United Airlines has doctor dragged off flight because he refuses to "voluntarily" be removed.

Many have probably seen this recent news item.

The story as I understand it is that United Airlines had a flight from Chicago to Louisville that was full/overbooked. It was a Sunday evening flight, so many people were probably returning home to start work the next morning. They let everyone board until the plane was full. Then, AFTER everyone was boarded, they asked for 4 volunteers to be removed from the flight. They needed 4 seats so that United Airlines employees could take them, as those employees needed to work a flight out of Louisville the next morning.

No one volunteered, even after being offered compensation. So they started "randomly" picking people to kick off the flight so the UA employees could have seats. The first three begrudgingly but willingly (according to reports) exited the plane. The fourth, a doctor who claimed to have to see patients at the hospital the next AM, refused.

Chaos ensued. They called the police and had police/UA security physically drag him off the plane, splitting his face open in the process. It appears that he didn't fight back, he just refused to cooperate. A couple cell phone videos have surfaced of the event. At least one can be found in the new link here:

United CEO tells employees 'there are lessons we can learn' after man is dragged off flight


Any suggestions for what the correct solution to this problem should've been?

What would you do in the doctor's place?

Do you have any experiences where you were forced or volunteered to be delayed due to overbooking?





1) While I understand the economics behind overbooking, I think the fact that the seats needed were for UA employees makes this case especially egregious. I kind of feel sorry for the employees who had to take those seats, since they are almost surely not to blame for how the problem was handled.

In this specific case I think there were multiple better options available:

a) Increase the economic incentive for volunteers. Supposedly it was at $800 before they started forcing people off. In hindsight, I bet UA would've paid exponentially more than that to avoid this situation. $800 seems like a low ceiling for being bumped off of a Sunday evening flight.
b) Pay for fares on other airlines for the employees and have them fly on different planes. Both Delta and American have evening flights from O'hare to Louisville. Midway Airport has multiple evening flights from Chicago to Louisville. I'd have to think that of 4-6 flights leaving that evening on other airlines, there were likely a total of 4 seats available.
c) Hire a van and driver to transport the employees. It is less than 5 hours by car from O'hare to Louisville. The flight was at 5:40pm. The employees could've easily been in Louisville in time for a reasonable night's sleep.
d) Worst case? Handle this "overbooking" before you allow passengers to board. It is FAR easier to deny someone boarding than to drag them off the plane.


2) Honestly, it's hard to say what I would've done. I guess by the time it got to "we are calling the police", probably even just before that, I would've begrudgingly left. I definitely would've been on my phone researching what my rights were as a passenger being delayed due to the airline's own fault (which happens to include far more compensation than the $800 offered).

3) I've never been forcibly delayed. I did have a Sunday night flight (like this one) where they were offering compensation to be delayed. I really wanted to take it, but I had a meeting Monday AM that I absolutely HAD to be at work for, so I couldn't. A few other times I've been on flights where that was offered, but again, I wanted to be where I was going more than I wanted the compensation offered, but others took it. Obviously I've been delayed by other factors a few times, such as plane maintenance, weather, etc.

 

Many people seem motivated to boycott United over this issue, but honestly the real issue is with Security. I will state that again: The issue is SECURITY. It is never acceptable to knock someone out and drag them anywhere. This should never be a solution, ever. There needs to be a complete overhaul and retraining of the airport's security force.

 

You are right to be skeptical.
"Last year, the medical board imposed even more restrictions -- now he can only practice internal medicine in an outpatient facility one day a week."
From TMZ... not exactly known as a major reporting source, but hey...
United Airlines Doctor David Dao Convicted of Exchanging Drugs for Sex (UPDATE)

 

IMO there are two very separate issues here.

The one that is getting all of the attention, which is the "shock" videos that have surfaced of him being dragged off the plane. That one is definitely an issue with the Dept of Aviation, whose officers were reportedly the one to pull him off the plane.

But I think it is equally, though less dramatic, to address the root cause of the entire situation. United Airlines had a ton of options they could've used prior to asking the Dept of Aviation to forcibly remove the man. If they had done any of them, even simply denying boarding ahead of time, the situation would've ended up far differently.

I'm not a knee-jerk "burn the place to the ground!" type guy. I don't think this makes UA an evil corporation. But I do think the policies that were followed to get to the "hey, we need to have law enforcement physically remove this guy" option are pretty pathetic.

 

They de-board the entire plane and arrest the man. If he still does not leave, then they physically remove him without knocking him out. Three grown men can move this man without knocking him out and dragging him if the plane is empty.

Then they re-board the plane and continue on their merry way without the dissenting individual. Everyone is late. Everyone hates that one guy who wouldn't get off the friggin' plane. No one is physically injured.

If someone else wants to volunteer instead of de-boarding the entire plane, great. That guy who didn't want to get off when his number was called will be arrested when he arrives at his destination, fined, or whatever else... at the destination city.

