United refused to answer questions about the incident
Videos showing a man being violently removed from a United Airlines flight have provoked a public outcry on social media.
The footage taken from inside the airliner shows a man being violently pulled out of his seat and dragged down the aisle as passengers prepared to take off from Chicago to Louisville on Sunday evening.
Well there must be a reason. It may be a bad or mistaken reason but there must be a reason – they think he harassed the person next to him, or someone thought he was A Terrorist, or something.
But no.
The airline in question – United – has acknowledged that the man’s only apparent crime was that the flight was overbooked and he refused to leave voluntarily.
Erm…that’s not a crime.
And, in fact, isn’t it a crime to refuse to deliver a paid-for service and then assault the paid-up customer? That sounds criminalish to me.
Jayse D Anspach, who posted the footage, tweeted: “#United overbooked and wanted four of us to volunteer to give up our seats for personnel that needed to be at work the next day.”
“No one volunteered, so United decided to choose for us. They chose an Asian doctor and his wife.”
“The doctor needed to work at the hospital the next day, so he refused to volunteer,” Mr Anspach added.
“Ten minutes later, the doctor runs back into the plane with a bloody face, clings to a post in the back, chanting, “I need to go home.”
What???
Another passenger Audra D. Bridges, who posted a video of the incident on Facebook, that has been viewed over 400,000 times, wrote: “Please share this video. We are on this flight. United airlines overbooked the flight.”
“They randomly selected people to kick off so their standby crew could have a seat.
“This man is a doctor and has to be at the hospital in the morning,” she added.
“He did not want to get off. We are all shaky and so disgusted.”
The Washington Post has more details, which only make it sound even worse:
United Airlines says a man wouldn’t give up his spot on an overbooked flight Sunday.
So, according to witnesses and videos of the incident, he was pulled screaming from his seat by security, knocked against an arm rest and dragged down the aisle and back to the terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
United refused to answer questions about the incident, which horrified other passengers on the Louisville-bound flight. An airline spokesman only apologized for the overbooked flight, and said police were called after a passenger “refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily.”
But why do they get to call police on passengers who “refuse to leave the aircraft voluntarily” when it’s the airline that’s at fault? Surely what they should be doing in that situation is offering bribes until they get the necessary number of volunteers? Genuine volunteers, not “volunteers” dragged screaming from their seats.
Tyler Bridges recalled trouble starting almost as soon as he and his wife boarded.
An airline supervisor walked onto the plane and brusquely announced: “We have United employees that need to fly to Louisville tonight. … This flight’s not leaving until four people get off.”
“That rubbed some people the wrong way,” Bridges said.
I should think it would. What happened to that whole “thank you for flying with us today” thing? Not to mention that the respectable way to try to get people to do you a favor you need because you fucked up is to ask them very nicely – not to start with a threat. “Hey, I made a mistake, so we’re not going anywhere until you fix it for me.” <— No.
Then there’s the video, which I just watched. It’s unbelievable. It’s horrifying.
What is wrong with us? Is this some kind of Trumpvirus spreading to everywhere?
In another video, the man runs back onto the plane, his clothes still mussed from his forcible ejection, frantically repeating: “I have to go home. I have to go home.”
“He was kind of dazed and confused,” Bridges said. He recalled a group of high school students leaving the plane in disgust at that point, their adult escort explaining to other passengers: “They don’t need to see this anymore.”
The airline eventually cleared everyone from the plane, Bridges said, and did not let them back on until the man was removed a second time — in a stretcher.
This whole “human beings” thing has been a mistake.
It wasn’t like that in the past. I remember about 8 years ago, waiting at the gate at Cleveland airport for a late afternoon flight to Denver, on Continental (now United). Flight overbooked, call for volunteers to transfer to a flight the following morning; nobody moved. Offer of overnight accommodation at the Double Tree Grand. Nothing. Added dinner, still no takers. The last move was to include an upgrade to business class on the next Continental flight you booked so, as I didn’t have to be in Denver until the following afternoon, I took up the offer and had a good evening. I suspect that cost them considerably less than this debacle will.
Boy do I hope he fucking sues them until they go bankrupt.
I haven’t been on a plane since 2006, and wasn’t a big flyer before that, but do I not recall correctly that when a flight is overbooked the airline offers some kind of financial compensation? Travel vouchers for twice the ticket cost, vouchers for hotel stays, whatever? I thought they first ask for volunteers, then if they don’t get enough takers they offer increasingly valuable incentives until people are willing to accept compensation for the inconvenience. Do they not do that any more, or am I misremembering completely?
