United Airlines’ CEO Oscar Munoz has issued the a statement concerning the passenger who dragged off an oversold flight yesterday–
This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened. We are also reaching out to this passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation
This statement strikes a wise and cautious balance between assuming guilt and discarding the passenger. Even so, I would have expressed outrage over how the passenger was dragged off. That deflects the blame from United. Perhaps even mention that United did not operate the flight (it was Republic).
Unfortunately, United already opened its mouth earlier. The company’s first statement was tame enough–
Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked. After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate. We apologize for the overbook situation.
But spokesman Charlie Hobart added–
We followed the right procedures. That plane had to depart.
We wanted to get our customers to their destinations, and when one gentleman refused to get off the aircraft, we had to call the Chicago Police Department.
That may well be the case. But it is still tone deaf when most of the country is outraged over the incident.
I just exchanged a flurry of heated text messages with a friend (and lawyer) in Atlanta who is absolutely convinced that the passenger was in the right. I’m not convinced.
I find myself deeply divided both from an emotional and legal perceptive. Thus, I will withhold my commentary until I can come to greater internal consensus on the issue.
CONCLUSION
Even with the videos that have come out, I am not ready to lay blame at the foot of anyone. But my heart does go out to the gentleman below.
#flythefriendlyskies @united no words. This poor man!! pic.twitter.com/rn0rbeckwT
— Kaylyn Davis (@kaylyn_davis) April 10, 2017
Matthew, this wasn’t a UA mainline aircraft; it was a Republic regional jet. While UA was probably operating the gate, I wonder if it was a UA crew or Republic crew which needed to be accommodated?
Regardless, as many have noted, it’s never going to end well in the US to refuse crew or police instructions on an aircraft. The police also need training in how to raise the aisle armrest would have allowed them to remove him with less effort and injury.
Right, I suppose you are more than happy to pay for your meal and then got dragged out of the restaurant with your nosed broken and bleeding non-stop only because the staff at the restaurant feel like eating at your table. Keep defending their act of non-sense and you will soon see similar things happening to you.
comply now, complain later
United should have giving up seats more attractive ( better offer)
It’s United’s fault for overbooking. It’s their responsibility to find alternative measures. They should have increased the compensation to find 4 more volunteers to deplane instead of randomly choosing them. Every ticketed passenger has a right to be on the that flight so finding volunteers is the only way to go.
No where in their contract does it state that United has the right to kick off a passenger after he was given boarding access. He was in his seat. I too would be outrage for United’s behavior.
Everything in their terms and the law states they can deny boarding for numerous reasons (with compensation in some cases), but after they allow you to board, then it is a whole new ballgame and new set of rules.
While that sounds logical, there is no practical legal difference between pre-boarding and post-boarding.
United Contract of Carriage – “Rule 21 – Refusal to Transport” says “UA shall have the right to refuse to transport or shall have the right to remove from the aircraft at any point, any Passenger for the following reasons:”
I would like to know which of those reasons is met in this case. I see none.
If there is no practical legal difference between pre-boarding and post-boarding, then why make a very clear distinction in the CoC about removing passengers post-boarding?
Seems like the officer who used excessive force has been placed on leave.
It’s the use of excessive force which is a huge issue in my opinion. They could’ve easily made their offer more attractive by either increasing it or probably paying it in cash.
It’s amazing how stupid gate agents are. Policy states you offer compensation to have people volunteer. When no one does, you offer more. If still no one does, you offer more. Eventually someone will. It’s better to operate the flight and not make money on it, than it is to have pictures of a bloodied passenger, and video of him being yanked off the plane all over the internet. It’s simple business. Even if they had to offer $5,000 compensation to someone and operated the flight for zero profit, that’s still better than missing out on 10x, 100x, 1,000x times that amount in bad publicity. It just makes you wonder.
any other flights to the same destination that day, even on other airlines ? they bother to check?
There were certainly flights. No idea if they were overbooked or not.
seems like the gate agents did not take the time to check
Why didn’t they just pick someone else ! They had to show who’s in charge I guess and bully a paying customer ! Yes he maybe should have deplaned but I can see his side as well and to a pond his pick someone else ! As this was not worth it ! Maybe to united now people will be even more scared to argue with the MAN
I remain perplexed as to why CPD Aviation Officers wear blue jeans on the job?
