For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
By avtur3
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529282
In years gone by travel by air was looked upon as glamorous, it appears that this is no longer the case. However what happened to a United Airlines passenger has seen 'customer service' sink to an all time low ... as reported by BBC this evening.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39556910

It will be interesting to see how United's PR folks try and talk their way out of this.
#1529285
I have to admit this one infuriates me.

I checked out a number of sites, and there is a nice write-up here

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-you-too-could-get-dragged-off-a-plane-if-the-airline-overbooks-your-flight-2017-04-10

On the wrinkly plum forum there are already 12 pages of comments ranging from "he got what he deserved for disobedience" to "I've had it with aviation industry and Amerika".

I have never understood why unqualified agents of private companies have the "right" to get the police to level physical violence on paying customers who have done little more than try to get what they paid for.

Of course there are those who say "it's in the CoC".
Well whoopee effin doo.

A private company ferked up. Rather than suck it up and spring for an alternative for their lack of arithmetic and management abilities- they use the armed and violent agents of the State approach.

I used to travel every week or couple of weeks as SLF. It got to the point where the arrogance of (legally unqualified) cabin crew and their airline employers became more than I was willing to accept. As such I have only taken 2 commercial flights in the past 8 years.

Airlines overbook to make money. That is a commercial choice. Under no circumstance should they be allowed to call on the State to employ - or threaten to employ- physical violence to uphold their commercial decision to sell more of something than they actually had.

:evil:
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#1529286
Of course , knowing that the whole thing was being recorded on many smart phones and that there was a distinct possibility that the story would get out, there was much screaming and drama in order to achieve maximum compo.
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By leiafee
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529291
Overbooking ought to be the airline's gamble not the passengers'. If they've upped their financial offer enough someone would have taken it.

If they'd upped it to the point where it'd have been cheaper to get the extra crew where tgey were going by some other means, well those are the breaks - or should be.

Mind you, if the organisational culture is so disorganised and the angry that they don't know how many people are on board until they're actually all sat down, I think I'd have volunteered to get off anyway just in case their airthworthiness, or W&B or performance calcs were similarly slipshod!
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By leiafee
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529292
Bill McCarthy wrote:Of course , knowing that the whole thing was being recorded on many smart phones and that there was a distinct possibility that the story would get out, there was much screaming and drama in order to achieve maximum compo.


You thnk he wanted a bloody head and to be on YouTube more than he wanted to get home in the seat he'd paid for?

That seems improbable to me really. We're talking about a middle aged doctor not a teenage diva.
By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529316
They had a booked and boarded flight.
They needed to get cabin crew somewhere else (I'm going to guess at late notice due to illness), so they needed to replace 4 customers with employees.
No one would take them up on their financial offer of $400 so they randomly selected 4 people, the only fair way.
One refused so was forced.
Sometimes people need to maybe hard decisions.
The individual should have voluntarily moved.
Not nice, but I can see the airline's point of view.
#1529317
99.999% would just get up and get off and make a bliddy great fuss at the airline desk, but no. He had to be dragged screaming with a "look what's happening to me" along the aisle. The American lawyers will be rubbing their hands in glee.
I well remember a crew change flight from Singapore in a RAF VC10 . There was a cabin pressure system fault which necessitated us returning to Singers to have it fixed. A quick turn round and we were away again to Gan for a refuel stop. We were all directed towards the NAAFI while the refuelling process took place. After we all boarded again a pompous crab walked the aisle and turfed off four or five of the crew, proclaiming that they were drunk. When they proceeded down the gangplank thingy, there were an equivalent number of RAF wives waiting to board - with a thank you to the guy who chucked them off. It was premeditated, the aircraft departed, but our matelots, with much chagrin demanded to see the base doctor who pronounced them entirely sober. Boy, did the brown stuff hit the fan with the RAF over it. Now, they didn't have to be dragged off by some important Military plods - but there could have been a right punch-up at the time.
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529320
Not nice, but I can see the airline's point of view


Well I can't, they should have chartered an air taxi to move the crew if all else failed. This is why my choices of transport go in the following priority order:

Fly or drive myself
Go by train
Walk
Don't go at all
Go by CAT
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By cockney steve
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529327
This has all possibly changed, or maybe not applicable to USA law.....Scheduled Public Transport journeys were (are? ) legally obliged to transport all passengers booked.

