Even if it wasn't a passenger overbooking, it was overbooking in that they failed to properly account for the likelihood of having to ship crews around their network.
If their occupancy ratio was lower, then there wouldn't have been a problem, they could have fit the crew in. If they reserved 4 seats for crew on every flight, again there wouldn't have been a problem.
If they had even reserved 2 seats and run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time there wouldn't have been a problem.
If they had brought crew in from two different starting points - it would have been fine.
It's still overbooking, just not oversold tickets.
The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price.
Much like an ISP having all their IP traffic going down one pipe, and not having enough room to send out the customer invoices because everyone is watching Netflix.
In this case, semantics matter. Overbooking is a legally protected practice, but what you're trying to wedge into the definition of 'overbooking' is not.
Overbooking is generally used as a synonym of oversales. Trying to redefine overbooking right now to mean something else is just going to cause confusion.
There's a rhetorical difference where "overbooking" puts the onus on the customer, and "oversales" puts it where it should be: on the airline who sold the extra tickets.
And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.
How can "overbooking" possibly put the onus on the customer? Overbooking is entirely within the control of the airline, and the customer doesn't have the capacity to overbook, or even the knowledge as to whether overbooking could possibly occur.
> And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.
Well yes, that's the whole point of this discussion, that calling it "overbooking" or "oversales" is wrong.
Yes, overbooking/oversales are effectively synonyms, but that's not the issue at all here. Overbooking is purchased and reserved seating over capacity.
The plane was fully booked and boarded at capacity, and then 4 more seats were cleared by physically removing passengers. Collapsing these events by saying it's an overbooking issue overlooks the very important timeline in between the plane being booked/boarded and then initiating a removal of said passengers, instead of denying them in the first place.
The request for 4 seats should've arrived before the boarding process (or at least before it ended), that's the problem.
No, there is literally no distinction at all. The customer cannot possibly buy too many tickets, they can only buy as many tickets as the airline sells. So the only way to overbook is by the airline selling too many tickets.
Even if that is the case, there are much better methods of dealing with a situation like this than calling a police officer. It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force. The man is lucky they didn't taze him. The crew should have known that. It's good that this policy is about to change, but it is too little too late.
I assume you meant "taze", as in incapacitated him with a Taser electroshock weapon. It's an unfortunate typo, because he seemed quite thorougly distressed, disheveled and without composure - fazed.
It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force
My understanding is that there was a lengthy conversation that took place before the outrage-inducing video starts. They did attempt to resolve the situation peacefully. At some point there is an impasse. Police are making a request and he's ignoring it. There are two ways that can go: 1) Police shrug their shoulders, leave, and let the man have his way; 2) He's going to be forcefully removed.
That is, as far as I can tell, the actual reality of the situation. And anybody advocating for outcome #1 probably has some thinking to do about what it actually means to have a police force at all.
Yet why does the forceful removal of that passenger justify knocking him down and dragging him off the plane? There's plenty of ways to forcefully remove someone from something without doing what they did.
Police is allowed to apply force, but that doesn't immediately give them the right to go loco.
This, like the notion that police should aim for the knees when shooting at suspects, is one of those perennial concerns that doesn't survive contact with reality. Once force is applied, you shouldn't be surprised when things go wrong. Force is messy. Which is why, yes, it should be viewed as a last resort.
Maybe there are better ways to resolve this situation wrt to the police and the airline. But I think basic common sense says that there are much better ways this passenger could have handled it, too. At some point it must have been obvious to any reasonable person that 1) the cops weren't going to change their minds; and that 2) force would eventually and inevitably be applied to resolve the situation in their favor.
Once the police were there, he resolved it the best possible way for him; he stood his ground, got a little banged up, and will not be quite rich for the idiocy of everyone involved.
Exactly this. It's not hard to understand. If you know you're right, and you're not afraid of being assaulted, stand up for yourself; or in his case, stay seated (for the wise guys). If someone told you that you'd be entitled to millions for going through what this guy did, you'd take it 100 times out of 100.
That's not to downplay how horrendously the situation was handled. The airline deserves to pay damages, and he deserves the money. But, to suggest that he didn't help by not cooperating is one of the silliest ideas swirling around.
