How could United Airlines have screwed up so badly?

[firecat69]

I expect this thread will be moved to The Beer Bar, but I'll offer this:

 

United is part of Star Alliance. Switch to EVA or another partner airline and use up your points through them. Because of personal past experiences, United's been on my shit list for many years... and I'm really difficult to piss off.

But of course that is what everyone already does since there are more seats provided by member airlines then UA and of course UA loves it when you don't take their seats for free.

[firecat69]

A very serious incident mishandled at every stage by the airline, including the apology.  

 

Makes you realise how lucky we are in Europe to have pretty strong rules on oversold flights and disruption to passengers.  A good example of what EU red tape actually achieves.

There is essentially no difference. European airlines overbook because they have to in order to stay in business . The rules for compensation are no better in Europe then USA.

 

Here is how EasyJet explains it and of course they constantly overbook and bump passengers as do all European Airlines.

 

http://www.easyjet.com/en/help/at-the-airport/oversales

[bkkguy]

Most infuriating thing about this incident is that they are digging up this poor old Vietnamese guy's past.

 

if you are really so infuriated by this why are you repeating the information and providing a link to even more details of the information about his past?

 

bkkguy

[forky123]

Reading the rules and regulations is somewhat amusing as everything is about people being refused boarding at the gate. It's obvious no one envisaged someone would be stupid enough to board people and then try to get them off.

[Guest ronnie4you]

Chicago to Louisville, where the flight was heading, is less than 5 hours by car. Again, I am not really defending the airlines here, but the, "I can't be bumped because I'm a doctor" line is bullshit. 

Would you really want to see a doctor who had been up all night driving from Chicago to Louisville? From O'Hare it's a good 6 hours at least. Your lack of sympathy with this guy is astounding.

[Guest]

This whole thing is a disgrace. 

 

1  The laws should protect consumers from being forcibly bumped from a flight.   Market forces do not work to prevent this if all the airlines have clauses in the small print, so it must be legislated for.

 

2  I suggest if an airline sells a ticket, they should not be allowed to deny the passenger boarding for anything other than safety or security reasons.    They should be required to conduct a reverse auction until customers voluntarily accept the offer.    If it goes to $10,000 or more, well tough.   If the airlines go short on seats, they should accept the risk of a "squeeze".     Same as anyone going short on stocks.  

Serves them right for screwing up.  They deserve the pain, not the customers. 

 

3 The whole idea they can deny a customer boarding for any one of their own employees sucks.  It just creates the impression their staff come before the customers.   That's all wrong.

 

4  If the customer no shows, he usually loses the ticket.  If the airline doesn't offer the contracted seat, they just bring on the thugs to drag their customer off the plane.

 

I hope this guy sues them and wins.   I also hope customers boycott this airline to the extent where they go bust.

 

By the way, the idea that he's a doctor  is irrelevant.   That's just another job, although one where they are paid very well and sometimes have an inflated perception of their own worth relative to other professions. 

[steveboy]

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.

[firecat69]

So much over the Top Vitriol. It really is just weird that people don't understand. The airlines have 2 choices.

 

Go bust because only 2/3 of the plane is full or raise the ticket prices by a substantial amount to cover the no shows. Or the 3rd option is no refundable tickets under any circumstances.

 

You think people are squealing today about something that statistically happens to a minute % of passengers . Wait till you see them squeal when prices double or there is no such thing as a refundable ticket.

 

1/10 of 1% of passengers are denied boarding in the USA. Many times more then that accept the money etc offered to them an thus never end up being denied. There are passenger who buy tickets on the most likely route to be oversold just so they can take the offer and pocket the money while getting to their destination some time later.

 

That in no way justifies what happened to this passenger. But somewhere lost in all the negative articles is the fact that it was not UA airlines but a feeder airline with poorly trained people .

 

Some of the original report had Chicago police pulling the passenger off instead of again poorly trained Civil Aviation Police. Yes this passenger will get a big Payday and I guess he deserves it because of the injuries. But if he had refused the $800 offer to begin with none of this would ever have happened.

