Via https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/64m8lg/why_is_... and more:
> Lawyer here. This myth that passengers don't have rights needs to go away, ASAP. You are dead wrong when saying that United legally kicked him off the plane.
> 1. First of all, it's airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about "OVERSALES", specifically defines as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to denying boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply.
> 2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it's clear that what they did was illegal-- they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a.
> 3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you've boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn't have been targeted. He's going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco.
I can also confirm it personally because I have family in that area and it turns out they were treated by him. o_O He doesn't have the best reputation, apparently. Not that that's at all relevant to United's behavior, of course--it's like those cases where a cop shoots an unarmed man for no reason and they try to defend it because it turns out he'd robbed a liquor store the previous week. Was pretty surprising to me, though.
It's great that others have checked out the guy's statements, but I think the downvotes on the parent and easy dismissal of his/her IMO reasonable question is a bit much.
Except their tone / style was far from reasonable. It was arrogant and elitist. If they have concerns about the authenticity of reddit posts, there are far better ways of wording it, instead of going lulzzz reddit hurr durr.
That said, United utterly botched this in the way they handled it.
And I don't let the PD off the hook either. That police can use violence to settle what is essentially a business dispute is just wrong.
I was responding mostly to the claim that they can only denying boarding in the event of an oversale because they can deny boarding to accommodate positioning crew, it happens all the time.
I agree that once the passenger was boarded, the situation was different. United screwed up, and they compounded the problem in their violent removal of the passenger and their subsequent public responses to the incident.
"Confirmed reserved space means space on a specific date and on a specific flight and class of service of a carrier which has been requested by a passenger, including a passenger with a “zero fare ticket,”"
"Zero fare ticket means a ticket acquired without a substantial monetary payment such as by using frequent flyer miles or vouchers" ... "A zero fare ticket does not include free or reduced rate air transportation provided to airline employees and guests".
Which means the employees cannot be counted as having confirmed reserved space. 14 CFR 250.2a says:
"In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily."
Which means denying the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space means denying 0 paying passengers. They cannot bump passengers for crew. Whether they do or not, they legally cannot.
I believe your interpretation is incorrect. This was discussed in another thread last night.[0]
Assuming 14 CFR 250 even applies (there's multiple reasons why it may not), the explicit exclusion of employees from the definition of a zero fare ticket is immaterial due to employees otherwise satisfying the definition of confirmed reserved space.[1]
The critical point is that the definition merely includes zero fare tickets, which are explicitly defined as not being employees. That does not mean employees cannot otherwise satisfy the definition of confirmed reserved space.
Deadheading employees are not involved in the operation of the aircraft, so they may be considered passengers. The employee travel passes used reserve a specific date, flight and class of service at their request.
Due to the urgency of that particular situation, the passes used were positive-space, also having higher seating priority than paying passengers. While that sucks, the alternative is that an entire flight is delayed or canceled, with many passengers on that flight missing their connections. Those missed connections then bump people off subsequent flights, creating a cascade of chaos. That's why deadheading flight crew have priority over ticketed passengers in certain situations.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095224
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/index.php?width=840&...
United screwed up by failing to follow the correct procedures, and the compounded that failure by sending security personnel onto the plane to manhandle their customers.
* maintaining extra crew on standby at each airport, in case of no-shows by the scheduled crew.
* reserving (i.e. not selling) space on flights specifically for such crew transport.
* buying seats for them on other airlines, chartering a small aircraft, or other means of transport.
* offering enough cash to persuade volunteers to debark. Considering that the alternative is to compensate an entire planeful, the budget for this is a lot higher than 4*$800.
That means you are, even if confidently so, guessing? Or can you provide concrete details?
Consumers are in fact treated like shit, either knowingly/actively or not, and that is an abuse of power and trust. Power and trust that should be dissolved and then earned back.
This chrome extension, created in a couple of hours, illustrates a simple fact: be evil, be ignored. That's it. The power is in the hands of the consumer. We all have the right to voice our opinion with how we spend our dollars.