I expect the police to police, as in, maintain law and order. As I understand it, neither were broken at said impasse.
Again, I have come to expect very little of American police. The crew should have known better than calling the police. I blame more the crew and probably their textbook for unleashing the dogs, rather than the dogs biting.
"An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. However, if a dangerous weapon is used in assaulting or intimidating the member or attendant, the individual shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life."
If a flight attendant asked him to get off the plane and he belligerently refused, that would seem to be a violation of this law.
Note that I'm not arguing that the original request was justified OR that the police response was justified.
49 U.S. Code § 46501 - Definitions
(1) “aircraft in flight” means an aircraft from the moment all external doors are closed following boarding—
(2) “special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States” includes any of the following aircraft in flight:
And to preempt more of this nonsense, FAR 91.3 and 91.11 don't apply either, those are for operational safety purposes. This is a contract of carriage issue, and what the airline tried to do is not in that contract.
The passenger was within his right to peacefully refuse to cooperate, in this instance, as reported.
The article suggests that the airline was the one breaking the law and not the passenger. So in this case the police helped the airline commit a crime. Is this nowadays what means to have a police force?
They were sworn law enforcement officers working for the city of Chicago.
There's room for them to have different authority than other Chicago police, I haven't found anything in a couple minutes of looking, but they aren't private security or anything like that.
The central thesis of my argument is that the ins and outs of each side's claims can be litigated later on. At that moment, the cops probably don't (and likely in principle can't) know exactly who is right and who is wrong and in fact this isn't at all the role we expect the police to fill.
If the police didn't know who was wrong then maybe instead of using force, they could asked the airline to cancel the flight and seek damages in a court. Then, and only then, they could remove anyone from the plane as it wasn't part of a contract anymore but just the airline's property.
> they could asked the airline to cancel the flight and seek damages in a court. Then, and only then, they could remove anyone from the plane as it wasn't part of a contract anymore but just the airline's property.
If they asked the airplane to cancel the flight they could then remove the man from the plane? You're arguing that if United cancelled the flight for everyone that would render the contract of carriage moot for all and then the person would no longer have a claim to a seat?
Yes. If they removed the passenger and the flight went on, then they would favor one party. If the flight was canceled, they would favor neither party, a much more just approach if you can't know which party is in the wrong.
If the flight was canceled, the contract wouldn't be moot but the case would need to be resolved outside the plane anyway. As the plane wouldn't be anymore part of the problem, the airline could ask for the passenger to be removed on the ground that he was trespassing. The passenger could also ask the police make sure that the plane stays grounded.
This is deeply naive. They are civil servants, an arm of the executive branch of government, and we expect they will do lawful things, not unlawful things to be figured out later, and only if you can afford a good attorney to do this litigation you seem to think is the appropriate default scenario.
Your position strikes me as compatible with an authoritarian police state. And that is not the system of government we have in the U.S.
It is part of the job description for police to, at all times evaluate the legality of what they're doing. Otherwise, they are just hired thugs, might makes right, let a judge sort it out. And if they are merely hired thugs, that makes them untrustworthy by default as civil servants, and will even be viewed as capricious. What's the standard of the moment?
And in fact, that's why Black Lives Matter is even a thing. The police aren't trusted in some communities, because they have so often simply reacted with force. That's what the politics requires, and is a betrayal in those communities. Use force now, sort out the injustices later (maybe). That's a recipe for loss of trust, other than, do what they say or they will beat your ass. That's not justice in any possible sense of a civil society.
I believe this is correct. If there is a civil argument, it can be heard in an appropriate venue. But once the owner/operator of an FAA regulated aircraft has asked you to leave you no longer have any recourse and the word of the airplane crew carries quite a bit of weight.
I'm seeing the suggestion that United broke the law which doesn't quite seem to be what this article is saying. The article is saying they breached their own contract of carriage. This would allow for damages afterwards in civil procedures but i can't imagine how it gives the man the right to ignore the order of crew and airport police to get off the plane.
I wouldn't even get too hung up on the "FAA regulated aircraft" portion of this, just in a general sense. You and I may have a contract that says you can use my property for a day, but then I might prevent you from doing so. This could be wildly inconvenient for you for various reasons. If I told you to leave, I wouldn't expect the cops to figure out who was right. I would expect the cops to err on the side of the property owner and make the obvious and expedient decision to evict you from my property.