 

This sums up well where United Airlines did wrong:
This was United’s real mistake

It appears they didn't give notification in writing, as required.

As discussed there, and I mentioned above, they should've upped their offer, especially since they'd already allowed people to board.

My argument is that there were so many better options before even considering physically removing someone.

 

I think the combination of shocking video and attractive narrative (poor downtrodden everyman, beaten and bloodied for daring to stand up to Corporate America) is making it exceptionally difficult to have a rational conversation about this.

I'm kind of suspicious of this whole affair. I'm not convinced that United are the big bad villains in this case, and I'm certainly not prepared to suggest that his forced removal was mishandled. The video is indeed shocking but I can't help but think he had plenty of opportunity to simply walk off the plane but chose not to. With law enforcement on the plane asking him to leave and him refusing, what's their recourse? Suggesting that they could have done it better or less forcefully stinks of Monday morning quarterback to me. I'm quite certain, at least, that I could not have removed a resistive person in a confined space more peacefully than that, regardless of how many spectators there were.

I wonder at what point in the process the airline is required to give the written statement to the passenger. Do they have to present it prior to refusing boarding? If they'd had it waiting for him in the terminal with his check, is that adequate?

I don't know the rules surrounding this well enough to say whether United acted rightly or wrongly, and I'm not really convinced that the passenger is automatically in the right just because he got hurt. In any case I'm fairly sure they're going to pay him a big juicy settlement to make it go away and everyone's going to forget about it in a month. Now would probably be a good time to buy stock in United.

 

What were those options? Assuming United was in the right to ask him to get off the plane, he was effectively trespassing by refusing. If he'd been asked by staff to leave a McDonald's and hit his head when police pulled him out of the booth to escort him from the premises, would that have been more or less right than what happened here?

I think the rules are kind of messed up, but if the crew was following the rules and he wasn't doing as instructed by the flight crew, then what are they supposed to do?

 

In about 30 seconds I came up with four, which I posted in the OP.

United wasn't in the right. By their own "fine print", and by carriage law, they had to present to him in writing what his rights were (which were substantially more than they were offering, btw) before removing him from the flight. That's noted in the article linked in post #8.

The crew didn't follow the rules by law. I think any of the four solutions I listed in the OP are better than what they went with. I'm sure given a few minutes of hard thought (or years of industry experience, with probably countless similar instances to gain experience from) that list could grow exponentially.

 

None of which make any kind of economic sense for United. They can refuse boarding to a customer for $1300. Any option that costs them more than $1300 is immediately a loss. Once they get past $800 or $1000 for the offers there's no point in haggling and further delaying the flight when they can just pick someone and cut them a check. As for the other options, what's it going to cost them to hire a van and driver to travel that far? To book seats on other flights at the last minute (assuming any seats are available)? To pay support staff to make all these extra arrangements?

And yeah, it would have been better to handle this in the terminal, but that's not really a meaningful statement here. If he's in his seat before they find out they need it, what are they supposed to do?

Here is the relevant document I was able to find on this. It does say that the passenger who is bumped involuntarily is entitled to a written statement, but that's still kind of a red herring. Your link says "there's no evidence" that he was presented one but that's pretty meaningless. What sort of evidence would you expect there to be? Should other passengers have filmed it? If it was done in the terminal should it have been documented? What kind of evidence are we really expecting that someone handed this guy a piece of paper at some point? Unless or until the flight crew or the passenger comes out and says "yes/no, this did/did not happen" there's no way to know. But lacking any compelling evidence to the contrary I'd be willing to take on faith that the flight crew executed a crucial step in a federally mandated procedure that they have to perform frequently.

As far as I can tell the entire right or wrong discussion depends on at which point United loses the right to deny boarding to a passenger. Can a passenger be denied boarding after already being allowed on the plane, but before the plane has left the terminal? I'm sure United has a highly paid legal team who are as we speak preparing arguments to say that they most certainly can.

 

You can find flights from Chicago to Louisville, at last minute notice, for under $250 each right now, some at $202. That's under $1000 for 4 people, less than the $1300 (per person, there were 4 people) called for by law. You can also do bus and train rides for under $200 per person, which would've arrived only a couple hours after the plane.

Also, don't forget, it SHOULD be $1300 x 4 passengers, so $5200.

Seems like the above options makes more economic sense to me.

Then, weigh in the negative publicity of forcing people off planes to place your employees on them, even without a video.

If you honestly can't see how there would've been better options available, even at short notice, that would've been an overall smarter decision (cheaper even, though in the real world the cost is far more than the compensation amount now), than I guess we just disagree.

Follow the law? As noted above, other options available were far more economical too. Especially when you consider the total amount they should've been obligated to compensate the passengers booted was $5200.

Just using common sense (which could be a presumption), but despite many reports confirmed by those on the plane that they did not offer the terms in writing, United hasn't yet claimed otherwise. They've released other statements, and inter-company emails (including them admitting they should've done things differently) have been leaked, but no defense of "we did follow the law and give him the terms in writing".