Too bad if your company gets caught up in someone's else's bullshit. Be evil. Be associated with evil. Ignore evil. Be ignored yourself. The internet is not a free advertising platform. The rules of infinite reach apply to big money and just someone willing to slap a few lines of code together.
Basically they caused this no volunteer situation themselves.
If what the person is saying is true, then technically speaking, the only one who could demand cash would be the doctor.
My statement about the doctor being the only one that could be compensated was definitely tongue in cheek.
The process is quite different with other airlines
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-united-and-delta-manage-ove...
Relevant quote:
"Last year, Delta had the highest rate of people without seats for flights by far and United was No. 2. But they handled those customers differently, according to DOT data. Delta was the most generous airline in voluntary compensation. On Delta, 100 times as many customers voluntarily took vouchers as those who were involuntarily denied boarding. United had 17 times as many volunteers as customers involuntarily denied boarding: 62,895 volunteers and 3,765 forcibly bumped."
yes, the police did the brutalizing, but all of the decisions that lead to that confrontation were UA's.
It's akin to arguing we shouldn't lock up people who pay for assassins, only the assassins themselves.
And I'm not trying to compare an assassination to what UA did, only point out that the law doesn't give you a pass because you weren't the one who physically did the act.
If I call the police because there is someone suspicious in my neighborhood and they show up and end up shooting an innocent person, I am not responsible for the shooting.
The only exception I can imagine is in the case of a false report. If one were to call and say he saw someone with a gun walking down the street and waving it around threatening people, and that was false - I suppose he could be responsible for injury that resulted from a confrontation with police. But it would require a criminal act on the part of the person who calls the police to have lied to the police.
If United is legally held responsible for the action of the authorities, I would have to expect that it could only be if they made a false claim to the police about his behavior prior to their arrival. I have a hard time believing they would be responsible just for misinterpreting the FAA boarding rules, even IF they did it knowingly.
No, but this example illustrates perfectly what I'm talking about.
If the only reason you called is because it's a black kid, then people are going to be justifiably upset at you, even if the police are the ones who shot the kid.
What we're talking about here is why people are upset.
Also, given the publicity here, there's no reasonable claim any competent airline could make that calling the cops to remove a passenger, for the airline's own initial fuckup, wouldn't result in harm to the passenger.
Which makes the case one of premeditated or negligent battery.
The problem is lack of scrutiny by the officers handling this. The process should have gone something like this:
United: "Hey, we have this guy refusing the leave the airplane. Can you help us remove him?"
Chicago PD: "Why won't he leave the airplane?"
United: "He says he needs to catch this flight for something work-related."
Chicago PD: "Is he threatening other passengers? Why do you need to remove him?"
United: "We need to fill the seat for some last-minute flight crew. Look, this is really important, can't you just come and take this guy for us? It's already becoming something of a scene."
Chicago PD: "So what you are saying is, you are asking a paying passenger who is already seated in a departing plane to leave. And he won't do so voluntarily. Can't you ask someone else to go instead?"
United: "We tried, but no one is willing to take less than $1600 worth of our $50 flight coupons. Ridiculous! We do no more than $1200 per FAA guidelines."
Chicago PD: "But did he break any laws?"
United: "Not sure, maybe there's something in the ToS."
Chicago PD: Click
United: "This man is trespassing on private property."
Chicago PD: "We'll be right over."
United breaking their agreement isn't illegal, but remaining on private property after you've been asked to leave by the people in charge is illegal.
That's like saying you leased your house to a tenant for a year but then six months in you find another tenant that you want so you call the cops on the first tenant. Doesn't work like that (well at least where I live).
A contract is a contract and nobody is tresassing here.
Sure, they're breaching contract, but that's a civil matter. It's completely unlike residency, as well, because that's got special protections, and as many times as people say this has special protections too, it doesn't.
To elaborate just a bit, breaking a contract isn't against the law, being "contractually obligated to let you stay on the plane" doesn't mean they can't kick you off the plane, at all.
Also, Chinese? I don't see anything on the linked article about them being Chinese. In fact, it looks like he's Vietnamese?