The more I look at those horrific videos the more I think they look like ex-military ‘private security contractors’. The wasn’t bleeding as they dragged him down the aisle, yet later he’s bleeding from the face, hard? After being dragged out to the jetway?
Somebody hit him HARD. Difficult to imagine trained CPD officers doing that…
This is an excellent point that merits further investigation.
Well, United’s CEO just made very clear what the work “re-accommodate” means to them. Thus, next time a UA agent tells you they need to re-accommodate you be prepared to lose some blood. I have no words for this.
Matthew, I really don’t know what qualifies you to be an air travel blogger. That flight was not oversold so stop going down that road. The four pax in question were non-rev crew members who were out of position and needed to reposition at SDF. United’s first problem was they had a flight crew out of position. Tell me how this is the problem of the paying passengers? Second, gate agents allowed the plane to completely board instead of taking care of the problem at gate. Third, United did not offer to fully compensate the passengers per 14 CFR 250.5.
If you want to be in the blogging business, you should at least report the facts correctly.
You say that you’re not ready to blame anyone. United was to blame for creating the problem and failing to professionally deal with the problem. I don’t want to hear about their contract of carriage which was written by United attorneys to solely benefit United. I didn’t see under denied boarding if you have already boarded.
I hope the doctor sues United
You are incorrect on Your overbooking assertion. Just because it was employees traveling on positive space does not make it any less of an overbooking situation.
Employees were in stand-by status. How is that overbooking or “positive space”?
Who said employees were standby status? They were confirmed last-minute on the flight just like other passengers. Let’s say the crew did not get on. Instead of one man missing his appointments, a ripple of flight cancellations may have resulted.
It’s not like United could just put them in Uber if they had mandatory rest required prior to the flight.
From the Courier-Journal “Passengers were told at the gate that the flight was overbooked and United, offering $400 and a hotel stay, was looking for one volunteer to take another flight to Louisville at 3 p.m. Monday. Passengers were allowed to board the flight, Bridges said, and once the flight was filled those on the plane were told that four people needed to give up their seats to stand-by United employees that needed to be in Louisville on Monday for a flight. Passengers were told that the flight would not take off until the United crew had seats, Bridges said, and the offer was increased to $800, but no one volunteered.”
If it was so critical that these employees were needed at the destination, why were they on Stand-By? Something is fishy here. There was criminal conduct on the behalf of United and there is misinformation and a smell of a coverup.
Matthew, then UA confirmed too many pax and they knew it. Are you old enough to remember the “240” days when a carrier had to rebook their pax on another carrier if they couldn’t get them out within “reasonable dispatch”? You say that UA has to get their crew to another airport to keep that flight from being late. UA could have booked their crew on another airline. Did they even try? You also bring up the concept of crew rest. Whether thy flew on UA or another airline, they duty hours would be the same.
Since you went to law school, you must be familiar with the term – “reasonable dispatch”.
No I am not incorrect. Here is what the dictionary says – I’ll use the present tense to make it easier for you to understand:
1. to sell more of (a stock, product, etc.) than can be delivered.
Sell would indicate that money or other consideration was/were exchanged.
Non-rev employees don’t pay in any way, shape or form. My friend Michelle is an F/A for DL. If she can’t get to her base or back home on DL, she flies on AS. Why, because DL is not going to kick paying pax off their aircraft. That doesn’t even make any business sense.
Mathew, I believe that you must have a considerable number of shares in UA stock because you logic is beyond sensible. To make matters worse, United boarded all of the pax before they could figure out what they were doing. They should have figured out what they were doing before the first pax boarded.
Per 14 CFR 250.5, the doctor was eligible to receive 4 X his ticket price upto $1,350.00. I still say that United probably violated 14 CFR 250.5 we would have to ask the doctor about that.
If you think that this is acceptable behavior by an airline, I expect you to be the first pax to take a low-ball bump offer.
Thank God that I’m an elite with AS. In the very few times they mess up, they go out of their way to make things right. Maybe Mr. Munoz should learn from Alaska.
