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Another(!) reason I fly only on my Private Jet.


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Not all airlines overbook. United Airlines' CEO deserves to lose his job. The stock took a dive today. This company is going to seriously pay for this outrageous mistake. And to think all of it could have been avoided by raising the ask price to the max of $3,000, if not higher.

 

Edit: Sorry, United's highest price for passenger bumping is $1,300. That's what I meant to write.

Edited by corymonroe
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Not all airlines overbook. United Airlines' CEO deserves to lose his job. The stock took a dive today. This company is going to seriously pay for this outrageous mistake. And to think all of it could have been avoided by raising the ask price to the max of $3,000, if not higher.

He is appearing on Good Morning America tomorrow. That ought to be interesting. There's some real travel nerds here that would know for sure, but I sure thought all of the airlines routinely overbooked -- at least the US ones.

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Stock ended at $70.71 down 81 cents or 1.13% off the lows of $68.36. The scary thing for United right now (besides the obvious bad press and PR disaster) is how hard and what kind of legs the boycott threat from China has. Apparently there is a boycott effort underway and people were cutting up their United Credit Cards already. Some stories are spreading that the passenger was singled out because he was Asian. Again it is all about perception, not about truth in the PR game.

 

Time will see if anyone buys the "real" apology or how fast this blows over and we are on to the next scandal.

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Funny these days to have people without a clue as to what's going on pontificate. The must carry crew wasn't going to Louisville on holiday, since the FAA only allows crew to work a certain number of hours they were needed to relieve a crew or an entire flight would have been cancelled stranding those passengers. I assume you all read about the fiasco with Delta in Atlanta when they couldn't get crew in last week. This never happened when I was young, but airfares were a lot higher. People keep going for the lowest rate possible, well this is what you get. Welcome to Walmart. By the way maybe this wasn't handled well but if United lowers their fares by 5 dollars all the outraged folks will be at the trough going for the cheapest fare.

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The Economist's take on this:

http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21720580-ugly-incident-provokes-social-media-storm-passenger-dragged-united-airlines?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/airrageapassengerisdraggedfromaunitedairlinesplane

 

'Not long before United released Mr Munoz’s statement about the bloodied passenger on Facebook, it had posted a picture of a company dog nuzzling a young boy, part of a programme to make travel less stressful. Travellers will be telling a story about United for some time. It won’t be the one about the puppies.'

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I just love Karma. United's real problem is not here in the US, where we sometimes have no choice but to fly brand X if we want to get to a particular place. And we'll forget and move on to whatever is next in.....oh.....about 14 more hours, depending on how absurd our President is today. No, United is in a clusterf**k because the gentleman in question is of Asian descent. No US airline has more invested in China and Asia than United. Their pretty American hinies are hanging a long way out on this one. Offend that particular demographic and see how long their memories are! Besides, there are several Asian Airlines who's service and equipment make United look like a Well's Fargo horse and buggy.

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@Becket

I agree. Americans have short memories. All they care about is low price. The Asian market, that's an entirely different issue, and it's going to hurt. I don't see how United's CEO survives this. This entire blunder could have been so easily avoided. United never offered to pay 4 passengers the maximum amount possible, which is $1300 per passenger. I'm sure they could have gotten authority to pay more. Every passenger has a price for giving up his seat. What could have cost a mere $5000 and no YouTube video, is now going to cost hundreds of millions and a video that will last forever.

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The "victim" here is not Chinese. He is of Vietnamese decent. Married father of 5, 4 of whom followed him and their mother into medical careers.

 

He's also a convicted felon who supplied drugs to a former patient, gay lover who aided the authorities in arresting him for drug violations.

 

He's only recently returned to the medical profession and is still under supervisory watch for his lack of current medical treatments.

 

He has also been identified as having social interaction issues, lacking coping skills in stressful situations.

 

His wife was seated by him on the plane.

 

I think United Airlines suffered the luck of the draw in choosing to deny him his seat. Then Chicago Airport Security officers added injury to the insult, but no reasonable person would have reacted the way Dr Dao did..

