Overbooking, Flightcrew over paying passengers, the United incident

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Was he going to have to wait an entire day?  I haven't seen any reporting on what they were planning to do with him.

Also, this has been posted several times now, but one more try I suppose can't hurt:

 

If you’re involuntarily denied boarding, the Department of Transportation regulates what you’re entitled to. Here are the rules, as published by the DOT:

• If you are bumped involuntarily and the airline arranges substitute transportation that is scheduled to get you to your final destination (including later connections) within one hour of your original scheduled arrival time, there is no compensation.
• If the airline arranges substitute transportation that is scheduled to arrive at your destination between one and two hours after your original arrival time (between one and four hours on international flights), the airline must pay you an amount equal to 200% of your one-way fare to your final destination that day, with a $675 maximum.
• If the substitute transportation is scheduled to get you to your destination more than two hours later (four hours internationally), or if the airline does not make any substitute travel arrangements for you, the compensation doubles (400% of your one-way fare, $1350 maximum).
• If your ticket does not show a fare (for example, a frequent-flyer award ticket or a ticket issued by a consolidator), your denied boarding compensation is based on the lowest cash, check or credit card payment charged for a ticket in the same class of service (e.g., coach, first class) on that flight.
• You always get to keep your original ticket and use it on another flight. If you choose to make your own arrangements, you can request an “involuntary refund” for the ticket for the flight you were bumped from. The denied boarding compensation is essentially a payment for your inconvenience.
• If you paid for optional services on your original flight (e.g., seat selection, checked baggage) and you did not receive those services on your substitute flight or were required to pay a second time, the airline that bumped you must refund those payments to you.

 

Isn't there some question as to whether it can be construed as 'denied boarding/bumped' once a passenger has, heh, already boarded?

[Swordfish]

5 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

That doesn't make it fair though

Fair is a highly subjective term.

And I'll ask again, where aer you reading that he would have had to wait a day?  

Worth noting that the coverage of this story is fairly atrocious.  It's next to  impossible to even get a clear reporting of the basic facts which any reporter should be able to discern pretty easily with a little bit of leg work.

[James Arryn]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

The man's wife keeps getting brought up.  Is the suggestion that one must do exactly as their spouse does?  Because that shit doesn't fly in my life.  My partner is able to do things I am not and vice versa.  No fucking way would I expect that she follow me in every decision I make. 

Dunno about others, but that's not at all what I meant by bringing her up.

 

2 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Fair is a highly subjective term.

And I'll ask again, where aer you reading that he would have had to wait a day?  

Worth noting that the coverage of this story is fairly atrocious.  It's next to  impossible to even get a clear reporting of the basic facts which any reporter should be able to discern pretty easily with a little bit of leg work.

So, you'd maybe call this news...say it with me now...______?

[DunderMifflin]

11 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Fair is a highly subjective term.

And I'll ask again, where aer you reading that he would have had to wait a day?  

Worth noting that the coverage of this story is fairly atrocious.  It's next to  impossible to even get a clear reporting of the basic facts which any reporter should be able to discern pretty easily with a little bit of leg work.

I thought that hotel accommodation was included. I could be wrong.

Yeh fair is a subjective term, which is why it's not going to be fair just because united or a government agency says it is.
I'm just baffled(well not really) that people  will just accept this short money at all.
That 800 bucks will be gone in a maximum of 2 or 3 days for most people.
The appointments, deals, clients, you miss have much longer lasting consequences than 800 bucks.

[Dr. Pepper]

7 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Fair is a highly subjective term.

And I'll ask again, where aer you reading that he would have had to wait a day?  

Worth noting that the coverage of this story is fairly atrocious.  It's next to  impossible to even get a clear reporting of the basic facts which any reporter should be able to discern pretty easily with a little bit of leg work.

Almost every article states that the flight was leaving at 7pm, potential volunteers were told the next flight available to Louisville would be at 3pm the next day.

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/04/10/video-shows-man-forcibly-removed-united-flight-chicago-louisville/100274374/

Quote

Passengers were told at the gate that the flight was overbooked and United, offering $400 and a hotel stay, was looking for one volunteer to take another flight to Louisville at 3 p.m. Monday. Passengers were allowed to board the flight, Bridges said, and once the flight was filled those on the plane were told that four people needed to give up their seats to stand-by United employees that needed to be in Louisville on Monday for a flight. Passengers were told that the flight would not take off until the United crew had seats, Bridges said, and the offer was increased to $800, but no one volunteered.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

8 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

And I'll ask again, where aer you reading that he would have had to wait a day?  

The Hotel Voucher would suggest that they weren't getting out that day. At least not on a plane, anyway.

[Swordfish]

6 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

The Hotel Voucher would suggest that they weren't getting out that day. At least not on a plane, anyway.

Hadn't seen that part.  Thanks.

 

I also don't get how this guy was allowed to somehow get BACK on the plane after all that.  

That seems crazy to me.

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Hadn't seen that part.  Thanks.

And I mean, coming off after already boarding...on a connecting flight...he might as well file his lost luggage form on the way out.

[Dr. Pepper]

All the passengers on the flight will receive a refund for their tickets.

Quote

United says passengers on United Express Flight 3411 are getting compensation equal to the cost of their tickets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-latest-senators-want-answers-from-united-chicago/2017/04/11/72a066d2-1f1a-11e7-bb59-a74ccaf1d02f_story.html?utm_term=.56741735dc25

[DunderMifflin]

39 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Hadn't seen that part.  Thanks.

 

I also don't get how this guy was allowed to somehow get BACK on the plane after all that.  

That seems crazy to me.

