By the look on the faces of the two lounge receptionists, you'd think I'd asked if I could take a dump on their desk. "Other people have paid membership to use this lounge" I was told in a rather disdainful way. "Sure", I said, "would you like to put a value on the fact that I will never fly with you again then?", I replied...silence - they stopped talking to me and carried on doing other stuff as if I had suddenly become invisible.
No, I did not get to use the lounge, and no, I have never flown with United since - which also means that work colleagues who travel with me are also lost to them.
There's no excuse for them being rude about it, but I don't think your expectations were especially reasonable either.
I am so glad that United officially incorporated this wonderful custom. No longer do I need to decide on the bribe amount on a per-case basis, I can now just pay once!
Some airlines will take over an entire terminal at an airport (e.g., JetBlue, Virgin America) and make it much better on both fronts. But in my experience that is not the norm.
Despite the delay, we were happy customers.
Some vouchers or access to the lounge, with the passenger then not bothering to claim compensation, is much cheaper for the airline.
http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights...
Even better if they have good beer ;)
I've flown Lufthansa plenty of times, they're great, even economy.
We felt that, as full fare, 1st class passengers, delayed for 12 hours by non-weather reason, we should have access to their lounge. Nope. I'm happy to say I never flew with them again.
I wonder if that is grounds to sue.
“Despite the negative experience, we hope to have your continued support,” the rep concluded. “Your business is especially important to us and we'll do our utmost to make your future contacts with United satisfactory in every respect.”
Seems like they prefer a certain skill level of employee: low.
How many people were on that flight with you? If you have the right to go in the lounge then everyone else does, and obviously that's not going to work. In addition, the lounge is for those who pay for it, not for those whose flight gets cancelled. If I paid for it and all of a sudden the lounge is full of people because a flight got cancelled I wouldn't be happy.
It's your right to never fly United again, but I don't think the staff was unreasonable.
Also, there is no way to know if they were actually rude, or if you were rude first because they cancelled your flight and you asked in the wrong way.
Furthermore, if we're going to compare 'worlds,' those people working behind the counter aren't the only overworked and underpaid workers. A lot of people in the world are working in far worse conditions than behind a counter at an airport... and for less pay. Even in other low-paying jobs, I don't expect every employee to be so visually and verbally disdainful to a customer for asking a question.
They will decry working conditions (if it could mean they would be subject to those conditions), but willfully ignore the gap between themselves and laborers.
>would you like to put a value on the fact that I will never fly with you again then?
As if we're supposed to expect that someone who acts like this even asked the employees nicely. The employees should be scared they'll lose their job if they don't do exactly what I say!
Sorry, but you're the one with the out of line thinking here.
"Sir please deplane we need your seat"
"No- I haven't done anything illegal and am in my seat already"
"Looks like he's not following crew instructions! Get em' boys!"
Looks like the officer, Sgt. Brian Stansbury, got off with nothing:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160313/12001133892/compl...
Again I'll offer the example of Germany: cops are basically all armed, but they're very slow to pull out their gun. Even if you run at them with a knife, they'll aim for your legs. Saves a lot of lives, with just training and culture.
| [Cop:] May I see your license and registration?
| Ah certainly...
| [Cop:] What you're doing?
| Chewin' chocolate
| [Cop:] Where did ya get it?
| Doggy dropped it
| [Cop:] ...carry on
Based on http://www.askthepilot.com/how-to-speak-airline/ it seems like "boarding" means to enter the plane.
> One might argue that Dao had not completed “boarding” until the cabin door was closed. This argument would be wrong. The term “boarding” is not defined in the definition section of the contract, and absent an explicit definition in the contract, terms are to be afforded their plain meaning. “Boarding” means that the passenger presents a boarding pass to the gate agent who accepts or scans the pass and permits entry through the gate to the airplane, allowing the passenger to enter the aircraft and take a seat.
> It is possible in this regard to distinguish between the collective completion of the plane’s boarding process, which is not complete until all passengers have boarded and the cabin door is closed. But that is different from each passenger’s boarding, which is complete for each individual once he or she has been accepted for transportation by the gate agent and proceeded to the aircraft and taken his or her assigned seat.
This was all on Asian airlines. My few experiences on United have been terrible.
So in this case I'd say the regulations guiding airlines is fair. United's execution of these regulations is the problem. There are a million things United could have done in the chain of events to have avoided facing a PR backlash. As this is HN, I'd give a simple technical solution that would have avoided this whole problem:
The computer could have deboarded 8 passangers at random from order of lowest priority. United could have explained that if their employees don't catch this flight another flight with XXX passengers will be delayed / cancelled. This would allow the supervisor to use their own discretion to allow 4 of the 8 passengers to reboard.
Making the practice of "overselling" illegal is not the solution. There are times where problem could be cause by equipment swaps changing seat numbers. If we stop the airlines from overselling then travelling will become a lot more expensive.
Your solution just has the airline crew going, "Fair enough, sir, you can stay" and then calling the next name. At that point, the next person knows that refusing is allowed, so he does too. Pretty quickly, you're absolutely going to be on a flight where five of the eight refuse, and now you're back to bludgeoning elderly asian people. And at some point, the whole system becomes public knowledge, and you now add the element of fights between passengers because we all know that only four of us get to refuse.
Or you just eject all eight of them and four can later reboard. Again, what if one or more refuse.
There is a solution in place already. United just didn't choose to employ it. United offered vouchers to anyone who wanted to voluntarily give up their seats. They reportedly bumped the offer one time. They didn't bump it enough. There's your solution. I promise you everyone on that plane had a price. You can find four people who'll take say $2000 to miss a flight to fucking Louisville. Does United think $2000 is too much? I guess so, but at that point, United has a problem that can be solved by effectively buying back some seats, and sellers get to set the price they'll take. It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper to have paid them.
You inform the refusenik that he is trespassing; if he continues to refuse to leave, you inform him that police will be waiting for him at his destination, then call out the fifth name on the list. When you arrive at the destination, he goes to jail, while the four bumped passengers get vouchers and fly later.
Come'on this is hacker news. I am sure most here have seen the mainframe based applications that entirely control every aspect of airline industry.
These things were coded by professionals over 30 years ago. Its not like these flights are being managed by some buggy wordpress plugin made by some offshore developer.
Given how cheap flying is by historical standards, I wouldn't mind that.
Bumping a well behaving passenger in preference of a "more important" one doesn't really fall into either category.
Considering the passenger in this story has already consulted legal counsil, I'm thinking the lawyer agrees that he did nothing wrong.
https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1411-i...
There's a lot of room in between a contractual dispute and interference.
It applies only in the "Special Aircraft Jurisdiction of the United States":
"An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant..." [1]
An aircraft is in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States only while the aircraft is "in flight." [2]
"An aircraft is "in flight" from the moment when all external doors are closed following embarkation until the moment when one such door is opened for disembarkation, or in the case of a forced landing, until competent authorities take responsibility for the aircraft"
IANAL, but it would seem difficult to charge anyone with "interfering with a flight crew" if the door hasn't been shut. The language doesn't seem ambiguous.
[1] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2009-title49/html/USCOD... (scroll down to the 46504 section)
[2] https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1405-s...
The customer even paid premium price to be in first class and instead of being notified at the gate, like any respectable airline would do, he's asked to give his seat to somebody "more important" than him when already seated.
It doesn't make any sense, if that "more important person" came later, he should be the one getting compensated by the airline especially when the problem occurred because United needed to change the plane for a smaller one.
You don't kick customer, you compensate them.