This was a very rare event: in the majority of cases, they're able to get volunteers to take a later flight. In almost every single one of the cases where they aren't, the people involuntarily bumped leave without incident. I doubt anyone on the flight crew foresaw their chain of actions ending in violence, right up until it happened. And I think that lack of foresight is entirely reasonable and understandable.
United (as a company) did a poor job of handling the aftermath, though.
The cost of involuntarily bumping 4 passengers ($800+ x 4) assuming no further incident, rapidly approached any benefit from not cancelling (or delaying) the morning flight. Total revenue for the regional flight would likely be less than $10,000.
Seriously, this wasn't hard.
Stupidly, The cost of the likely lawsuits (even from lesser incidents, that didn't involve beaten passengers, just extremely annoyed passengers) often negates any cost saving for the airline.
anyway, if the guy payed for his tickets, doesn't he have the right to stay on his seat as long as he's not a terrorist/criminal?
Also, united should be blamed for 99% of this incident, as it was united that called security to force the guy out - even when they had the chance to offer some other guy more rewards/etc for a smoother process.
Not really. It's the United that called those "cops" so they should take the full responsibility for their actions.
I'm still amazed that "overbooking" is legal though. It feels to me like it's a one big scam - airlines basically sell a product that don't have and it's absolutely fine by the law. WTF world?
If you define it the second way, the doctor hadn't completed boarding. (And I don't think it's a totally ridiculous torturing of the words to read it that way.)
1. Airlines in general don't seem to have defined 'boarded' in their contracts. This usually means that the meaning as tested in court will default to that commonly understood, i.e. 'has entered the aircraft and is seated'.
2. Accepting the manifest isn't final, there have been many instances of aicraft returning to the gate for manifest changes. Even to embark a late but high-value passenger. So when is the aircraft finally boarded? when the wheels leave the ground?
3. The United CEO stated that the flight in question was 'fully boarded'. That may have been an error in terms of hsi legal team but shows that even the airline doesn't have a concrete internal definition.
In Europe even before 9/11 flight security protocols demanded that a passenger need to be present on the plane and be seated until boarding is complete.
No piece of luggage is allowed to go on the flight if the airline / the pilot / crew / airport staff has knowledge that the passenger is not on that flight: They need to open up the cargo area, remove all containers until they find this person's luggage so it can stay on ground.
[edit] I suppose I should expect the downvotes to continue flowing for this comment. If you do downvote, please also explain exactly who you think made the mistake, and where. Thanks!
They could've done a lot of things better before assaulting him, but i don't think after that initial fact any further are necessary.
What I though was going to be a useless required class ended up being quite educational.
The class was quite eye opening for somebody who just moved to this country 3 years prior.
A large part of why people are upset about it isn't just the physical brutality, it's the act of FORCIBLY removing someone from a plane after they've:
1. paid 2. boarded 3. spent all the time going through customs, etc.
The fact that he got brutalized, even if it was not purposeful, is secondary. If you read through this very thread you'll see most of the commentary isn't centered around his injuries, but around UA's decision to forcibly remove him after boarding.
Saying that they couldn't get volunteers is like saying you can't hire developers - you can get either if you offer the market rate. Instead, United decided to use muscle instead of compensating customers for what was United's mistake.
It certainly looks like they are specifying a maximum compensation for the relevant situation here.
But suppose it were entirely up to United. Whenever I've asked people what United should have done instead, "offer more money!" is really the only response I've gotten. Even if the amount were much higher, there could still be scenarios in which people would refuse it for whatever reason. And even if it were entirely up to United, that seems like very minor mistake, if you could call it that. And certainly nothing that should cause anything resembling "moral outrage." Particularly when their flight bump compensation is in line with all other major airlines.
That can only be true if you haven't really been anywhere talking about it.
People have suggested paying more money, having them take a later flight (or a morning flight), having them take a different airline, paying for a rental vehicle and asking someone to drive them the 6 hours.
Part of the reason people are so angry about it is because there are SO many other options, and they went STRAIGHT to the nuclear option.
The moral, outrage isn't because United made a mistake. The moral outrage is because, rather than pay $800 more to correct their mistake, they resorted to force.
