OMG the man was Chinese

[JoeH]

However a passenger who sat next to him told BBC Radio 5 Live that he said he was originally from Vietnam and had been living in Louisville, Kentucky, for about 20 years.

Could very well have been from Vietnam, there are many ethnic Chinese that have lived there going back centuries. Still considered Chinese by many even if they have never lived in China.

There are many ethnic Chinese communities scattered throughout parts of SE Asia. They often are treated as second class citizens of the countries they reside in. Many become refugees during war and other conflicts. As an example, student who used to work in my department had ethnic Chinese parents from Cambodia and Vietnam, he grew up in France.

[Lemon Drop]

JoeH wrote:

However a passenger who sat next to him told BBC Radio 5 Live that he said he was originally from Vietnam and had been living in Louisville, Kentucky, for about 20 years.

Could very well have been from Vietnam, there are many ethnic Chinese that have lived there going back centuries. Still considered Chinese by many even if they have never lived in China.

There are many ethnic Chinese communities scattered throughout parts of SE Asia. They often are treated as second class citizens of the countries they reside in. Many become refugees during war and other conflicts. As an example, student who used to work in my department had ethnic Chinese parents from Cambodia and Vietnam, he grew up in France.

yes, absolutely - it will be difficult for United to escape the charge that this incident was racially motivated. China is a growing market for the airline and this will do major damage.

The self-inflicted PR nightmare for United grows worse by the hour.

Trending on social media: "not enough seating, prepare for a beating."

[btfc]

"I am hearing there is some legal paragraph in your plane ticket that says an airline can bump you, they can chose how to pick who is bumped, and you agree to this when you buy the ticket. Something under the Consumer rights….."



'Contract of Carriage':

"If you have purchased a restricted ticket, depending on the rules applicable to the fare paid, one or more restrictions including, but not limited to one or more of the following, may apply to your travel:
...
and (2) change or modify any of its conditions of contract with or without notice to ticketed passengers."

https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract.aspx

[$tevie]

United Apologizes for Removing Passenger: ‘No One Should Ever Be Mistreated This Way’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/busin...tion=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=65144921&pgtype=article

[Ca Bob]

It's extremely unlikely that United staff were trying to get on the flight for their own personal pleasure. It's likely that United needed to reposition crew so that they could pilot and staff a flight out of Louisville. The effect of keeping those crew members off the Chicago flight would be that the later flight out of Louisville would not be able to leave.

There are various reasons that such crew repositioning takes place. It might have been that the crew originally scheduled to fly the Louisville flight were going to end up with excess hours, which would be a serious violation of federal regulations. Sometimes this happens due to weather, and sometimes it happens due to delays involving long takeoff lines. In that situation, the airline has to either bring in another crew or cancel the flight. In a large hub, the airline will have reserve crew available to take such flights. My guess is that United's flight operations figured out the problem, checked to see if they had reserve crew members available in Louisville, and finding none (or not enough more likely) checked for available reserve crew in nearby airports. Chicago is a major hub, and would be a likely source. Flight operations managed to get the reserves to the gate in time for boarding, but as the facts show, not before the plane was completely full.

In short, what United did in shuffling crew members from the Chicago hub to a regional airport was logical and in keeping with industry practice. The alternatives were to cancel the later flight, find crew in other places, or do exactly what they did. I would suspect that flight operations is ordinarily not concerned about whether the flight they plan to use to shuttle their crew members is close to fully booked. They have a few thousand other things to worry about.

There are a couple of questions remaining. The first is why United overbooked to a level that left it no wiggle room in trying to shoehorn those 4 "space positive" crew members onto the flight. My guess is that United has gotten used to squeezing every last nickel out of its flights in an era of high fuel prices and aggressive price searching by customers. The standard approach is to search on Kayak or Priceline and grab the best price that fits your itinerary. When I buy a ticket off of Priceline, I don't think of myself as a discount ticket holder, but as a ticket purchaser. I'm guessing that United walks a little closer to the line in terms of overbooking than some of its competitors, and got stuck with a difficult situation.