 

And anyone who thinks there will be any long term damage to UA is just dreaming . They might have to beat the other airlines fare by $10 for a short time and people will flock to them as they always do for the lowest price.

 

Just ask Ryanair, EasyJet etc.

[emailbroken]

There is essentially no difference. European airlines overbook because they have to in order to stay in business . The rules for compensation are no better in Europe then USA.

 

Here is how EasyJet explains it and of course they constantly overbook and bump passengers as do all European Airlines.

 

http://www.easyjet.com/en/help/at-the-airport/oversales

Actually, most see the EU provisions as being somewhat better than those in the US.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/smartertravel/a-guide-to-air-passenger_b_4017963.html

 

Highlighting the cash settlements for info, which apply to flights on European airlines or flights heading to or from the EU (plus Norway and Switzerland)

 

• EUR 250 for all flights of 1500 kilometres or less:
•  EUR 400 for all intra-Community flights of more than 1500 kilometres, and for all other flights between 1500 and 3500 kilometres
•  EUR 600 for all other flights.

 

Airlines in the US and Europe do not "constantly overbook and  bump passengers".  If that were the case it wouldn't be a financially viable solution for them.  They play the numbers game and normally get away with it.  For me with about 60 international flights a year I average about three bumps.  

[forky123]

But if he had refused the $800 offer to begin with none of this would ever have happened.

Where does this come from? I'm not arguing its voracity but I was under the impression from the airlines statements that they had no volunteers and had to do a "random" selection. Only later it appears the random selection wasn't a random selection but a careful calculation in later statements.

 

As for overbooking, that really isn't what happened here. They were on the plane, in their seats when United decided to move 4 flight personnel instead of 4 passengers. That has nothing to do with overbooking and everything to do with poor decision making. If you want to kick 4 people, do it before they go through the gate and preferably quietly. There were loads of really poor decisions here but overbooking is something the press have latched onto because they invariably start speculating long before they have any facts. Let's face it, journalism today has little to do with reporting and everything to do with filling endless hours with few facts but lots of guesses.

[steveboy]

You think people are squealing today about something that statistically happens to a minute % of passengers . Wait till you see them squeal when prices double or there is no such thing as a refundable ticket.

 

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!

[firecat69]

Where does this come from? I'm not arguing its voracity but I was under the impression from the airlines statements that they had no volunteers and had to do a "random" selection. Only later it appears the random selection wasn't a random selection but a careful calculation in later statements.

 

A

It comes from the fact that as reported in numerous articles the Dr accepted $800 to give up his seat and subsequently realized he would not get to his destination that night. He then demanded to get on the flight and stupidly they allowed him to take his ticket back and board. Apparently this all went on before the plane was boarded.

 

Technically you may be right that this was not over booking but we don't really know how many people were paid to get off. All we know from reports is that they had 4 employees to get to their destination and they were offering money etc for people to take a later flight. They may have been paying a dozen passengers for all we know. Then again it may have been only 4 .

 

 

All they had to do was 0ffer $1000-1600 and they would have had plenty of takers.

 

No excuse for this feeder (Republic Airlines) to do what they did and UA is taking the incoming and a few weeks from now the stock will be back up , if it is even down now and the plane will be full again and there will be more and more bumping voluntary and involuntary as summer approaches.

[forky123]

Financial impact was always going to be short term, the impact on the relationship between flight attendants and customers will be there for a long time. As for whether he first accepted, reports seem to differ depending on where you read it. Something tells me we will never get a truthful account or, if we do, we won't recognise it amongst all the fake ones.

[fedssocr]

There were several issues. Mainly I think the problem is one of corporate culture. Front line employees are not given any leeway to handle a situation like this with some common sense. And since this was United Express it means that these are the least experienced, most poorly paid employees. 