The contract wouldn't even enter into it. If there's a grievance, then it should be handled later. The police aren't there to litigate that issue. They're there to resolve the immediate conflict.
Crucially, it doesn't matter that the contract is 100% in your favor. That's not what the police are there to discern.
Everybody is trying to play amateur aviation attorney, but this is really about understanding the role of police in resolving disputes like this one.
> Everybody is trying to play amateur ... attorney
Including you.
You're right that it's not the responsibility of police to determine all details of who's right and who's wrong, especially considering contracts that can take days for a trained contract lawyer to understand. They do have a responsibility to ensure that the person requesting removal is the owner of the property, and the person being removed is not a co-owner, but that's about as far as it goes.
However, that's not the only issue being discussed here. Just as we should get too hung up on the "FAA regulated aircraft" portion, we shouldn't get hung up on the "police role" portion either. The more important question is United/Republic's role. Were they in a position to require this passenger's removal, or was that breach of contract? What about the issues of crew logistics and voluntary-deboarding incentives? If you want to broaden the focus, let's broaden it all the way.
> i can't imagine how it gives the man the right to ignore the order of crew and airport police to get off the plane.
Neither 49USC§46501 nor 14CFR§91 applied at the time in question, according to applicable definitions (e.g. "crewmember" and "flight time") which anyone who presumes to interpret law can and should look up near the rules themselves. Absent either of those, the passenger had all the rights he would have in any other time and place. He had a contract establishing his right to be where he was. United/Republic had already recognized that right by allowing him to board in the first place. He had done nothing since to waive or nullify his rights under that contract. Thus, at that moment and under those circumstances, he was under no obligation to comply with the order that was given.
If they'd closed the doors, 49USC§46501 would apply. If they had left the gate, 14CFR§91 would. Those would have been different cases, but we're not here to discuss different cases. Anybody who wants to treat rules as sacrosanct should do so based on a full and accurate understanding of those rules.
Given that the man was not handcuffed and indeed made his way back on to the plane, there are perhaps assumptions that can be made about how happy the officers were with the situation in general too (without resorting to any Nuremberg analogy).
It seems, like usual for American police, officers are insensitive to anything but violence; no logic, just apply force.
This is correct and I believe it's by design.
Law enforcement officers are selected for high aggression and high intelligence is often/usually penalized in the screening process. In a lawsuit against New London CT, the courts found it legal to disqualify a candidate for being too smart.
I don't doubt it. It's not for nothing that the USA police is by large mocked around the world. Land of the free and home of the brave is quite ironic when it comes to USA police.
Well yea, man. If UAL is so popular they have to drag people off the plane, they must be selling crazy tickets, right? And they probably have more room to raise prices than anticipated.
You make good points. Airplanes used to have jump seats, fold down seats, specifically for accommodating these sorts of crew transfers, so that they wouldn't interfere with normal passenger seating. I wonder if the jump seats were removed at some point in order to increase normal seating.
If you look in the /r/aviation threads you'll see various people who are airline crew claiming they can fly jumpseat but it's beneath them and they want their regular-seat privileges enforced at basically any cost.
Don't the jumpseats have more legroom? I thought the ones I'd seen did, just by not being part of the ordinary aisles and being smaller (slimmer back especially). I'd take a milking stool over the regular seats if it meant not having my knees jammed most of an inch into the seat in front of me (and I'm not even that tall).
Where is the cabin crew supposed to sit during take off and landing if the jump seats are occupied by others? Also, this wasn't a 737, but a smaller plane.
This sounds plausible, and fits with the incident if basically no one trusts the airline to negotiate in good faith.
Employees assume that if they don't make a fuss about getting a seat, then they'll have to fly jump-seat or standing-room-only from then on out.
Likewise, passengers don't trust the airline offer of $800 and the next flight out for giving up their seat. I would have taken that offer if I could be assured it was legit, but I'd have a strong suspicion they'd deduct the cost of the flight and the hotel and give me what's left in the form of Chili's gift cards or something.
With trust that low it was probably only a matter of time before a dispute escalated into unnecessary use of force.