I dont think he ever left the plane

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/travel/united-passenger-pulled-off-flight/

"Dao and his wife initially agreed to get off the plane, passenger Jayse Anspach said. But once they found out that the next flight wasn't until Monday afternoon, he demurred and sat back, saying he was a physician who needed to get to work the next day."

 

 

[Swordfish]

Just now, DunderMifflin said:

I dont think he ever left the plane

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/travel/united-passenger-pulled-off-flight/

"Dao and his wife initially agreed to get off the plane, passenger Jayse Anspach said. But once they found out that the next flight wasn't until Monday afternoon, he demurred and sat back, saying he was a physician who needed to get to work the next day."

 

 

I'm talking about AFTER he was forcibly removed.

There's video of it here:

 

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2017/04/10/video-shows-passenger-forcibly-removed-united-airlines-flight

[DunderMifflin]

Idk I guess he just ran back on there. Ppl temporarily break free from police quite often.

He probably had Superman adrenaline too after just being beaten up.
And who really wants to tackle a blood covered stranger

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

Isn't there some question as to whether it can be construed as 'denied boarding/bumped' once a passenger has, heh, already boarded?

I have a feeling that Dr. Dao's lawyer is going to test that theory most vociferously.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I have a feeling that Dr. Dao's lawyer is going to test that theory most vociferously.

Indeed.  United's defenders like to gloss over the "deny boarding" ambiguity.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Indeed.  United's defenders like to gloss over the "deny boarding" ambiguity.

They may as well rename the Chicago to Louisville Shuttle after him and cut him in on a percentage. They are so screwed here.

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

The offer they made was fair IMO. And if nobody takes it you kind of have to randomly pick people. And if said people refuse to get off the plane then security has to remove them. It was poorly executed but there's nothing wrong with the process.

Maybe I see it this way because I've had jobs that require you to fly multiple times in a week. And every now and then you unfortunately get bumped from the flight. It sucks, but this guy acted like a total baby, as others have said.

Have you ever seen a situation where the people to be bumped from the flight were allowed on the plane in the first place? I also had a job with a lot of flying, but every time I saw somebody bumped from a flight, it happened before anyone had boarded the plane. In fact, depending on the country, airport and airline, when a plane is crowded, many people (including myself) would get boarding passes which don't even have a seat number on them and then everyone has to go to the agent at the gate who assigns the seats.

If they had to kick people off who were already on the plane, there is definitely something wrong with the process because it means that multiple people were assigned the same seat and the crew didn't catch this prior to boarding. This happened to me once (the other person got upgraded to first class), but it was obviously a mistake -- the flight attendant got the master list which showed the correct seats. For it to happen to 4 people who had no seats at all means that somebody dropped the ball -- among other things, somebody now has to go find and offload their luggage.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yet no one did.  Your subjective opinion about what is a fair expense is not universal.  I believe Dr. Dao was flying home from Japan.  Perhaps he didn't feel up to driving five hours after having flown back across the international date line.  Regardless, United handled this incredibly poorly.

Again, Dao and his wife initially agreed to be bumped. It was only after he found out that there wasn't another flight that night that he changed his mind. That said, it does change things if he was on the last leg of an international commute. 

15 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Ok, if you were on that flight, then perhaps this wouldn't be an issue.  You're able bodied, willing and able to drive, have ample time in which to delay travel so as to accept a token amount of money, are relatively free of obligations which would require you to ddecline a bump.  But you weren't on that flight.  Others were who determined that their time wasn't worth $800.  They didn't have the opportunity to determine if their time was worth slightly more than that because United never offered and instead went straight to cops. 

No they didn't. They upped the offer multiple times to the point where they were offering  four times the value of the ticket. And by all accounts the airport security were very polite in the beginning. Dao began the escalation by not complying. 

13 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

They may as well rename the Chicago to Louisville Shuttle after him and cut him in on a percentage. They are so screwed here.

Not necessarily. United may only be on the hook for a small percentage of the damages. Again, it's the airport's security that should be worrying about getting sued. 

12 hours ago, Altherion said:

Have you ever seen a situation where the people to be bumped from the flight were allowed on the plane in the first place? I also had a job with a lot of flying, but every time I saw somebody bumped from a flight, it happened before anyone had boarded the plane. In fact, depending on the country, airport and airline, when a plane is crowded, many people (including myself) would get boarding passes which don't even have a seat number on them and then everyone has to go to the agent at the gate who assigns the seats.

If they had to kick people off who were already on the plane, there is definitely something wrong with the process because it means that multiple people were assigned the same seat and the crew didn't catch this prior to boarding. This happened to me once (the other person got upgraded to first class), but it was obviously a mistake -- the flight attendant got the master list which showed the correct seats. For it to happen to 4 people who had no seats at all means that somebody dropped the ball -- among other things, somebody now has to go find and offload their luggage.

Once, and it was because they needed to get a pilot. That said, it was absolutely a mistake to let the people board first.

 

Honestly, my biggest complaint at this point is we care so much more about this overblown story than we do about way more important things, like for example, a genocide occurring in Africa

[Fragile Bird]

There's a press conference going on with the Dao's lawyer and daughter. Sounds like they will be suing United not only for him but for all mistreated airline passengers. In fact, it sounded like the opening statement in a lawsuit.

Among other things, their position will be it was the duty of United to keep their passengers safe.

[BigFatCoward]

A man dragged screaming off a United Airlines flight described his ordeal as "more horrifying" than his experiences in the Vietnam War

i think we can all agree that the bloke is a prize plum, and should be told to fuck off in no uncertain terms. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

57 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

A man dragged screaming off a United Airlines flight described his ordeal as "more horrifying" than his experiences in the Vietnam War

i think we can all agree that the bloke is a prize plum, and should be told to fuck off in no uncertain terms. 

Yeah, now I think he's milking.  Not cool.