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

While I would almost always volunteer and get a free ticket, let alone cash. I can't remember if it was Delta or United that I was flying with to Australia and I missed my connecting flight in LA due to bad weather and do to the construction that they were doing at the time. But, it could have been a serious problem because when you miss a connection, they can cancel your return ticket as well.

I only blame the airline in that they should have hired more pilots and crew to not have this problem as much in the first place. The second place the airline messed up was that they let the plane board before commandeering the seats for the other crew. The cops were just doing what they were told to do, although could have been kinder when trying to remove the guy. And all the people filming need to hold their cameras sideways, not vertical.

Having the stock price go down will get the attention of the top executives and require them to change some policies and attitudes. We will see how United deals with this along with the other cuts the airlines have been making to change it from an experience flying, to just getting from point A to point B.

 

Good article.
Settles a lot of questions I had on the situation.

 

That is totally unfair in the sense it targets UA only.

That doesn't stop it from being totally funny.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 13, 2017, Original Post Date: Apr 13, 2017 ---

I agree ^.

And I also must mention that it also reinforces some of the points made in this thread.

 

I'm getting a Total Recall/Robocop/Starship Troopers vibe from this. I dig it!

 

None of the ideas, articles, discussions, or postings pretty much anywhere are remaining rational and unbiased. We all have our own biases based on our backgrounds and experiences. I'm not going to engage in the conversation any longer, as I feel it's going in circles. Everyone defends their point of view, as well they should, and nothing changes except the next news story. My thoughts and opinions haven't changed and won't. And I'm just not going to let myself get pulled back in. So I'm going to step out because I'm frustrated and not willing to remain that way.

 

What they messed up was letting this situation get onto the plane. As several people also said, planes get overbooked all the time and the basic theory for dealing with it is that everyone has a price. But you have to get it done before people board.

Seeing someone get roughed up and dragged off the plane for buying a ticket to fly on it looks horrible, but the real outrage I think was the initial tone deaf response of the CEO praising how the staff handled it.

The McDonald's analogy is an interesting one. No restaurant or other service industry treats customers on the way aviation does. I get its because of security, I get this is what the terrorists have done to us as a society.

If you were at a restaurant and you had booked, you sat in your seat and then they came out and said "sorry we've given all the food to our own staff to eat and you have to leave, here's a voucher for a meal next weekend" and you sat there and said "im not happy about this and I dont want to leave" there are two things you can be pretty sure of
1, if it technically could be considered trespassing unless you became violent the police arent getting involved on any level
2, its pretty unlikely you'll get bashed over the head and dragged out by your feet while your fellow diners cry out and beg the waiters to stop hurting you