It's worse than that, really. I've got people on reddit telling me that policy -- which they say I can only read if I FOIA it, maybe -- is that all disputes with passengers are supposed to immediately escalate to police as a first and only resort. Because "9/11", apparently.
If they had recognized that they needed 4 seats for crew before the passengers scanned their tickets and walked down the jetway as is usually done they wouldn't have had a problem.
They could have started the process before the flight booked, asking for volunteers before they got seated and attached to the idea of being on that flight. If they had no volunteers, they could probably have randomly selected passengers to deny boarding, and rejected them at the gate. While I am offended by them violently dragging the man out of his seat and off the plane, if the ticket scanner doesn't blink green the passenger likely won't force his way onto the plane, and if he was injured by security while doing so, public opinion would not be so united against the airline.
>The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, they just didn't follow through with the correct way to free up seats, which is increasing the bid.
Some family cleared something like $13,000 in amex gift cards during the delta debacle last week by volunteering their seats multiple times. If you keep increasing the bid, you will find a price at which someone will give up their seat.
My guess is it will be like the Wells Fargo fiasco. Some low-level employees - probably the staff that worked that flight - will lose their jobs while those that actually created the policies that led to this will be just fine.
This is a new kind of UI/UX dark pattern. The United app lets customers pay for seats, and any reasonable person thinks that's the whole of it. But the fine print says that's not true, and says you can be forcibly removed if the flight is oversold.
"When you use the web, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another."
No. The fine print does not say that. The fine print says they can deny you boarding, not remove you once already boarded. Your point about the dark pattern is all too true, but United still behaved entirely illegally here.
It's still denied boarding, and would be so until the doors were closed, so he wasn't technically boarded at the time he was removed. (And they can remove you for all sorts of reasons even after you've boarded.)
I've been saying for years that the only thing holding back massive disruption in the airline industry is the FAA.
American and United are two of the most poorly run mega-corps in the US. Customers hate them, but need to fly. Warren Buffet thinks they're notoriously bad investments. Why?
There are a lot of regulations for airlines like American, but considering, for example, that there's nothing you can do at 35,000 feet in a giant metal machine if there's a mechanical failure, I'm much happier that there are a lot of regulations than not enough, in this case. There are a lot of things that suck about air travel in the states, but the FAA isn't one of them.
As far as the companies being bad investments, it's most likely due to their extremely low margins and ROI.
Safety and Regulation are two partially overlapping sets.
The FAA regulates an immense amount of things that are trivial and those regulations are very hard to update. The FAA issues the vast majority of regulations[0].
Apparently Warren Buffet has changed his mind in recent years and invested in airlines. Largely because of what you describe: consolidation means people have no choice but to use them.
He's smart so he bought other airlines as well. As Matt Levine pointed out today, while Buffett lost money on UAL yesterday, he more than made up for it with gains in other airlines which were up on the news. He said: "Boycotting United to fly another airline is just what United's index-fund owners want you to do"
I don't think the FAA is bad. It's the companies that are. What disruptions do you need? Other airliners can provide service just fine even though they have to follow FAA rules when flying to and from the US.
Flying is the safest form of transport because of the FAA. Yes there are a ton of rules and regulations, but the vast majority exist for a very good reason and the FAA is very good at cracking down on offenders. Why? Because the consequence of failure is so high that we can't afford not to.
Get rid of the FAA and it's only a matter of time before what was illegal ends up taking down a full airliner, killing hundreds or even thousands of people and ruins flying for everyone.
> but the vast majority exist for a very good reason
I don't know how you can back that up. Who has done an analysis on the percent of them that have made a material impact on safety.
> Get rid of the FAA
I didn't say that. I just said they're in the way of innovation and customer satisfaction. Maybe we don't have to be extreme. Maybe we could just modernize them?
The subtext here is that customers don't have any actual rights when dealing with a large corporation. The terms of service have become so lengthy and obscure that it's virtually certain for a corporate lawyer to find some justification somewhere for almost anything. The corporate employees and the police both operate on this assumption. As a customer, your only recourse is to meekly accept whatever treatment is coming your way.
Yes, passengers don't know their rights but pilots and other administrators should. So United personal should have known they are in a legal grey area when removing a passenger who had boarded.
