steveboy

Thank you Libob69. This firecat69 put me on ignore because he could not tolerate me bringing up his mistakes and misjudgments. He must have learned this from the ostriches sticking their head in the sand when feeling in danger. This about the ostriches is a myth, but it is not a myth about firecat.

Wait until you are 97 y.o., if you get that lucky... In the "days of old" it took much longer to cross the oceans by steamboats.

Yes, at this point it is all innuendo, or nicer said, speculation. But I am not speculating about the nature of United employees, I have personal experience with them. All I can say is that by generalizing one may be lumping together some very nice people, which some of them are. It is very possible that this event gets settled out of court, the airline has too much to lose if it goes to trial. Although the Non Disclosure Agreement only binds those who sign it, the potential plaintiffs. Others may have some more information to disclose.

We have not yet heard from the policemen who removed Dao from his seat. The airline employees must have been stunned, flabbergasted by the nerve of a passenger challenging their ABSOLUTE authority. Who knows what they told the policemen! They might have been inclined to portray him as a dangerous troublemaker, a criminal who could endanger their operation. And so they called the police to report, not a commercial dispute in violation of their contract of carrier, but a dangerous criminal situation. If so, they made a false accusation, a violation of the law in itself.

I am not totally sure, but I think that he is the wrong one. Had it happened the way he says, we would have heard it a hundred times in the news, AND the airline would have argued this immediately to cover themselves.

Are you a shareholder of United stock? I don't understand your position of making the victim the victimizer. How did David Dao "inconvenienced" other passengers? Other passengers got their airfare refunded, so they flew for free. The flying public will benefit from him. Like society owes gratitude to Martin Luther for his rebelliousness that brought the Reform, so we will owe Dao for having stuck to his principles and having brought outrage against the evil airline. And Dao hopefully will benefit from an extra million $$ in his pocket, even after he gets his face fixed. WHAT "redress"? Have you ever tried to get a redress from United Airlines? I have, and I was unsuccessful. Had he left, he would have never received any satisfaction. What is also disturbing here is that this episode only came to light thanks to some of the other passengers who captured it on video. Who knows how many other ugly episodes are never made public... This is questionable. The definition of "trespassing" is entering someone else's property without permission. Here Dao not only got permission to sit down in the plane but he paid the demanded compensation to be transported in it. I think that a good lawyer can argue against the relevance of the "contract of carrier" that is thousands of words long that cannot in practice be made aware to every person who has to buy a ticket, and can argue that such contract does not necessarily empower the company to have pacific passengers removed with violence. IF the confrontation with security officers was not a WIN situation for Dao it is still too early to tell.

You were not blessed with a mathematical mind. If the airline is willing to give a fair solution to a problem "that statistically happens to a MINUTE % of passengers", this can only cost them a MINUTE amount of money, even if they pay $5,000 to each affected passenger. Not a doubling of prices!

z909, one can agree 100% with your post. We keep reading more about the risk of flying United: "David Dao, 69, suffered a concussion, broken nose and damaged sinuses and lost two front teeth when he was dragged off a flight Sunday to make room for United personnel, lawyer Thomas Demetrio said. He said Dao has been released from the hospital and is staying in a "secure" location." Of course it could have been worse: the United airplane could have fallen from the sky and crashed... Come to think of.... maybe, maybe it will be a good time to fly this disgraced airline again when they implement all the perks and discounts they will have to do to attract customers again... unless by then they have fallen so low that their airplanes become unsafe.

You are right, I hadn't thought about this! I also have Global Entry and pass through Immigration checked by a machine. Now I can leave all my raunchy porn on laptop and tablet, maybe add some more... Except that when the machines are down (it happened to me once) one still has to face a real person. But at least when I applied for Global Entry they didn't make me swear that I'm not gay.

It seems that the flight was not overbooked, One can read in: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/04/11/united-ceo-employees-followed-procedures-flier-belligerent/100317166/ "United spokesman Jonathan Guerin said Tuesday that all 70 seats on United Express Flight 3411 were filled, but the plane was not overbooked as the airline previously reported. Instead, United and regional affiliate Republic Airlines, which operated the flight, selected four passengers to be removed to accommodate crew members needed in Louisville the next day. The passengers were selected based on a combination of criteria spelled out in United’s contract of carriage, including frequent-flier status, fare type, check-in time and connecting flight implications, among others, according to United." The flight was booked correctly, but to accommodate an United employee who was needed THE NEXT DAY they didn't mind expelling by force a customer who had paid for the flight and was already in his seat. We could see the horror felt by other passengers from the way one of them was treated, but there seems to have been no horror by the crew of the plane. Where were the flight attendants, where was the Captain? Maybe they felt that what was done to the Chinese doctor was deserved, and maybe they even felt empowered that one of them had gotten such a high priority over the snooty wealthy passengers they have to serve and attend?

