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United Incident


Tommy

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6 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

I don't agree with that point. Overbooking is a tool that has been used and perfected down to a science over the past few decades. The carriers know with pinpoint accuracy just how many people will show up for a flight and plan accordingly.

There are two adages used in the airline business. The first one is, once that plane leaves the gate, there's no filling those empty seats. The second is, if you want to become a millionaire, start off in the airline business as a billionaire.

According to my frequent flyer accounts, I have flown over three million miles over the past 30 years. I can't ever recall being involuntarily bumped even once.

So can a car salesperson "double sell" a car to you and to another bidder? Then told you that the car was sold to another customer when you turn up to pick up the key?

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Just now, gsengle said:

What are they supposed to do if he continues to forcibly resist?

There was a time when it did because both sides were generally more reasonable.


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How about try to up the antes and increase the compensation until someone said Bingo and danced off the plane? (Elegantly put, Flyboy)

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How would airline passengers like it if they were charged a fine for not showing up? Or if airline fares went up because airlines couldn't manage yield as well? Ok let's change the laws, but honestly it generally works pretty well. It's all a compromise.

 

 

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This is unreal. I would have done the same as the passenger and refused to give up my assigned seat.

<Begin Rant> I was part of the "Delta Meltdown" over the weekend. My 12PM flight on Friday from LAS-DTW was perpetually delayed until 1AM the next day where we were all told "The flight has been cancelled, there are no hotel rooms available, we cannot rebook your flights. We are sorry". Took me three hours to find a motel room which ended up being in a rough part of town and had "zombies" (crackheads) lurking around. I think I got athletes foot from walking around the bathroom floor without socks on. Those bums there forced me to pay for 2-nights hotel as I was there from 7AM-2PM. Delta's telephone system then and currenty will not accept calls for anything. Their website refuses to let me rebook. The only communication that works is Delta's Twitter. Thankfully Frontier had an odball direct flight to CMH for only $270. Stayed at an IHG hotel there where I deloused myself and then rented a car to get home.

I wouldn't be surprised of the pax that was dragged off was caught up in the Delta nonsense. I would have been just as pissed off. I lost 2.5 days of my personal time due to Delta's inability to manage crew or passengers and spent well over $600 to get myself home. I feel totally sorry for the families; those with children that were/still are caught up in this mess. Blaming operations failures on a storm that happened a few days ago is unacceptable. At what point will Delta take ownership and quit blaming a "weather incident"?<End Of Rant>

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Just now, Tommy said:

So can a car salesperson "double sell" a car to you and to another bidder? Then told you that the car was sold to another customer when you turn up to pick up the key?

Like I said, this is a practice which has been used for decades with great success. And unlike a car, an airline seat is a commodity. 

 

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Let me give everyone on this thread a thought from my life experience.

 

Don't refuse to obey an air crews instructions. They have federal law on their side. It's not a smart play however put upon you feel. Deal with customer service outside.

 

Oh, and in my experience empathy with the airline employee more times than not is more effective in getting what you want than the feel good full frontal attack. Or as my mom taught me, you get more flies with honey.

 

Again United screwed up. But I don't think the passenger handled it well either. That said he may end up paid off, smh

 

 

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Granted I only worked a short period of time for Mesaba Airlines, I certainly did plenty of non-rev travel. I really want to know who these UA employees were. I had half a day of training on non-rev travel. You treat all customers as king & queens. If you non-rev travel you dress professionally. You are the last-class of pax to travel; you are the first to be bumped. You have few rights as a pax when on non-rev. I learned how to work the system to get "free" non-rev biz class seats and I also gave up several to elderly, military, etc. on a regular basis. 

The idiot gate agents should have "bumped" people before boarding them. Its that simple. Clearly some super-shenannigans happened here.

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Granted I only worked a short period of time for Mesaba Airlines, I certainly did plenty of non-rev travel. I really want to know who these UA employees were. I had half a day of training on non-rev travel. You treat all customers as king & queens. If you non-rev travel you dress professionally. You are the last-class of pax to travel; you are the first to be bumped. You have few rights as a pax when on non-rev. I learned how to work the system to get "free" non-rev biz class seats and I also gave up several to elderly, military, etc. on a regular basis. 