The moral outrage was compounded by the president of United not delivering a sincere apology. "I'm sorry your dog was run over." isn't the same as "I'm sorry I ran over your dog."
There seems to be a case to be made that United wasn't even in the right contractually. It certainly struck many people that way at a gut level i.e. when you take delivery of a product or service you don't expect the seller to come back later and take it back. This also contributed to the moral outrage.
The McDonald's woman initially just wanted (restorative) justice --Mac Donald's to pay for medical bills --McD went full corporate and got handed by the jury. Here it's the opposite, right out the gate, he's looking for major compensation and damages, rather than say medical bills, lost wages, etc.
Sure passengers in general feel a bit emasculated/defeminated on an airplane and want to give it to the airlines, but honestly I don't see a case for severe damages.
I'm certainly not going to drop United as a possible carrier over this incident. I'd drop them if it happened to me personally but I would not expect others to follow suit. Just like I won't ask anyone to boycott a particular car dealer from a particularly popular brand because I think they treated me poorly.
He must be one of those guys you don't want to prank even as a friend because embarrassment is too much for him.
[Citation needed]
Edit: OK, then.
"The 69-year-old medical professional has hired corporate law specialist Stephen Golan and personal injury specialist Thomas Demetrio".
[1]http://perezhilton.com/2017-04-12-united-airlines-david-dao-...
Someone else _offered to get off this plane - for a few hundred or so bucks more than the on-site middle management was prepared to pay - so they chose to not only break his contract illegally, but physically assaulted him using hired goons to do so.
I'd bet reasonable money that Stephen Golan's people contacted Dao, and by "hired" they mean "The law form has offered to do this on a _very_ small commission, because they know just how much money United stands to lose here, and Stephen Golan plans on buying his own 747 with his 15% cut of the settlement figure".
And as much as I hate ambulance chasers - I'm cheering this one on here.
It's _possible_ I'll get o a United plane in future, but that'll require me knowing that this incident hurt them a lot - enough to ensure that nobody working at United now or in the future doesn't hear about it, and that it's blindingly obvious being part of letting a situation like this happen again will not only be an immediate firing offense, but also have United's lawyers chasing illegally acting staff for whatever they own to cover then next 8 figure damage payout.
For better or worse - this is how the justice system works against corporations - they can't choose to assault a person and put them in hospital - then just say "Oh sorry, here we'll cover your hospital bill. Now we're all good, right?" and have everybody involved just say "Company policy, soz!". Stephen Golan needs to take enough money out of United's coffers to guarantee that there's a top down message send inside United that this must _never ever_ happen again - no matter what the company policy says. (I'd also settle for United just covering Dao's expenses, and the entire chain of management from CEO down including the airport rent-a-cops as well being sentenced to whatever jail time they'd d=face if they're each personally committed this assault on Dao in public. But I'd be prepared to let Dao choose which of those outcomes he'd prefer...)
I would prefer restorative justice over punitive justice in this case. If people were not deplaned, another flight would have been delayed/cancelled affecting not one or two people but hundreds. There were jerks all around --from the people who physically took him out to the victim himself.
And how does that become David Doa's personal problem?
And how are you gonna feel about "restorative justice" when United pay his hospital bills - and then assault one of your family/friends next month, because they know it's cheaper doing that than delaying/canceling flights (or, you know, getting their fucking shit together and having proper plans to get flight crews to their planes without turfing paid and seated passengers off aircraft...)
Like I said - I hate "ambulance chasing lawyers", but I genuinely hope this ends with an out of court settlement north of 10mil - not because I think Dao or the lawyer "deserve" that much, but to make it crystal clear to all United employees (including the CEO) that this is _never_ the right way to deal with this problem.
We _know_ what his seat was worth - $1600 - someone else offered to get off for that, and was "laughed in the face". United were offering $800. The one of the four crew missing their spots - worst case - affects "hundreds" of other people (people you'll note who, like Dao, have paid-up tickets and contractual arrangements with United, not Dao...).