^Phillip we must have been posting at the same time–that’s what I thought.
They did offer; they offered $400 and then $800, but still no one volunteered. (Sorry, I didn’t withhold that on purpose, I’ve read a third piece since posting.) They should have kept upping the number.
Auction went horribly wrong then! Pilot may need a new drug test.
This SHOULD be the end of that company as a viable entity.
The virality of this news and the profession of the victim probably makes this moot, but I would actually consider contributing to the good doctor’s legal fund to that end. For ethical reasons; and within my limited means.
One problem is that it will be complicated to avoid flying Untied, since so many companies share planes these days. One solution, albeit partial, is to not fly if possible.
It seems that airlines routinely overbook – I suspect that is their insurance against flying partially full when some people don’t show up. I’ve almost never flown (never out of a major airport) without the airline offering some sort of compensation for someone to give up their seat. I never take them up on it, because if I have the freedom to not travel at that time, I would take the train.
And United is one of only two airlines that fly out of Lincoln airport, so I guess I don’t have a lot of options to flying United. They almost always have better times than Delta, so I fly with Delta only about 1 out of every 8-9 trips. When you have a tiny airport, you sort of get stuck.
But this…definitely Trumpworld. And when this case gets to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch will side with the airline, because…business.
The last time I was on an overbooked flight, I looked up the U.S. Department of Transportation’s summary of passenger rights and have kept it bookmarked on my phone ever since. (I didn’t end up needing it, because they got volunteers.)
Sadly, the airline may have been within its rights to boot passengers off involuntarily. Apparently they have the right to do so if their efforts to obtain volunteers have been unsuccessful. That’s not to say that United complied with all the applicable rules here: among other things, they’re supposed to provide the passenger with a written statement of their rights including what compensation they will receive. And I have no idea when and whether the airline is authorized to use force to remove a passenger.
Of course, the bigger issue is that United was heartless and cruel, and stupid for not anticipating the negative PR from being heartless and cruel. It’s going to cost them a lot more than what it would have taken to induce some volunteers.
Also, fun fact: in many instances, the compensation owed to a passenger who is involuntarily bumped is MORE than what the airlines typically pay volunteers. It’s a little complicated, because the compensation due ranges from zero (if they can still get you to your destination within an hour or two of scheduled arrival) to four times the one way fare (for a “get there the next day” scenario like this one). But that compensation is due in cash or check, not flight coupons or airline miles or other stuff that may not cost the airline anything. So even on a cheap flight, the airline is looking at several hundred dollars in cash compensation — buying volunteers off with a hotel and meal voucher and a first class upgrade is a steal for them! And that’s without factoring in the value in not involuntarily taking a passenger off your flight, either because you actually care about your passengers or because you want to look like you do.
I’ve just been reading that thing myself.
https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights#Overbooking
It doesn’t say anything about summoning the cops to drag refuseniks screaming out of their seats.
I must be missing something. Why do airlines ever overbook? If I sell all 100 tickets for the plane, but only 96 people show up, how is that bad? Why is that something the airlines try to guard against?
Ophelia,
No, it doesn’t, but remember that is just a summary, not a comprehensive analysis of every contingency, and it’s not the actual regulations themselves. I’m pretty sure there are laws and regulations about failing to obey the instructions of flight crew, and I don’t see why an airline doesn’t have the power to call the police to remove a disobedient passenger from their property just like any other business. If this were a passenger harassing his fellow passengers, surely we’d agree he can be forcibly removed by police if necessary.
Again, I’m not endorsing what happened here. Among other things, I note:
Also, supposing the airline thug police broke my glasses while bloodying my nose with them, and supposing they actually give me such a written statement — how the jetgods am I supposed to be able to read and comprehend it while possibly concussed and/or in a state of shock? Am I fit for flight? (They did put him back on the plane didn’t they — before cancelling?) (No, on re-read I see that he was carried off on a stretcher. Not fit for treating patients next morning then.)
So: criminal charge of battery and assault. Civil suit seeking compensation for bodily harm, actual economic harm and punitive damages on a scale proportionate to the corporate income, I guess.
Brilliant P.R. in all. (Company officer Oscar Nunez commented that it was unfortunate. So true!)
The fact that the doctor is Asian is of course purely coincidental.