The idiot gate agents should have "bumped" people before boarding them. Its that simple. Clearly some super-shenannigans happened here.

 

Agree. But consider that the four employees might have needed to get there to prevent stranding hundreds of other passengers for lack of a crew. If that was the case the airline would have gotten a lot more compliance by explaining themselves. Yes and offering $$$.

 

 

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Just now, gsengle said:

Don't refuse to obey an air crews instructions. They have federal law on their side. It's not a smart play however put upon you feel. Deal with customer service outside.

I don't suggest disobedience is the answer, but saying one should deal with customer service on the outside is completely unrealistic.  There is practically zero recourse available short of a legal action.

Bottom line....if the airlines keep playing the over-selling game and scenes like this are repeated, regulatory penalties will be developed and enforced.  Really, the airlines are the root cause....this is their f'ing business.  One shouldn't blame the victim.

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I think what leaves the sour taste in my mouth is that the bump was due to United employees needing to get somewhere. Highly unlikely (but not improbable) that these employees were "booked" at the last minute to address some company business. Little different situation than the classical overbooking situation.

As a frequent flier on a number of airlines, I get why "bumping" happens. I wonder how much of what triggered the passenger's resistance was knowing his seat was being given to a non-revenue passenger.


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1 minute ago, gsengle said:

 

Agree. But consider that the four employees might have needed to get there to prevent stranding hundreds of other passengers for lack of a crew. If that was the case the airline would have gotten a lot more compliance by explaining themselves. Yes and offering $$$.

 

 

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You think stranding 100 pax elsewhere - and judging by the comments on United Facebook, it's an usual occurrence for the airline anyway - will have further-reaching consequence than this absolute PR disaster on an international level?

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You think stranding 100 pax elsewhere - and judging by the comments on United Facebook, it's an usual occurrence for the airline anyway - will have further-reaching consequence than this absolute PR disaster on an international level?


I never said that. But it would at least justify their original decision. Nothing justifies how they handled it from there. Heaven help em if it comes out it was just united execs that wanted to go home.


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8 minutes ago, Marauder said:

I think what leaves the sour taste in my mouth is that the bump was due to United employees needing to get somewhere. Highly unlikely (but not improbable) that these employees were "booked" at the last minute to address some company business. Little different situation than the classical overbooking situation.

As a frequent flier on a number of airlines, I get why "bumping" happens. I wonder how much of what triggered the passenger's resistance was knowing his seat was being given to a non-revenue passenger.


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I agree. And if it turns out to be like what Greg said that it was given to an United exec..... 

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@Tommy please feel free not to ever fly commercial. For the rest of us who depend on air travel for our livelihood, (I'm not an airline employee) the system works very well. I logged 107,000 air miles in the first 3 months of this year. This is how I do business and how I earn a living and fund my Mooney addiction. Airlines over booking flights is a well established and proper procedure. It's also enshrined in law. It also happens in your country as well. I've lived in Australia for some time and have over 1 million miles on Qantas. This is established best practice all over the world.

I see airline customers all the time (I spend a lot of time in airports) being belligerent with airline staff. And several times, I've seen customers forcibly removed from planes. It's always done by law enforcement. And you can be sure, once a law officer tells you to get up out of your seat and to leave the plane with them, you will be leaving the plane. There is no way around it.

The customer here who refused to leave, was absolutely in the wrong. Don't like it, don't fly.

The leggings incident is different, the girls are still in the wrong, but it's unfortunate whoever gave them the passes, didn't inform them, or maybe they were informed and didn't take it seriously. All airlines enforce a dress code for employees traveling for free. My brother is a Captain and his airline doesn't allow employees to even wear jeans when they travel for free. This applies to anyone else traveling for free on your employee benefits. This is not at all unreasonable.

As a consumer of massive amounts of air travel, I'll certainly side with United in both of these cases. The system must be working well, as air travel is accessible to more people for less money than ever before.