I found the argument interesting that United should have lied and just invented a plane swap with a smaller body. Would have left the affected passengers is a weak position.
There is so much wrong on all levels including the reaction of the CEO. This will be a case study for long time.
> So United personal should have known they are in a legal grey area when removing a passenger who had boarded.
From what I've read, they weren't in a grey area, they were doing something that was specifically illegal. A grey area is when it may or may not be illegal. This wasn't grey.
I am not even remotely a lawyer or qualified to actually answer this, but my guess is the situation here didn't actually prevent United from fulfilling their contracts. They just chose to ignore their contracts because they thought they could get away with it.
Force majeure doesn't apply in this circumstance because it requires an external force or event that is unforeseeable. In this case, United didn't plan correctly for the transport of its 4 employees, something well within its capability to predict.
It's possible that United did plan correctly for the transport of those employees, but the employees themselves failed to follow the plan. How was it that the 3411 crew didn't even know the other crew was coming, until the very last minute? That's extremely unlikely if the other crew had been scheduled for 3411. It's more likely that they had originally been scheduled for another flight, missed it, and got to 3411 before word did (possibly because of poor communication between United and Republic). At the very best, they were later than they should have been. Why? And did they (or someone else) pressure the 3411 crew into doing what they did?
United still screwed up in a lot of ways. So did Republic. So most of all did the aviation "police" - an organization that seems to consist largely of people thrown out of CPD for exactly the kind of misconduct visible on the video. But somewhere in there I think there's a fourth group that screwed up - the people whose sudden appearance triggered the whole mess.
Their "rights" were replaced by a contract. You have no rights not enumerated in the contract of carriage. Rights are for government actions against you. In the United States, "rights" are discarded in favor of profit.
The subtext here is that customers don't have any actual rights when dealing with a large corporation.
The problem is that people now believe that. In fact, lawsuits against big companies often are settled on very favorable terms for the customer. As the article points out, United violated their own contract of carriage and FAA regulations. This is going to cost them.
Only because the passenger peacefully resisted, and did not comply with the airline's request he depart the plane on his own volition. He didn't give into threats, and risked and received an assault, in order to arrive at the point where this is going to cost the airline.
He should totally bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit, it's a total cake walk as it'd be hard to find a jury that wouldn't sympathize and he and his grandkids would be millions of dollars richer. Not to mention all the dirt you can drag United through during the lawsuit in the media. Love to see some testimony from the dick CEO as well who tried even character assignation of the poor doctor they needlessly assaulted.
> He should totally bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit, it's a total cake walk as it'd be hard to find a jury that wouldn't sympathize and he and his grandkids would be millions of dollars richer. Not to mention all the dirt you can drag United through during the lawsuit in the media. Love to see some testimony from the dick CEO as well who tried even character assignation of the poor doctor they needlessly assaulted.
Moreover, refusing to leave the premises when requested or to comply with the police when they arrived, is unquestionably against the law.
Even a jury has to operates within the constraints of the law or be overturned on appeal. Remember, the airline would be the defendant and has the right to appeal.
Sure, being bumped is lousy behavior by the airline but the doctor doesn't have a legal leg to stand on for his tantrum. If anything, the airline could probably sue him for delaying the flight and win.
"Moreover, refusing to leave the premises when requested or to comply with the police when they arrived, is unquestionably against the law."
One might think that, but TFA points out that there are regulations covering when a passenger can be bumped. The demand that the passenger leave may have violated these rules. The police order in that case was mistaken, a point also raised in TFA.
> One might think that, but TFA points out that there are regulations covering when a passenger can be bumped. The demand that the passenger leave may have violated these rules. The police order in that case was mistaken, a point also raised in TFA.
Moreover, the police order may have been mistaken but that in no way absolves the individual from complying with said order. He should have resolved the issue with litigation afterwards.
(Again, to make my position clear, the airline behaved quite badly but so did the passenger.)
> order a passenger removed for disrupting a flight
Passenger was not disrupting the flight in any way. Passenger was behaving properly and then was forced to leave for the convenience of the airlines at great inconvenience to himself, despite the fact that he was as entitled to remain on the flight as any other passenger -- as in this was unfair to him and him alone. It was also made clear to him that he was not responsible for being forced to leave as well as the fact that all the other passengers felt the exact same way as the passenger who was being forced to leave.