All this having been said, the other question is whether United was within its rights to bump the 4 passengers and why it was that this one passenger has become an international incident.

I read a long discussion on another blog in which it was pointed out that under the law of contracts and the law of trespass, United was fully entitled legally to bump passengers. Most fliers don't expect to get bumped, and most airlines handle the process of buying back a few seats in a better way. But according to the terms of sale, United has the right to deny service under most conditions. I'm assuming that the flight crew informed the passenger politely that he had to leave the flight. I believe that this is a legal command, just as it would be a legal command for a bartender to eject somebody from a bar. Notice that on this United flight, one couple who were told to leave did just that -- they got up and left. Nobody was grabbed or dropped. They just left. What further transpired between them and United remains unknown because it was a peaceful (and lawful) exercise.

When the passenger refused to leave, that left little option for the airline. (I must admit that I am at a loss to understand the argument that United should have found somebody else to bump once it became obvious that this particular passenger had strong feelings against leaving. That would turn the process of random bumping into a process which favors passengers who are willing to use physical resistance.) The use of law enforcement was the next step, and it was a necessary step. The passenger still had the option of cooperating with the officers who told him to get up and leave the airplane. He still refused to cooperate.

I fail to see that law enforcement had much of a choice other than to physically remove the passenger. This option doesn't happen all that often, but most of us have seen cell phone videos of obstreperous passengers being carried off a flight accompanied by the cheers and applause of the other passengers.

Some people are trying to make a distinction regarding the fact that this passenger was minding his own business up to the point where he was ordered to leave, as if this makes his resistance to removal something different and better than the process of removing a passenger who is drunk and disorderly.

This passenger was not under arrest at the time he was asked to leave the plane, and he could have made a verbal protest at the time. He would be in a better position to file a civil action had he behaved that way.

All this having been said, I must confess that I stopped flying on United several years ago due to the desultory attitude of the ground staff. It turned out that the airline had just filed for bankruptcy and pretty much abolished the pension savings of its employees the previous week. It's not surprising that passengers ran into some bad attitude, but it's also not surprising that a lot of us try to avoid it by taking other carriers.

[Dennis S]

I can't believe no one took the $800. A couple could have saved $1,600. I'm assuming the replacement flight would be free.

[bfd]

Many were likely betting that because apparently no one bit on the initial "low-ball" offers, the airline would up the ante. Generally, this happens. For whatever the reasons this time, however, United decided to play their hand - and they always have the upper hand in something like this.

What they didn't bargain for was that the security/goon squad from Chicago literally ripped the old guy out of his seat and dragged him off the plane. While United staff may have done everything "by the book", United still deserves the blame for their use of the airport's goon squad.

United should have security procedures for an event like this - and if they don't want variability, they need to hire their own security staff - and train them - for each airport.

[Lemon Drop]

$tevie wrote:
United Apologizes for Removing Passenger: ‘No One Should Ever Be Mistreated This Way’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/busin...tion=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=65144921&pgtype=article

yea they finally got their PR act together, WAY too late.

Absolutely no excuse for how this person this treated. I'm amazed at the attempts to rationalize and justify it.

I'll be surprised if the board lets this CEO stay after this level of incompetent response to a major PR crisis.

[Lemon Drop]

Really secondary to United's corporate response or their overbooking practices is the fact that this yet another act of police brutality that was completely avoidable.

The more facts that come out about this incident, the more disturbing it becomes. Impossible to imagine them doing this to a white woman.

[Speedy]

rjmacs wrote:
What's particularly sickening to me is the number of people here who parrot America's favorite racist maxim:

"If he had just obeyed the authorities in the moment, and filed a complaint later, none of this would have happened."

You obey the cop, then complain later. Otherwise you risk physical harm and prison. The cop is always right at the point of contact unless you are willing to shoot it out with law enforcement.

United should have upped what they would pay until someone took the cash.