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Doctor dragged off overbooked airplane

ruby59 said:
Double edge sword. Because thanks to the tabloid media the airline will let leak any little thing that happened in this guy's past, intimating that he is a nut and he got what he deserved because he should have just exited the plane like the other 3.
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Disagree. They would have done that anyways. Except everyone would have taken the corporation/security officers side. The same thing happens with police. If he tried to make a fuss after the fact, he would have gotten shut down so quick. With the video on his side, he has a good case.
 
Jimmy Kimmel nails it.
Watch his whole five minute skit, or just FF to 4:10 to view his spoof-commercial for United Airlines.

 
telephone89 said:
Disagree. They would have done that anyways. Except everyone would have taken the corporation/security officers side. The same thing happens with police. If he tried to make a fuss after the fact, he would have gotten shut down so quick. With the video on his side, he has a good case.
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No I think you are misunderstanding me. I am glad that the people took advantage of the technology around them to record what happened.

But it is that advanced technology that also allows United to put on a smear campaign of this person.
 
Some people should definitely be fired, but here's the info I'd want to have to figure out who:

1. Did the gate agents have authority to go beyond the $$ they offered to get people to volunteer?

My guess is no and that they could be reprimanded or fired themselves if they did it. If that's true, you can't criticize them for failing to do something they're forbidden to do. I'd consider firing whoever decided ground crews shouldn't have the flexibility to handle tough situations like this.

2. What other transportation options were feasible for the Republic flight crew that needed to get to Louisville and why weren't they used?

Again, it may be the ground people have little flexibility to book flight crews on other airlines rather than deadhead on their own or rent ground transport when seats aren't available. Again, maybe they aren't to blame if they didn't have those options.

3. What was the criteria used to decide who was going to get kicked off the flight?

Was it latest to check in/board, any other standbys, etc. which might have seemed more fair than randomly picking someone to boot off?

3. Why didn't they make another appeal to passengers (or consider some other option) when the man said he was a doctor and had to see patients at the hospital on Monday?

It seems like they could have given it another shot, explaining why, and see if someone else did step up, and if not, go to some other kind of criteria to decide who gets bumped off.

4. What were the airport security people told about the man before they boarded the plane?

My guess is that they didn't have the whole story. That doesn't excuse what happened, but if they thought he was a threat to the safety of other passengers, it might start to explain why they were so aggressive from the start rather than trying to calm and defuse a tough situation.

5. What sort of training do these security people get? Is it the same minimal training that rent-a-cops get so they aren't effectively trained to handle and defuse situations?

My guess is that they are all poorly trained, including the cabin crew for Republic (the commuter airline that handles United Express on this route), and so responded poorly.

6. The one person who should absolutely be fired is whoever at United decided on the responses the airline made Monday. UA must have a crisis response team (they are an airline after all). Any competent communications person would have realized that the airline only had one chance to get it right and that the ONLY response United could give to that video was to say they are horrified, that no passenger should be treated like that, to apologize to the man hurt, and launch an immediate investigation into what happened. Nothing else they said was going to counter the power of that video which had gone viral, and a good PR person would know that. So if their communications folks were the geniuses who wrote what the CEO said on social media and the e-mail to the United employees (which again any good PR person would know would leak to the public), they should be fired because they are terrible at their job. If it was someone who overrode their recommendations, that person who vetoed the idea should be fired. My guess is that the CEO will be asked to step down because he too should have known their response would be like putting gasoline on a fire. They've made a better response now, but the damage is already done. They blew it badly and the whole world knows it.

The fallout from this is already tremendous and threatens not only United's marked in the U.S. but China which is a big and lucrative market for them. More than 100 million Chinese downloads of a video showing a man of Chinese descent being dragged off the plane. That's a lot of potential passengers to piss off. And comments on all sorts of sites have given people the opportunity to express their horror and to tell their own stories about how terrible United is to fly. Not everyone has other options, but many people do. My guess is United will suffer from this for quite awhile.