In any case, you can’t see that this worse advertising an airline can pay for.
Steve, there is a huge difference between NRSA (non-revenue space available) and PS (positive space) travel. Both are forms of employee travel, but PS is used for deadheading. There is no chance these employees who were accommodated on the flight were somehow just trying to standby to get home from a weekend in Chicago.
Second, I no longer own United stock–
http://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2010/02/09/feeling-stupid-for-selling-my-united-airlines-stock/
I still feel like a fool.
I lost thousands when AA went bankrupt. I no longer dabble in any airline stock.
Third, I do take the lowball offers…I’m the wrong guy to ask!
Matthew –
I think you underestimate the problem this is becoming for UA.
I have seen a number of Asian friends and colleagues on my social media feeds, who are frequent travelers in the SF Bay Area, talk about boycotts of UA. This is no longer just about denied boarding – there are a growing number of people who are seeing this as racial.
It’s not about blame anymore, it’s about UA managing the fact that large numbers of UA customers have already decided to blame UA. There’s nothing Oscar can do to change those minds, it’s about how to keep them as customers.
“It’s not about blame anymore, it’s about UA managing the fact that large numbers of UA customers have already decided to blame UA. There’s nothing Oscar can do to change those minds, it’s about how to keep them as customers.”
You are totally correct except it is now beyond trying to keep them as customers, but about keeping from them for losing even more passengers as this video goes viral in Asia.
I think this is a case of pure stupidity and a power play on the part of the United employee who decided they were the almighty ruler who couldn’t be bothered to increase the incentive and instead chose to power play the passengers and show them who was boss.
Greg,
If this is true, Untied is truly in trouble…
This is simply the most outrageous abuse I’ve ever witnessed in the airline industry. The story is really about using the power of the police to settle a business dispute and is so immoral on so many levels the entire management of United should be fired and the individuals that called the police should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Matthew, you should totally boycott United. I was thinking of trying to the new Polaris product because of you, now I will never fly this disgusting excuse for an airline again and will forbid any of my employees from flying them for business purposes. I’m 110% for all the security measures, but it absolutely sickens me to see an airline abuse this for their own mistakes. The flight wasn’t even overbooked. They could have driven their employees if it was so important. I hope more than one United employee goes to jail for this.
UA is getting abusive by the hour. It doesn’t matter what the situation was the passenger should be handled more humanely. No more UA for me. The CEO should quit.
Regardless of who is at fault here – and you could make lots of arguments both ways – this response is so bathed in PR it is sickening. It makes the airline look like it couldn’t care less. It’s making a statement cause we have not not cause we care.
So he pays for this seat, right? But then gets dragged from it. From the seat he paid for…with money…from his pocket…And the bastards have the audacity to apologize for the inconvenience it was for the overbooking and not directly to him? And claim what they did was the, “correct procedure?”
I know which airline I WON’T be taking anymore.
Hope you are okay, heart goes out to you. Sue em!!
Yes, it’s a PR disaster and the CEO’s dumbass remarks are outrageous. He shouldn’t cheap out on crisis management advisors. If he even used one.
I’ve been on flights where they’ve asked for volunteers to deplane or not board. In many cases I’ve been very tempted but unable to volunteer due to serious work commitments or ongoing travel arrangements. That’s why I bought a ticket to travel on a plane at a certain time. Technically, the passenger was contractually obliged to leave, but pragmatically, after hearing his reasons for refusal they should have either made a decision to pick someone else, or offered a higher level of compensation and would have easily got someone.
Calling the police to forcibly remove someone in this situation is short sighted, vindictive and an abuse of tax dollars. The fact that the police responded in this way is police issue and they are equally at fault – a properly trained officer would have mediated and suggested resolutions to this dispute, but it seems that these officers were just thugs in uniforms.
Unfortunately it is all to common in the US airline industry for power to go to the heads of low level customer facing employees. The verbal abuse I have received from check-in agents would not be tolerated in any other industry. There needs to be a full scale review of practice to ensure that the industry is not exempt from constitutional norms under the guise of security. The current trend will only serve to undermine responses to genuine security threats and confidence in those responsible for ‘safety and comfort’.