 

According to UA's own telling it wasn't until after the flight was fully boarded that the deadheading employees showed up at the gate saying they needed to be on the flight. Certainly it's much easier to deny boarding before people have boarded. 

 

They should have kept offering more compensation until they had takers. But since the rules only require them to pay 4x the one-way fare paid, it was cheaper for the airline to just kick people off the plane and pay them a couple hundred bucks. And since all the airlines really care about is their shareholders and not their customers they do whatever is cheapest for the airline. Offering a voucher and a flight 24 hours later isn't especially enticing to most people. Especially once they're already on board and ready to go. Most people don't have the flexibility to agree to a 24 hour delay. Perhaps if they had offered a flight on American an hour or two later it would have not caused so much trouble. But again it was cheaper to only offer their own flight the next day.

 

I swore to never fly on UA again after they screwed me over on the way home from Asia a couple of years ago. Again it was a United Express issue. Since UA decides to contract out these smaller routes to regional carriers in order to save themselves money they don't have as much control. But their livery (or a version of it) is on the side of the plane so they get the (deserved) blame. UA really is a horrible company with terrible customer service. Maybe this will be the wakeup call they need. But I somehow doubt it when the bottom line is all they really care about.

 

But ultimately I agree that UA won't suffer too much. There's not much competition left in US aviation. So when people don't have a choice other than drive or fly they're stuck.

 

When it comes to no-shows I'd guess that a large part of the time it is due to missing a connection rather than people buying a ticket and just not showing up.

[jfarmer017]

What if he had been a surgeon? Would you be happy to go under the knife knowing your surgeon had had no sleep the night before? Even if the airline offered to drive me in a chauffeured limousine Id have turned it down.

 

No offense, but you are being overwrought. Medicine and healthcare delivery does not work that way. Nobody involved in ambulatory care is that close to death that they could not be rescheduled for a procedure or an exam within the next several days.

 

 

I know this was not technically United but it carried Uniteds brand name. And it was not United that ejected the passenger in such a criminal way. (I really wonder where the captain was as all this was happening. It was his flight and on board his word is law.) But it is United that is now in disastrous PR shit and no doubt facing a multi million dollar law suit to boot. And it could all have been solved without any fuss with just a few hundred extra dollars being offered.

 

 

I don't disagree that the airline handled it very poorly. But on the other hand, I don't think the guy is some kind of poor hapless victim deserving of sympathy. Once the airline chose him to be ejected, the mature, adult response is to comply and try to seek redress at a later date. Nobody has a right to airline travel, and airlines are permitted to eject any passenger for any reason. By making a stand, the passenger delayed and inconvenienced every other passenger. 

 

By example, if I get into a conflict with a restaurant manager over a dinner, and the manager decides to eject me from the restaurant, I no longer have any legal right to be on somebody else's property. Refusal to leave is trespassing. Getting into a physical confrontation with security officers is a no win situation.

[steveboy]

I don't disagree that the airline handled it very poorly. But on the other hand, I don't think the guy is some kind of poor hapless victim deserving of sympathy. Once the airline chose him to be ejected, the mature, adult response is to comply and try to seek redress at a later date. Nobody has a right to airline travel, and airlines are permitted to eject any passenger for any reason. By making a stand, the passenger delayed and inconvenienced every other passenger. 

 

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.

 

 

 

 Once the airline chose him to be ejected, the mature, adult response is to comply and try to seek redress at a later date. Nobody has a right to airline travel, and airlines are permitted to eject any passenger for any reason. 

 

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...

 

 

Refusal to leave is trespassing. Getting into a physical confrontation with security officers is a no win situation.

 

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.

[jfarmer017]

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? 

 

No; I have already said repeatedly that the airline handled the situation very poorly. But I am trying to give a nuanced view. The passenger escalated the situation by refusing to get off the plane. The passenger had every right to feel wronged and to question the staff. But once he was asked by the airline to deplane, he had a legal obligation to comply with that instruction. That he got bumped in such a fashion was a grievous error but that he was physically removed is on him. He had every opportunity to leave on his own accord, and choose to to remain. He knew the risks such behavior posed, and he chose to take them. 

