New guidelines for United pilots make it more difficult to throw off a passenger whose conduct is questionable. Would it have saved me from my “photo incident” ejection?
I focused on United’s updated alcohol guidelines for pilots yesterday and flight attendants today, but that is not the only thing that has changed. Brian Sumers also notes that United has updated its passenger removal policy.
It now explicitly states that a passenger cannot be removed due to physical appearance, race, gender, religion, gender identity or ethnicity. Instead, it must be based on “thorough assessment” of the passenger’s behavior.
But what caught my eye was the passenger removal “process” that captains are supposed to engage in:
If considering the removal of a passenger, the captain shall:
- Huddle with fellow crew members to assess the situation
- Discuss and evaluate resolutions with the Purser, Customer Service Agent, Customer Resolution Officer (CRO) and Ground Security Coordinator (GSC)
- If after a through assessment, the decision is made the remove the passenger, then the removal shall be accomplished by Customer Service. Customer Service employees a variety of removal protocols, dependent on the situations.
In an internal note, @united SVP of flight operations tells pilots the airline has updated its passenger removal policy. A United spokesman tells me this is no big deal, saying “That language has been in the various manuals for our customer-facing employees for quite some time.” pic.twitter.com/zYzwSdUvEO
— Brian Sumers (@BrianSumers) August 13, 2019
My “walk of shame” was led by a Customer Service agent…who profusely apologized to me and said the flight crew was totally overreacting.
I bring up my incident not to rehash it, but in hopes that with United’s new emphasis on core4, a pilot would not simply defer to one misguided and frazzled flight attendant. Because the captain has a responsibility to keep all passengers safe, including passengers facing untruthful allegations from troubled flight attendants. In my case, there was no “thorough assessment”. Instead, there was just a total deferment to one lying flight attendant.
CONCLUSION
The captain retains the ultimate authority to request the removal of any passenger in the interest of safety. But that doesn’t mean the captain should be a rubber stamp for overzealous flight attendants. Hopefully this updated policy will help pilots be more discerning, even as they grapple with the negative ramifications of overruling the wishes of a fellow crew member.
> Read More: Thrown Off a United Airlines Flight for Taking Pictures!
> Read More: Be Very Afraid: United Airlines Loosens Onboard Photo Policy
image: United Airlines
I don’t think the new policy had it been in place at the time of your incident would have changed anything. Because it was quite clear the Captain in that instance wasn’t interested in doing his job but rather in placating the whims of his FA.
He was supposed to be the adult in that situation and to my way of thinking he failed miserably.
That policy is useless. If the captain gets together with all flight attendants normally 2 to 3 on a flight. They will stick together and agree with each other and the peraon still gets kicked off the flight.
Wow that’s a crazy story! Before my time but I remember reading about it later. Did you ever get a “settlement???” I’m sure you could have pursued a number of claims… All I could find was this. https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2013/02/22/update-united-airlines-responds-to-photo-incident/
The United flight attendant behavior is being quite of an amazing change for the worae in the past few years… while the ground crew have been trying really hard to improve the flight attendants are going the opposite direction.
6 years and we are still talking about the photo incident???
Even with a “thorough” assessment…..I remain convinced that your situation would still be a “lady doth protest too much”. Yes you dealt with an overzealous flight crew that made a big deal out of taking pictures and took your “I’m not a terrorist” statement out of context….but you kept protesting to “right” their “wrong” rather than just letting it go and then bringing the issue up with United corporate after the fact. And there may very well have been a thorough assessment by the captain in your situation…..you don’t know the full extent of what might or might not have been discussed by the flight crew…..it just that the end result didn’t go in your favor or supported “your” assessment on the events or things you may or may not have said, done, etc.
Again I’m not disputing the fact that UA was seemingly in the wrong, based on your account, but unless it went the way you wanted it to, with either the flight attendant apologizing to you at the point when you called her over to “explain” your actions, or the resulting discussion with the captain allowed you to remain on the flight, I doubt very much that you would have been satisfied with the outcome.
And the constant tieback to the “horror” of “thrown off a flight for taking pictures” is getting old….in this instance UA is only clarifying in an internal document (which means for employees, not for bloggers to go publish on their own) that a customer will only be removed for “behavior” and not anything due to ethnicity, gender, race, appearance, etc. So since you weren’t pulled off for those attributes, and in your scenario it was behavior based assessment (which internally hasn’t changed) how does this exactly tieback?