@Ben, it’s bad because you could have sold 104 tickets, and are therefore missing out on an extra 4 tickets worth of revenue. Won’t somebody think of the shareholders!
/s
Hang on. When he hasn’t done anything wrong, and the only reason they want him to get off is because they want to put someone else in his place, after he went through all the right procedures to reserve and pay for that place? So if you buy a ticket to a play, the management has the right to tell you to get out because it wants to put someone else in your seat?
You said “the power” not the right, but I’m not disputing whether or not they have the power. Obviously the police had the power to get him out, but I’m saying they abused it – because they don’t have the right in those circumstances. Apparently the law says they do, but that looks like a law crafted by lobbyists for the airlines.
Horrifying.
An anecdote by way of contrast and bear in mind that this was long before 9/11 and in superficially simpler times.
My name is ridiculously common. It’s one of the most common western names there is. In fact, it’s probably about the second-most common, my brother has the most common western name that’s even possible. My parents can not be noted for their imagination. I’ve had several jobs that required a great deal of flying about and it wasn’t unusual to find that both me and someone else had been booked into the same seat, at boarding time, because we were both called latsot. Obviously my real name is not latsot. My brother isn’t called, like, Keith Latsot or anything, you get the idea.
This is what happens: the staff swipe our boarding passes and they usually get a green light but sometimes get a red one. This is usually due to some random technical or organisational problem so they check the passport. If my boarding pass says latsot and my passport says latsot, they pass me through without further investigation. They can’t be arsed. Red lights are so common that they’ve lost all meaning. I don’t blame them. The problem, of course, is that the computer is saying the seat is already occupied by another latsot, but they aren’t privy to that information.
On one of the several occasions this happened, they let me on board. The flight was totally full and another latsot was in my designated seat because of the above. I like to think he was called Keith Latsot, but that was never established.
This is what happened. There is a jump seat in the cockpit and they let me sit there. It was *fantastic*. The pilots seemed to love an audience and described what they were doing and why for the whole trip. I love to ask questions and they loved to answer them. It was one of the most memorable and enjoyable experiences of my life.
A lot has happened since then and that certainly isn’t an appropriate thing to do now but the contrast is just amazing, isn’t it? Of course, I and my counterpart latsot were both white, perhaps it would have worked out differently otherwise. It sure as shit would now.
But. As HOLY FUCK horrifying as that UA story is – and I really find the video difficult to watch and the text hard to read – there’s another issue. The security theatre that went up after 9/11 wasn’t exactly convincing and as every security expert on the planet predicted, it would only get worse. It has, the security measures are stupid and getting worse. We’re not allowed to take laptops to your fine country now? Well, not going there then. But here is an actual security measure that could be deployed before the need to hurt anyone and before anyone boarded a plane. Apparently this procedure has not changed since the 90s, when they let me ride in the jump seat.
I have a seriously long rant, which I can summon at a moment’s notice, about airline security and security theatre. What’s happening in that video isn’t security. And it isn’t even security theatre. It’s brutality masquerading as security theatre. And all that was required to prevent it was for airline companies to be very, very slightly less greedy.
Security theatre happened because everyone knew there were only a few things we can realistically do to improve security on planes. So they invented stupid shit instead of actual security. Greed was the one thing nobody involved wanted to shed and that’s why we have scenes like this.
^ Top comment.
Meanwhile the story has only gotten worse.
I flew to the USVI, along with a couple of friends, about a month ago. We all took different flights, as the incomprehensible airline calculus of ‘booking a ticket’ demanded. One of my friends was on a UA flight that was overbooked, and no one wanted to volunteer to get off the plane. They eventually decided to involuntarily kick off the passenger with the cheapest ticket, which turned out to be a 16 year old girl traveling with their parents. The parents balked, but UA was insistent that they would throw this minor off the flight and force her to take some unidentified later flight. This led to another passenger volunteering to get off, just to allow the girl to remain on the plane. Yes, they should have just continued to raise the compensation amount until someone volunteered, and yes, before that ever happened they should have just booked the correct number of passengers. But just reflect that the airline thought their best course of action was to throw a minor off the flight her parents were on.
musubk, interesting. There was an article published this morning in our media explaining how United make the decision who to kick off. They stated that United will not break up families travelling together and will not kick off minors travelling alone. Then again, United seem to be both full of shit and pretty much unshamable, despite the best efforts of many consumers over the years.
Good god – that’s appalling.