ton of information, and there are multiple competitors in most markets. Airplanes generally fly close to capacity and profits are near zero.
Yes the coach experience often sucks.But people can make the experience better by paying more Economy Plus, Business or First Class, TSA Pre screening etc.