Let's say United managed to only incur the $800 per seat costs they were offering here as compensation to the "hundreds" of other passengers potentially affected by one crew members absence. At the very low end, if "hundreds" is only 200 - that's $160,000 dollars of risk - and I admit that's something the on-site United manager needed to mitigate. Which they had the option to do for only $800. Instead - they almost certainly broke the law, purposefully mis-used non-applicable regulations, and didn't back off when things started to go pearshaped, not just in the aircraft, but with the tone-deaf initial two messages from the CEO.
So by saving $800, they put a guy in hospital, and the people who made that decision got backed all the way up the management chain to the CEO and his legal advisers - in a $22billion company.
And you're somehow implying that what the victim did here makes him as much as a jerk as the United and airport rent-a-cop people?
Sorry, we do not agree on that - you are just wrong.
And I stand by my earlier comment - if this doesn't end up with a settlement up in 8 figures, _my_ read of that will be that United fully intend to do this again next time it suits them, and that assaulting paying customers in the interest of "shareholder value" is part of their procedure manual.
Most level headed people don't put up a struggle to get off. Most people who are thus inconvenienced or wronged will take it up via normal channels. If I'm asked to deplane, unwarranted as it may be, I'm not getting into fisticuffs --I'll take it up later via other means, and it appears most people in the same situation do the same. Very few people become belligerent. Again, not saying this is the preferred mode to operate, but it's how airlines operate. Maybe an 8 figure fine changes that but my guess is they'll just have more legalese giving them more leeway in bumping passengers. I don't think it's going to change an industry which historically operates on thin margins. Not unless they become "re-regulated" and we get the privilege to pay 2x to 4x current airfare like people did pre-1980s in real dollars.
Here's why I think he was a jerk --the airline, right or wrong was operating from a legal standpoint which includes the ability to take people off a plane (you may debate that) but he did not retaliate in a legal manner --he took personal affront and physically resisted removal. Separately, I think the airline were jerks because they should not have resorted to their legal options when they had not exhausted reasonable monetary options first.
That choice was just plain wrong, and allowing it to unfold as it did knowing there was an $800 solution on offer was morally reprehensible.
And you're being accidentally or intentionally misleading about what we can all see in the video - Dao did not "get into fisticuffs" or "become belligerent", he sat in the seat he'd paid for. United-directed rent-a-cops started the fisticuffs and belligerence.
Excusing this with "but it's how airlines operate" is such a cowardly point of view it genuinely astounds me that anyone capable of reading and commenting on a site like this could hold it. If _any_ business is designed to operate this way - where errors on their part result in a procedure that involves and excuses assaulting people - they deserve to be shut down.
I'm happy not to "re-regulate" the airline industry, I'm just saying if we're going to let "the market" be the fundamental driving factor - that "the market" needs claws. The things that they should not be allowed to do need to have powerful corrective market forces against them.
And claiming that any alternative solution to assaulting Dao will result in "the privilege to pay 2x to 4x current airfares" is again intentionally missing the point - THEY COULD HAVE SOLVED THIS FOR $800! AND THEY CHOSE NOT TO.
Fine them enough to _really_ hurt, or close them down and put everyone in charge in jail for assault.
(If you want to get into pure speculation worst case outcomes here - take a look at the UAL shareprice - it dropped tom 71.5 to 68.5 in the 25 mins from 9:30am yesterday - about $900mil of market cap - which then bounced most of the way back, but settled something like $450million down . If you want stupid rationalizations for why we need to change or not change the industry here - here's mine: If we allow this as acceptable practice, then obviously next time a flight crew needs a seat, the gate manager will just call his broker, make sure all the other passengers have their phones out, and beat shit out of the most photogenic passenger on board. Instant profit.)
That said, it wasn't united that removed the guy, so had American or Southwest got to the point of needed to removing a non-co-operative passenger (it seems that point is less likely to occur) it would probably of been the same police team that actioned it. People need to remember that.
Also, this idea that he was targeted due to being Chinese has no supporting evidence, its more likely it was first row of people with less/no airline status (given the extra legroom seats in front were probably reserve for gold members).
United screwed up on processes, gate management, and their apology. But this was the police/airport-security that should shoulder most of blame for the social outrage..