 

 

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...

 

 

No, I have not. And again, not the point. Nobody put a gun to his head and made him buy a ticket on United Airlines. When he bought that ticket, he agreed to certain stipulations, one of which is that the airline reserved the right to remove you from the plane. He has no right to unilaterally declare that he is longer bound by those stipulations simply because it is now proving inconvenient. 

 

 

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.

 

 

That is the common definition, but trespassing as defined legally in criminally statutes is willful entry into or remaining upon property without the express or implied permission of the owner. If I invite you into my home that does not mean you may remain as long as you please. If I demand you leave my property. That is, if I rescind your permission to be there, and you refuse to leave, you are committing trespassing. Similarly, if a bar owner ordered a patron to leave, and that patron refused, the bar owner could call the police, and the police would have the legal authority to remove the patron by force if he or she refused to go willingly. 

[PeterRS]

No; I have already said repeatedly that the airline handled the situation very poorly. But I am trying to give a nuanced view. The passenger escalated the situation by refusing to get off the plane. The passenger had every right to feel wronged and to question the staff. But once he was asked by the airline to deplane, he had a legal obligation to comply with that instruction. That he got bumped in such a fashion was a grievous error but that he was physically removed is on him. He had every opportunity to leave on his own accord, and choose to to remain. He knew the risks such behavior posed, and he chose to take them. 

A nuanced view? I find that view utterly objectionable. You still idiotically maintain the 69 year old doctor was partly to blame. That is just nuts! "He knew the risks of such behavior!" How on earth do you know that. Have you evidence that he had experience of that before? Fact is you dont. Did the gate agent when offering the compensation for volunteers tell all the passengers some would forcibly be removed if four could not be found? I have no idea but I absolutely doubt it. At the very least it seems he was not provided with the mandatory written statement of instructions and that is against the law.

 

At least you agree the way he was so forcibly removed was "a grievous error". But it happened and you cannot divorce the two situations. Where in any airline contract does it unequivocally state a peaceful passenger who is causing no disturbance in any way, no harm, who is buckled in his seat awaiting take-off, who is not even suspected of carrying illegal substances or whatever,  may be removed by such violent means that he broke his nose, two teeth, sinus issues and concussion? Ill bet you cant find it because its not there. And my understanding is that airlines cannot bump passengers who have a specific urgent reason for arriving at the destination by a certain time. A doctor caring for patients would seem to be a lot more urgent than the reasons of at last some others on that flight.

 

As I pointed out in an earlier post and as the lawyer stated unequivocally in the media conference last night, the legal arbiter of what went on on that plane was the captain. His word was law. Period. He had the legal right to order the bullies off his plane and/or to temper their behaviour. Where was he? Nowhere but locked in his cockpit it would seem. Why did the flight attendants not warn him what was happening as I assume they can not have done?

 

Te end result is that high powered lawyer yesterday made it totally clear that the law suit which will definitely come (a point he finally agreed) will either have to be settled with a huge out of court settlement or to go to trial with the airline and the city of Chicago as the primary defenders. He must be loving every minute of this because as again stated he knows the flying public is totally pissed off with the way they are treated by airlines. Im prepared to put a few bucks on the table that if it does get to court, the defenders will be faced with with multi million dollar awards against them. My guess is the doctor will end up with a 7 figure sum for the actions on that aircraft and aggravated damages that could stretch as far as a 9 figure amount. 

 

And all because the airline would not offer a few hundred more in cash to find a volunteer. The fault is the airlines. No question.

[emailbroken]

 

 

And all because the airline would not offer a few hundred more in cash to find a volunteer. The fault is the airlines. No question.

That's the key point I think. Would be very interesting to have an expert give a best guess to the financial settlement the passenger is likely to receive, plus some financial impact on United's reputation. I think this will be used in PR text books for a long time to come!