Hence, you get the bribery to mitigate overbooking, by "bumping" The alternative is to lay-on a second transport to meet that commitment.

Empty Flights? Empty buses/ trains? The contract says they have to provide the service, so they do.
In the case of overbook, where, unlike trains, every Pax is assigned a seat, the cheapest way out is persuade surplus Pax to wait for the next transport.
In this case, it seems staff tried to lowball the bids, then allowed their egos/arrogance/complacency to override common-sense.
Several reports/comments on the Dark-side, the displaced man found his way back on the aircraft and seemed disorientated and "not himself"

Well! knock me down with a feather! None of the rocket-scientists involved in this debacle ever heard of concussion? Apparently the Video footage shows quite clearly that his head made a "firm" contact with an armrest, resulting in bleeding and visible injury.


They had a choice...Pay-off the surplus Pax. (too tight / stupid to organise that) OR lay on a second plane (I did hear rumour of a Viscount -size airliner flying a schedule for a single pax)

Hopefully, the fallout will refocus United's Board on ensuring they have MANAGERS
who will apply common-sense and economic prudence to the job in hand.

Meanwhile, I forsee a mass-reprogramming of these mindless droids charged with the safe conduct of the business. I also see this becoming a classic case-study in business-management training........As mentioned elsewhere, Gerald Ratner! Well done ,United, you bypassed that elementary lesson!

edited to correct fat-finger spoolung as copied by Kanga, in later quote :oops:
Last edited by cockney steve on Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By Dave W
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529330
Commentary from Air Transport World:

United bumped passenger video damages all airlines

ATW wrote:Aside from the very real damage United has done to itself with this incident, this will hurt its Star Alliance partners – airlines that promise “seamless service” across the partner airlines. Can you imagine ANA, Singapore Airlines or Lufthansa contemplating whether one of their customers might be exposed to this type of “service” if they fly on a United-operated aircraft with a boarding pass that carries their brand?
...
But any airline that is so clueless and ill-equipped that its passenger-facing agents inflict this sort of treatment on their customers to get their own staff to work deserves all the rules, fees, fines and public condemnation that can be rained down on it.
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By Dave W
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1529340
No, but...
Ryanair passenger 'threatened with arrest' after she refused to leave overbooked holiday flight

“One family had made a booking specifying that one of the children was an infant.

“However when the passports were checked, it transpired that the infant was over the age of two and therefore was required by law to have its own seat on board.

“Our handling agents, rather than offloading a family group of six people, wrongly attempted to offload Ms Handley, as they believed she was the last to board the aircraft.”


However, I note the difference in the way Ryanair handled the publicity fallout vs United, whose CEO is today still being reported as claiming the pax was somehow at fault for being "belligerent". A better word might be "provoked".
#1529342
Bill McCarthy wrote:..
I well remember a crew change flight from Singapore in a RAF VC10 .. we were away again to Gan for a refuel stop. ... After we all boarded again a pompous crab walked the aisle and turfed off four or five of the crew, proclaiming that they were drunk. When they proceeded down the gangplank thingy, there were an equivalent number of RAF wives waiting to board - with a thank you to the guy who chucked them off. It was premeditated, .. Boy, did the brown stuff hit the fan with the RAF over it. ...


<continuing drift :oops: >

In '60s, in Liverpool, one of our local MPs (whom I knew well) was contacted by a very distressed constituent. Her soldier (squaddie) son had been killed in a training accident in Cyprus. His body was being flown to Brize, at her request, rather than being buried on the island; she was told when it should be arriving. She, at her own expense, had arranged a hearse and accompanying car to meet the aircraft at Brize. When the 'plane arrived the coffin was not on board. She was told that it had been displaced for 'urgent operational freight'. She would be told when to come back. The MoD offered no apology nor compensation for the rearranged hearse, as she could have waited until the coffin was safely back in UK.

MP did some persistent digging. It turned out that coffin had been displaced to make way for excessive (over allowance) personal efects of a Very Senior Officer returning to UK on same aircraft at end of tour. MP through Minister ensured that grieving mother was compensated, there was grovelling apology, mother was taken by military staff car to and from Brize, and there was a full military ceremonial there and to take coffin to Liverpool. This was not then the norm for repatriation of mere squaddies not killed in action. VSO and OC RAF Movements at Akrotiri were also reportedly carpeted. </drift>
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