 

His background and ethnicity is irrelevant. He was treated in a grossly hurtful, dangerous, and hurtful manner.

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I think it should make no difference what his prior behavior about anything before being boarded on the plane was. This was a plane boarding not a trial at which prior felonies should make a difference. It was stated on MSNBC that he and his wife had actually volunteered to leave but once they heard what time they would get back to their home (too late to make it feasible to do work) they changed their minds. As far as the enforcement officers, once United allowed them on the plane and requested that they do anything to enforce the regulations it became United's responsibility to see that the enforcement was done fairly and humanely. Unfortunately, United found out that most people agreed with that.

 

Good to know more information about this.

Edited by LADoug1
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The "victim" here is not Chinese. He is of Vietnamese decent. Married father of 5, 4 of whom followed him and their mother into medical careers.

 

He's also a convicted felon who supplied drugs to a former patient, gay lover who aided the authorities in arresting him for drug violations.

 

He's only recently returned to the medical profession and is still under supervisory watch for his lack of current medical treatments.

 

He has also been identified as having social interaction issues, lacking coping skills in stressful situations.

 

His wife was seated by him on the plane.

 

I think United Airlines suffered the luck of the draw in choosing to deny him his seat. Then Chicago Airport Security officers added injury to the insult, but no reasonable person would have reacted the way Dr Dao did..

 

It waa reported when they asked him to leave his seat the first thing he did was to consult his lawyer. I find this strange.

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I'm sure they could have gotten authority to pay more. Every passenger has a price for giving up his seat.

This was discussed on the ABC late afternoon news-panel show today, and there was universal agreement that 'Offer more' was the answer. As one of them said, there would have been at least one person who would say, 'Yeah, I'll take the round-the-world ticket'.

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This was discussed on the ABC late afternoon news-panel show today, and there was universal agreement that 'Offer more' was the answer. As one of them said, there would have been at least one person who would say, 'Yeah, I'll take the round-the-world ticket'.

Clearly, an "auction" for a volunteer would be the correct solution: " Can I find a volunteer for a free ticket and $1,000?"

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'Yeah, I'll take the round-the-world ticket'.

A "round-the-world" ticket would not have been necessary. A single business class ticket from NYC to LAX, if purchased today on United, would cost $3900. Imagine what the reaction would have been if United offered four $3900 vouchers. Imagine what the reaction would have been if United offered cash in any amount $1000 and up.

 

Not only are they losing millions now, wait until the lawyers get finished with United. This catastrophe is going to linger for awhile.

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A "round-the-world" ticket would not have been necessary. A single business class ticket from NYC to LAX, if purchased today on United, would cost $3900. Imagine what the reaction would have been if United offered four $3900 vouchers. Imagine what the reaction would have been if United offered cash in any amount $1000 and up.

Exactly. The RTW ticket is the sort of thing that is seen here as a major offer, other types of offers might have more resonance in the US. Tickets and travel vouchers effectively cost the airline nothing (unless they happen to be used on a flight that was full). United have to be brain-dead (or at least tone-deaf) not to realise that flying home on the last flight on a Sunday night passengers are less likely to volunteer to give up their seats than on almost any other flight you can think of. By way of contrast, if I were offered money to be offloaded on a midday Qantas flight from Sydney to Melbourne when I knew there was another flight in 15 or 30 minutes (which there would be on that route) it would take me under a nanosecond to accept.

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I haven't seen the official take on this. A lot of the legal kerfuffle hinges on passengers who have not yet boarded. Once on board, it's a whole different set of regulations for who can be removed.

 

My understanding is that the plane had been boarded and then the four employees came to be seated. If you or I tried that ("I'm a world-famous lawyer and I need to be in court in the morning!"), we'd be laughed off.

And yes, there are limits to how long a rest flight attendants have to have between flights, so they can hardly be held responsible for their job responsibilities that United created.

 

Oh, and the $1,350 cap is by federal law.

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