 

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26 minutes ago, gsxrpilot said:

@Tommy please feel free not to ever fly commercial. For the rest of us who depend on air travel for our livelihood, (I'm not an airline employee) the system works very well. I logged 107,000 air miles in the first 3 months of this year. This is how I do business and how I earn a living and fund my Mooney addiction. Airlines over booking flights is a well established and proper procedure. It's also enshrined in law. It also happens in your country as well. I've lived in Australia for some time and have over 1 million miles on Qantas. This is established best practice all over the world.

I see airline customers all the time (I spend a lot of time in airports) being belligerent with airline staff. And several times, I've seen customers forcibly removed from planes. It's always done by law enforcement. And you can be sure, once a law officer tells you to get up out of your seat and to leave the plane with them, you will be leaving the plane. There is no way around it.

The customer here who refused to leave, was absolutely in the wrong. Don't like it, don't fly.

The leggings incident is different, the girls are still in the wrong, but it's unfortunate whoever gave them the passes, didn't inform them, or maybe they were informed and didn't take it seriously. All airlines enforce a dress code for employees traveling for free. My brother is a Captain and his airline doesn't allow employees to even wear jeans when they travel for free. This applies to anyone else traveling for free on your employee benefits. This is not at all unreasonable.

As a consumer of massive amounts of air travel, I'll certainly side with United in both of these cases. The system must be working well, as air travel is accessible to more people for less money than ever before.

 

You were absolutely dead wrong about Australian airline industry. Not only we have strict laws specifically prohibiting overbooking, no single airline in Australia deliberately and systemically overbooks.

And if overbooking happens erroneously, guess what? You get a biz class upgrade! You want to know why this is the case? Well, this is because domestic airline business in Australia is fiercely competitive on capital city routes and laws protecting consumers are wide-ranging. A return trip from Sydney to Melbourne (1.5 hour flight) is routinely priced at $35 to 40 USD. If you are late, you only need to pay another $40USD to get on the next available flight. And if you flight got cancelled they refund you and give you $100USD voucher as a gesture of goodwill (and will gladly pay for your accommodation plus transportation to and fro airport if you are stranded overnight). I know because it happened to me couple of times and I flied frequently for conferences and work (no lesser than you). Not once I witnessed an overbooking situation where the passengers got booted off.

There are many ways to skin a cat and earn a profit in business: you can either cheat your customers or treat them with honesty and dignity. 

And what about the Arabic-speaking passenger incident? How do you justify their forceful removal?

 

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4 minutes ago, gsxrpilot said:

As a consumer of massive amounts of air travel, I'll certainly side with United in both of these cases. The system must be working well, as air travel is accessible to more people for less money than ever before.

Of course you/I literally are in a different class than the majority of the flying public.  I flew a little north of 85,000 last year.  I'd reckon that a minimum of 75% of the incivility I see at the counters results from the overbooking practice....the overbooking practice having little to do with the accessibility or affordability of flying in the modern era. 

As GA guys we really need to be defenders of the flying public.  In many areas hub landing fees are used to support smaller surrounding fields and I'm pretty sure most people here aren't ready/willing/able to personally pay for that which the flying public currently subsidizes. 

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1 minute ago, gsxrpilot said:

Airlines over booking flights is a well established and proper procedure. It's also enshrined in law.

Paul, You may be right, but I'm not sure I like the system. Maybe it does provide the collective public with the lowest cost air travel, but it just doesn't seem right. We have a system, where you buy a ticket to go on a flight, then go to the airport, find that it is over-booked. Now you have a situation where the airline is bargaining with all the passengers, offering an increasingly larger pay-off to get someone to wait for the next flight. When the $ gets too big for the airline to stomach, they use some sort of a computer program to decide who gets kicked off. Then if that person gets belligerent, we have the current situation, where (assuming Tommy is correct) someone is physically hurt and the airline gets a really big PR black eye. And what will certainly result in a lawsuit with a tremendous outlay of resources to fight or settle.

I wish I had a better solution, but I don't. Maybe this is just the modern world.

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