I think linked article and regulation adequately address that. If the pilot asks an individual to debark, s/he is not, in fact, entitled to remain on the flight, other regulations notwithstanding.
FAR 91.3 and 91.11 exist for operational safety of the flight. The purpose of the FAR is the PIC can ignore company, customer, and even Air Traffic Control orders that compromise the safety of the flight. Company says you must land at this airport tonight, and the pilot says well it's socked in, it's not safe to land, so no. That's the purpose. It's to make him accountable to flight safety, not the company or anybody else.
By making him an agent of his company's customer service to remove a passenger who is in compliance with the law, regulations, and the company's own contract of carriage, and then use FAR 91.3(a) as an excuse to say the pilot must be obeyed is poor logic. And I am a pilot (and a former CFII). I think it makes flights less safe to inject the company's demands into the cockpit. They do not matter, what matters is safety. That's what his FAR is about, not to enable the pilot to be an ass to passengers on behalf of his moronic company.
And claiming otherwise damages the necessary trust that we're supposed to have, and should have, with pilots and crew. Their primary purpose is to save your life. It is not to pour sodas, or appease the company CEOs profit needs by being jerks to passengers, and throwing them off for business reasons.
As for the police, I think that was an illegal assault on the part of the officer, and given the available information the passenger wasn't breaking any laws, so the police being there was inappropriate in the first place, they shouldn't have intervened and should know that.
Too many places I frequent have had crews, and especially airline pilots, basically pulling the "my word is law, there is no appeal and no review and nobody above me but God and even He only has an advisory role" crap.
God complex in pilots. It's archaic, but still comes up from time to time. Before crew resource management it was absolute authority, and one of the most famous consequences of this thinking is the Tenerife accident in 1977. The PIC was basically all, no goddamnit we're cleared for takeoff and we're going now - 5 minutes later nearly 600 people are melting and burning.
More recently, examples of pilots refusing to fly with Muslims on board. It's more of this "what I say goes" logic, and the gate agents were not able to tell the pilot to take the corn cob out, and take these passengers to their destination.
> requested or to comply with the police when they arrived, is unquestionably against the law.
Except that's not who dragged him off. Representatives of a customer safety federal aviation department physically dragged him. I don't think everyone fully understands the sequence or "players" involved (I had to look it up too). - http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-united-pa...
Otherwise, you're absolutely correct about voluntary vs compulsory.
A police officer would still be liable for not properly restraining and ensuring the safety of the "victim".
The article you linked says the individual was from the City of Chicago's Department of Aviation. While you do bring up an important clarifying point, I'd be surprised if the individual in question didn't have most or all of the same authority/powers as a police officer within his jurisdiction.
Some additional information from the Wikipedia article on airport police that seems to be relevant: "The City of Chicago Department of Aviation Police perform safety, security and law enforcement functions at O'Hare International Airport & Midway Airport. The department was formerly called the Department of Aviation Special Police. The Chicago Police Department Airport Unit also performs many of the law enforcement duties in and around Chicago area airports." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_police) However, that information may or may not be current.
Even a pilot has to operate within the constraints of the law or be sanctioned. They have operational authority to do pretty much anything while a plane is in flight, but that doesn't shield their airline from the legal consequences of forcefully pulling a man from a seat in order to shuttle airline employees to their next destination.
You are wrong. Pilot in command[1] only qualifies when the plane is in flight, which is even mentioned in the quora question you linked. In flight definition requires plane to be moving under its own power. Additionally, the pilot did not tell the passenger anything. An on the ground manager did.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Please throw away your throwaway account.
You've been posting uncivilly to HN. We ban accounts that do that, so would you please (re-)read the site rules and comment civilly and substantively from now on?
How many people have a) many thousands of dollars sitting around to pay for lawyers b) the requisite leisure to attend arbitrary court dates and locations c) the ability to deal with the loss of the above if the company wins the case based on some technicality? The company will happily take the proceeds from illegally squeezing the 99% who don't press charges to pay for the 1% who do.