One other thing I'd like to know more about is the man flying with a number of teenagers on that flight who decided they would also get off the plane after the man had been taken off a second time. Other passengers then followed. I'd like to think he was a teacher on a school field trip and that he decided it was a good opportunity to show those teens how you stand up against injustice. I don't know if any of that is true, but that's what I'd like to think. Teachers are the best.
 
Just to respond to a couple of your points rainwood, the gate agents are mainline United employees. They have the authority (but limited) for the compensation that is offered. They should have gotten the authorization to offer more imo. The flight crew is the subcontractor Reblublic Airlines so they are an independent company that flies under the United brand. The video I saw looked like they had airport Rent-a-cop. Usually in these situations the CPD is used and this situation would have been much different. As far as United's CEO Munoz, this won't threaten his job in any way. Our large domestic Airlines have deep pockets and legions of litigators. Have you ever read all the fine print on the back of your airline ticket?
 
Bonfire said:
Just to respond to a couple of your points rainwood, the gate agents are mainline United employees. They have the authority (but limited) for the compensation that is offered. They should have gotten the authorization to offer more imo. The flight crew is the subcontractor Reblublic Airlines so they are an independent company that flies under the United brand. The video I saw looked like they had airport Rent-a-cop. Usually in these situations the CPD is used and this situation would have been much different. As far as United's CEO Munoz, this won't threaten his job in any way. Our large domestic Airlines have deep pockets and legions of litigators. Have you ever read all the fine print on the back of your airline ticket?
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I agree that the gate agents should have tried to get authorization for more if that wouldn't be a futile gesture. If company policy says they can never do more than a certain amount - whatever that is - before going to Plan B, it's hard to fault the gate agent for going to Plan B once that maximum limit was reached. For me, the question is what was Plan B and how did they decide on it? There's been some chatter online that 3 of the 4 passengers who were bumped were of Asian descent. If that's true, there was nothing random about it and says something even worse about how United handled this situation BEFORE it escalated into assault on a passenger.

And you may be right about Munoz, but my guess is that he's gone before the end of April. Not because of what happened on the plane, but because the corporate response to what happened on the plane made the situation so much worse for the company. From what I've read, he was hired to improve United's terrible reputation for customer service and he botched what was a real opportunity to step up and show that United cares about its passengers. Instead, he chose to downplay and explain it away, even tried to blame the passenger, and reassure all United employees that what was done was right and according to company policy. His instincts and leadership on this were terrible from start to finish, and I think he'll be asked to resign because of it, and rightly so.
 
The 6,000+ reader comments on The New York Times are interesting reading.
 
It is despicable and disgusting and inexcusable what happened to that poor man on the airplane and I hope all the people responsible are disciplined/fired whatever. Just reading what happened was traumatic so I can only imagine what that poor man went through. Fine print or not it is not OK to assault someone who is innocent and doing no harm to anyone and forcibly remove him the way they did. HORRIBLE.

They should have just offered more cash till they got people who would volunteer to willingly leave the plane. Period. Problem solved. A little bit more money could have made this a non issue and now I hope this costs them a LOT of money with a lesson learned because this behavior must never happen again.

This should be used as an opportunity for United to start a new industry standard regarding overbooking and how they treat their airline customers in general. The only way they can make this "right" is to improve how they behave in the future when a similar problem arises. And yes Munoz should have accepted full responsibility immediately and apologized and I think he needs to go.

The uncivilized treatment of people in general and in this example specifically truly is sickening and is a real symptom of our sick society IMO. And we need to stop it before it keeps getting worse. There need to be consequences to actions like this and we should not/can not tolerate this inexcusable behavior.
 
Does anyone know what the passenger that was removed by force actually said? I've been wondering if he said something that triggered such a response. There are key words that airline staff are trained to respond to, and when they hear them they don't mess around, since 9/11 they have been taught in certain situations to use brute force. Having said that overall if the guy just refused to get up and leave the plane the whole thing was handled very very badly. And if they picked him because they perceived because of his ethnicity he would be more compliant in leaving the plane, that is even more appalling.
 