[Guest]

I completely fail to understand why some people think it's OK to quietly deny passengers boarding at the gate.  It's NOT.

 

Just because the crappy airline wants to move some of its own people, they should not be permitted to deny people who have paid the right to travel.

 

The law needs changing to protect customers.

[forky123]

I completely fail to understand why some people think it's OK to quietly deny passengers boarding at the gate.

I don't think it's ok but I recognise that, if you are going to refuse to let someone travel, you need to do it before they board the aircraft. All airlines play the numbers games to keep prices low and many passengers want the flexibility to change their minds at the last moment as their circumstances change. The result is that on occasion the airlines have more people than places. There is a sensible policy in place, offer compensation and another flight. It works all over the world. Common sense though says that if you aren't offering enough compensation to attract the volunteers you need to increase it until someone is tempted. That's one of the very many things that went wrong here.

[firecat69]

First of all it is not a law. You sign your rights away when you click the ok box when you buy the ticket. You agree to all sorts of things that 99.9% of people never read or would understand.

 

The only law is that you are entitled to certain benefits if you are denied boarding because of certain reasons. Not included are weather, mechanical etc.

 

Your choice is walk or sign when you buy the ticket and then know your rights so if it happens to you that you at least get the minimum benefit prescribed.

 

It is very unlikely any of this will ever change as long as customers want low fares.

[Guest]

I don't think it's ok but I recognise that, if you are going to refuse to let someone travel, you need to do it before they board the aircraft. All airlines play the numbers games to keep prices low and many passengers want the flexibility to change their minds at the last moment as their circumstances change.

Also if you are going to shoot a passenger, it's best to do it before they board the aircraft.    It just doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. 

 

Also, the cost argument doesn't stand up.  All the low cost airlines in Europe offer low fairs & as far as I know, even the likes of Ryan Air never kick passengers off to move their own people. 

 

Choice is irrelevant as an argument.  If all the shitty old style airlines have such clauses in their small print, the customer does not have choice.  

 

Where competition fails to protect the consumer, some regulation is required.   A law preventing airlines from forcibly dumping passengers would probably make less than 1% difference in fares but would introduce some minimum standards of decency.   

[firecat69]

It's evident you don't understand the business model of the airline. Here is how Ryanair operates and Easy Jet and all airlines. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3205962/More-2million-passengers-claim-compensation-delayed-flights-Ryanair-loses-legal-battle.html

 

100,000's of business travelers daily make reservations that can be cancelled without penalty.Airlines of sophisticated programs to analyze how many are likely to cancel each day on each flight. That allows them to constantly sell more tickets then they have seats . Like most computer programs they are not perfect . Thus there are times they must bump people and offer them compensation. 90% of the time enough people accept the offers and flight goes off without a hitch. Sometimes and a tiny % 1/10 of 1% get denied boarding.

 

As far as moving their own employees , again you don't understand how the system works. Airlines constantly have to move pilots and flight attendants to other airports in order to keep the system moving.

 

Without that ability many more times you would be sitting on the ground for hours waiting for part of the crew to arrive.

 

And this thought that European airlines are any better is just not true as you can see from this link and previous link I posted on EasyJet. The only difference is at certain levels the compensation is better in Europe then USA but since all airlines try to get acceptance of an offer prior to denied boarding, these differences just don't effect many people.

[PeterRS]

As far as moving their own employees , again you don't understand how the system works. Airlines constantly have to move pilots and flight attendants to other airports in order to keep the system moving.

 

Without that ability many more times you would be sitting on the ground for hours waiting for part of the crew to arrive.

I think most of us realise that. What I for one totally fail to realise is why United in this case decided at just minutes notice after all the passengers were seated awaiting take off that suddenly they needed 4 crew seats? Crew movements are planned much further ahead of time and its common that some seats are deliberately blocked for that very reason.

 

Theres a lot of talk about a business model on this thread. That is no way to run a business!