Technically the blacks in the South had the right to vote after the Civil War. It took another hundred years of struggle to also secure the practical right. Theoretical rights don't matter much for those who can't exert them.
It was worse than that; they even published information on the wrong doctor (with the same name). One was from Louisiana, the other Louisville. Shameful.
No, the GP has it right: for all practical purposes, customers have no rights, especially when their contracts include binding arbitration clauses, since arbitration rules against the company essentially never.
> No, the GP has it right: for all practical purposes, customers have no rights, especially when their contracts include binding arbitration clauses, since arbitration rules against the company essentially never.
I don't want to make it partisan but with all due respect TOS is not the law (oh btw, please keep pushing to repeal the CFAA in the US). We don't live in a libertarian "paradise".
I've heard of anecdotes where a judge throws a pre-nuptial agreement because it was too one-sided? I think the same should apply to terms of service and arbitration clauses. They cannot supersede the law or become the law.
Something people are not talking about is why isn't there a lawsuit against the police department? They're the ones who did the actual assaulting?
It doesn't matter what you think because the Supreme Court has ruled that the Federal Arbitration Act, and the arbitration clauses enabled by it, is sacrosanct and denies all but the most egregious (and that bar is very high) of court challenges. Virtually all actions in court are barred by those clauses.
They replace the law. Supreme court decided can and does permit a total severance of your connection to courts of law against a corporation.
Your rights are replaced with a contract you didn't quite realize you agreed to. As such, you have no rights against a corporation. The arbitration kangaroo court is not required to observe the law. A meeting of the minds is not required where a contract with a corporation is concerned, as a human doesn't have to realize their rights were stripped by the contract.
When everything is privatized, you will have no rights remaining.
This is exactly why I'm fighting against Mandatory Binding Arbitration and Class Action Waivers. The system is slow, creaky, and arguably broken, but that's a _feature_ if it means that companies are afraid of it.
I'm not having a whole lot of success in my fight, it seems.
What hurts even more is that the supposedly enlightened companies that come out of Y Combinator also put in these clauses. When I asked one why, the reasoning was "our lawyers made us." Yet there seems to be no consideration that the business owner hates to be on the other side of that kind of clause all the while imposing it on his or her own customers.
I empathize with them, though. It is completely rational to limit the impact of lawsuits on your organization. If someone hands you a Get Out Of Jail Free card, you take it, no matter how good of a person you think you are.
I don't. I consider it to be morally objectionable to say "man, I really hate arbitration clauses as a customer" and to then turn around and say "well, I should impose arbitration clauses on my customers." Besides, limitation of risk is already possible in a variety of ways: insurance, company formation structure, and being reasonable with your customers. It is atrocious that a core feature of our constitution is so quick to be contracted away by people who are in the position to effect change.
This goes double for Y Combinator-enabled companies because they operate under the guise of being better for their people, their customers, and their industry than others.
Hence why in the EU, most terms of service are essentially meaningless. If a judge finds your clauses surprising or an undue burden on the customer, they are null and void.
It's the same in the US if you go to court. There are expected warranties and consumer laws. Corporations try to take it away and use many levels of policy and obfuscation to wear you down but once you get to court you have the ball.
But what will happen is exactly what happens with overbroad patents. It is not possible to make an agreement with someone that requires soul-bonds. This could count as unlawful eviction and assault.
>The terms of service have become so lengthy and obscure
I don't think it's fair of you to criticize either the length or the obscurity of terms of service. After all, you could replace nearly all of them with:
"
1. We have every right of every kind and can do anything, without being liable for anything.
2. you have no rights of any kind and may do nothing, except those afforded by law, which you hereby waive as far as legally possible.
"
More forward-thinking startups might add something to the effect of "Of course this does not mean we are Satan! We will naturally make an effort to provide roughly the service you have paid for. However, nothing in this section should be construed as a statement that we shall not act like Satan in any particular instance. We reserve the right to be Satan at any time and our sole discretion without providing any prior written warning. You've been warned."
Two important points raised by a lawyer about how to interpret the Contract of Carriage (or any other).
(1) When the meaning of a term (e.g. "boarding") is ambiguous or undefined, courts are required to interpret it in the way less favorable to the drafter of the contract.