I don't think he said anything worthy of that kind of action Arkieb. If you want a chuckle (if you can laugh about it that is) check this out. I nearly spit out my morning coffee when my dh shared it with me.

Ha yes let's put their guerrilla tactics to good use.

Pentagon Awards Contract to United Airlines to Forcibly Remove Assad
http://www.snopes.com/united-airlines-remove-assad/

It's a joke FYI.
 
I think it's sad that the media (or possibly United Airlines) is digging up unsavoury information about this man's past that has nothing to do with the fact that he was victimized on an airplane. I'm having a hard time knowing how any of it is relevant. MSN had it under the title "Another twist in the United Airlines Saga" Um. Why? Because people who have past transgressions deserve to be assaulted by airport staff? Because it somehow influenced how he was treated? No. It's just mean spirited gossip.
 
United can dig up anything they want because it is going to make them look even more clueless and mean spirited.

From what I have read, that person has already lawyered up.

Couldn't they have found another way to move those crewmen to the next location?
 
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/12/new-video-united-airlines-incident-phone-call/22037194/

Updated info. He was on the phone with United prior to the incident.

"I'm a physician," he can be heard saying. "I have to work tomorrow at 8 o'clock."

He then made it clear that he was not going to give up his seat.

"No, I am not going. I am not going," he said.

By this time, one of the officers then tells him they will use force to get him off if needed.

"Let them try to use force," he emphatically replied. "I make a lawsuit against United Airlines."
 
I don't think the lawsuit is going to change much. United will still evict passengers, as they do have that right. Maybe they'll start being more careful who they choose. Like maybe they'll do a focus group study and find that women are easier targets. Something like that. :nono:
 
Did anyone hear that the dirt they dug up was on a different Dao? I read that this morning in a few places...
 
There can never be any justification of how this man was treated.

Regardless of airline policy, to use these kind of tactics is wrong on every level. I've been on overbooked flights, where calls were made before boarding for people to give up their seats for compensation. This wasn't the case, the airline decided they needed the seats after allowing passengers to board, their problem, they should've resolved it without resorting to brutality.

Where else do you pay for something and then be told you can't have what you've paid for? It's totally outrageous for an airline to do this to passengers, and even more outrageous that they're allowed to do this, and you, as the passenger have to comply.
 
Hmmm. Refunding ticket price to all passengers doesn't seem like enough. People seemed genuinely traumatized on the video. Maybe they need to be paying for critical incident stress debriefing and/or counselling for anyone who was witness to that distressing event. They also probably need to be offering to pay for any medical treatment and future counselling needed by Dr. Dao, in addition to reimbursing him for the lost income from his having to cancel appointments, the cost of any accommodations needed by his family, and somehow find a way to reimburse him for the loss to his reputation given that this incident caused his dirty laundry to be publicly aired (in a way that will negatively affect his professional reputation and future earning potential). Criminal charges might also want to be considered (for everyone involved in making those really poor choices), because assaulting paid customers is just not ok.

Maybe I over-identify, because I know I'd be saying the same thing if I were in his shoes. There were so many other things they could have done other than physically dragging him off the plane.
 
t-c said:
According to his lawyer, the passenger suffered a concussion, a broken nose, and lost a couple of teeth. And that he will need reconstructive surgery.
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OUCH! well it will be a fat lawsuit against the Federal Government as well since all airport security are Federal employees - the Transportation Authority is a division of Homeland Security... so I suspect either TSOs removed the passenger or more likely they called the airport group of Homeland Security Agents (Federally trained/armed agents working the airport) and they removed him.
 
The people who removed where not TSA, and are not federal employees. They work for the Chicago Department of Aviation.
 
Platinum-blonde said:
The people who removed where not TSA, and are not federal employees. They work for the Chicago Department of Aviation.
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Ahhhhh you are correct my mistake. Well maybe that will change after this.
 
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