For the reasons I explained above.
My point is that you are contradicting yourself.
In this post you indicated “in hopes that with United’s new emphasis on core4, a pilot would not simply defer to one misguided and frazzled flight attendant. In my case, there was no “thorough assessment”. Instead, there was just a total deferment to one lying flight attendant.” However, it is only your “opinion” and not “fact” that there wasn’t a thorough assessment and that the pilot deferred to one FA….there very well could have been discussions, but you weren’t privy to those conversations…..even with the new guidelines, the pilot still has final authority.
But getting back to my point….you keep indicating the pilot just deferred to the FA and there wasn’t a thorough assessment. Yet in your original post about the “incident” you stated “the GS rep was very understanding, said he sided with me and claimed that he had done his best to make my case to the flight crew, but they “jointly decided.” So if I follow that account it seems that actually a “thorough assessment” was in fact made, it just wasn’t to your liking or the outcome you wanted.
I just appears that you keep sensationalizing the “incident’ only as a means to keep bringing up that you were “thrown off a flight for taking pictures” (yes it happened but this was no Dao incident where you were dragged off kicking and screaming”) and it makes me question the credibility of your posts when you continue to publish internal UA information, be that in the form of Oscar’s employee messages or anything else, just for the sake of publishing new posts. Yes you aren’t exposing UA trade secrets, but there is a reason that UA posts things on internal websites that require a login, rather than releasing it to the public.
What 121Pilot said. I really don’t think this would have changed anything in your case. What constitutes a “thorough assessment” is vague enough that the captain could still take the word of a single crew member, and then just regurgitate whatever information they provided to the other people he’s supposed to huddle with under the guise of “I’ve flown with this FA for years and take her word seriously.”
One and only one thing will stop issues like yours – significant disciplinary action against those who act in an arbitrary and capricious manner, i.e. making up rules and playing the “are we going to have a problem?” card, but that’s never going to happen in today’s “primarily here for your safety” climate.
I also agree that this wouldn’t have changed what happened to you, Matt. And I agree with what everyone else posted above. I think that this is about the culture of flying. The crew views themselves as a team, which they should. And I think it’s human nature to protect those who you view as being part of your collective. The “thorough assessment”, as MeanMeosh points out, is sufficiently vague to afford a lot of latitude for the crew to behave as *they* believe is appropriate. The real problem here is that there is no one in this sort of situation who can be viewed as a) sufficiently experienced and b) impartial enough to make a fair decision.
Still, I guess I appreciate the attempt by United to do something to address the problem. If they can’t do something to change the common perception about their customer service, it will only serve to benefit their competition. But this isn’t all that’s needed.
I have been flying the world for five decades. One thing I noticed in the last ten years is tg3e level of frustration of passengers. You travel to airport two or more hours before flight time, you fight the crowds th check in, and go through the security. Then you are placed in seats so close together you cannot move or even lower your seat back. They serve you lousy snacks and if it’s a so called meal it’s not worth consumption. Sometimes you want to scream. I think all of this combined brings out a high level frustration and anger in some. It’s no longer friendkky skies but it feels like a prison.
The flight attendant in your case should have been fired as temperamentally unsuited for the job, in her case a lying, dissembling, nasty petty tyrant. The pathetic weak-sister pilot should have been next out the door.
The flying public remains vulnerable to the whim and fancy of these petty martinets, liable to be kicked off in the event that some ill-tempered air-head trolley dolly /mean granny doesn’t like the cut of your jib ( ‘are we going to have a problem?”) They are unaccountable.
Well… Since alcohol banning starts longer prior to flight, it is proper that the most sober and high ranking officer on board got another responsibility, albeit for formality only
The fact that this means so much to you after so many years, as it would for any of us, is an example of why these flight attendants should be much more careful why they throw someone off a plane. For the flight attendant, it was just one action out of many on one particular day, but for the passenger it was something that will never be forgotten or forgiven. I had a situation with United years ago that I still tell my friends about, and it still rankles me to this day. The agent who caused it has probably never thought again about it, but for me, and for those I talk to about it, United is a cruel company.
I read your experience being thrown off a United flight with great interest, but I couldn’t find what the resolution was. Were the lying flight attendant and brusque pilot ever reprimanded? Did you receive an apology from United?