This reminds me of my 96 y.o. brother in law. His mind places a golden era around the 1950's. Everything was better at that time, and things have been going downhill since then. My much younger sister an me we take this man as a role model of how not to age, and we mutually cultivate our optimism and peace of mind.

You are right, this could be a win for passengers. The more the airline gets punished and the stronger the example, the sweeter the win. The irony is that it would have been so simple to resolve the situation: simply a flight attendant in front of the passengers "auctioning" the reward for giving up one seat. Starting at the $600 and going up until one passenger takes it. It should not have gone up more than a few thousand dollars.

You really think positively, and you deserve the satisfaction of knowing that, although hiding from the gym, it is there!

We all probably read about the forceful removal of a passenger from an United airplane to free up a seat for one of their crew members who had to make the trip. And we saw on youtube or elsewhere the video of the peaceful passenger lying on the isle floor being dragged out, and his bloody face. I have been a passenger of United so many times! And I have seen how ugly they can be. I hope this particular man, an Asian senior who is a doctor and needed to make the flight to see patients, will sue the HELL out of the airline. They may have had the right to make him leave, but not to have it done the way they did. I have my personal grudge with United. Three times I made flight reservations months in advance to fly to BKK, and three times I had to cancel my trip due to medical problems with my BF. So I had to change dates on my non-refundable ticket three times at a $300 penalty each, for a total of $900, and finally the ticket expired and I lost the $800 value of it. I was looking forwards to fly to BKK last Monday for Songkran, but my friend still needs care and I cannot leave him alone for 10 days. It breaks my heart! but not my pocket so much, because this time I made the reservation with EVA, and they already REFUNDED the cancelled flight with a penalty of (only) $150. This is and will be my future airline to travel to S.E. Asia. Originally I liked United because of their mileage program, but they started to steeply increase the miles required for a free flight and finally they made a change that drastically reduced the accrual of miles in economy flights. Damn exploiters! This incident of forcefully pulling out a peaceful passenger from his assigned seat is the last straw. I cancelled my "United Explorer" credit card and got refund of the yearly fee, and I will distance myself from "United Airlines" as much as possible and feel satisfaction for all the trouble they now face.

This makes sense. There are plenty of accounts that can be anonymous, like email accounts, forums like this one, accounts to store in a cloud. One can have encrypted files with arbitrary names in arbitrary folders. And application programs, apps, can be deleted and reinstalled at will. Intercontinental travel involves many hours spent idle, so what does it matter to spend a little time on these precautions? It can even be fun...

This post of yours is pure trolling! Not funny! It's not your business who others respond to.

You have a point

How can your life be wrecked by not being able to marry the man you love?

Unfortunately, on a marble statue we will never be able to find out, no matter how long we rub it.

Still, it is not bad when people make rhetorical questions like he made. He surely knows the answer before making it. Gays must have asked themselves in the past "why cannot we gays marry"? And the answer might have been: "Are you dumb or what? Don't you know that marriage is a godly institution that cannot be blemished by the sinfulness of homosexuals? Don't keep moaning about that but repent instead! "

It is not difficult to understand the feelings of your Partner. It is intelligent to stay forever in a loving open relationship. But "three is a crowd" You should feel fortunate to be with a BF like you have. He is surely accommodating by accepting that you prefer to have sex with others than with himself, a sign of true love. I think you owe him the attention of not bringing someone else into the household, no matter how much you desire to do it. Hopefully at 76 you have the maturity to accept this, and realize that this sacrifice of yours will bring to both of you good karma. And if you are able to do so, you better never ever ask to get credit from him for not having brought your young lover into the household. Look how lucky you are: you are free to travel to the Philippines (and I suppose anywhere else) to enjoy sex and then return to a loving household. I have a similar blessing And you can also realize that while it is perfectly fine for a 22 y.o. to be a sex worker or to have a short relationship of convenience, the age gap may be too large to let him truly fall in love. You may not expect this to happen and you want to help the 22 y.o. by bringing him to the US. But if you want to help someone, your BF of 50 years should come first. Good luck!

Hahaha... I like your honest explanation of why you come to BKK. More than twice your age and with a sweet perfect BF of nearly 20 years, I come for the same reasons. Human nature and the will and opportunity to satisfy the nicest fantasies that build up in a healthy gay mind...

I don't think they are lying to you, they may believe it themselves, poor things. More than lying the organized religions DECEIVE, because they sell you as a FACT that what can only be a BELIEF for them.

No, rather this more common statue. Can one respect a GOD with such a small thing?

That is what I was told in Catholic school when I was a little child. In reality, this is not so. Both recent Popes Benedict and Francis have stated that non-Catholics and even atheists who live a righteous life can go to heaven!