(2) If the conditions under which one party may do something are enumerated, they may not do it for reasons other than those on the list.
Both principles of legal interpretation go against United in this case. Remember, this is civil law - not criminal. The burden of proof is very different. While many such contracts are too one-sided, rules such as these exist to ensure that they can't be entirely so. A completely one-sided contract might even violate the requirement that it involve mutual consideration, making it a legal non-entity.
An interesting comment I ran across... not sure if it's valid or not, though:
"Lawyer here. This myth that passengers don't have rights needs to go away, ASAP. Here is how United illegally kicked him off the plane:
1. First of all, it's airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about "OVERSALES", specifically defines as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to denying boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply.
2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it's clear that what they did was illegal-- they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a.
3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you've boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn't have been targeted. He's going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco."
No, the real failure (and the source of this and many other issues in the airline industry) is the lack of competition in the US domestic market.
Pure and simple.
The huge, 350-million US domestic market is served by 4-5 major airlines, while the EU with 500 million people is served by tens of airlines. I recently flew from Barcelona to Nice for 30 euros, round-trip (with seat assignment).
Where are the (potentially Mexican or Canadian-based) low cost airlines?
That's right, none to be seen.
Let's hope this bust-up brings some legislative measures to introduce more competitive practices in the airline industry.
Otherwise we will soon be paying for the right to pee in-flight really soon.
The airlines can set up any rules they wish (with the FAA being complicit), because they know consumers (passengers) don't have much choice - they need to fly, driving is usually not an option in the US.
If you mean by distance, sure, but you can drive anywhere in the US, and there are a lot of people that do choose to drive semi-long distances (10-12 hours) over flying when fuel is cheap because they enjoy driving. It's less of an option when the distance is something like 30-40 hours, i.e. from LA to NYC.
> the lousy economics of airlines combined with their oligopoly status in the US says they will be extremely reluctant to make anything beyond bare minimum changes
I was really commenting on the part of the title "...a reporting and management problem", and on the comments in this thread splitting hairs over whether it was overbooking or over-selling - and completely missing the bigger point.
Which is understanding the cause, not looking at the symptoms.
> "Where are the (potentially Mexican or Canadian-based) low cost airlines? That's right, none to be seen."
I'm in the upper midwest and we have two or three low cost airlines. Sun Country is the biggest (and based in MN). Spirit Airlines also has a decent presence. Sun Country flies to lots of places. First class ticket to Anchorage cost me ~$700 last time I flew with them, less than an economy seat on Delta.
I don't know if it's just airlines that have competition problems in the US. I actually think it's the airports that the problem.
In the EU, many (most?) airports are privately owned. In the US, they're almost always state owned. Furthermore, the Port Authority generally owns all the airports in the area.
In many EU areas, that's not the case. There's 6 airports in the London area and they all compete to offer the lowest landing fees to win airlines.
Ryanair capitalised on this and really injected all the competition in the market by only flying from 'secondary' airports.
I'm not sure the same thing could happen in the US. There isn't the same level of competition for airports, and without that I think it's hard for any airline to really make any difference.
Why didn't they just keep doubling the offer for volunteers? Surely by $1600 or $3200 someone would bite. Then everyone is happy, it all gets finished quickly, and there's no chance of this sort of PR disaster (even docile removees can end up in the news if they then, say, miss the death of a hospitalized family member due to the delay).
Because handbook says a certain amount is the maximum they can offer, and likely the crew offering more would risk their job. Following this fiasco, Munoz said they will expand the handbook. We'll see.
The way I understand it is that they can offer any amount they want to get volunteers. But if they want to involuntarily bump someone, they have to pay at least four times the one-way fare that passenger paid, up to $1,350.
So bumping the person that paid the least for their ticket would mean they have to pay them the least.
See the Involuntary Bumping subsection under Overbooking in [1]. The airline is obligated to give you either:
`min(2 * your ticket price, $675)`; or
`min(4 * your ticket price, $1350)`
depending on how quickly they can reroute you to your destination. You also have legal standing to demand they pay you with a cashier's cheque instead of a voucher.
Judging by personal anecdotes I've read around the web, airlines may be willing to pay more if they are in a bind. But note that this whole voluntary/involuntary bumping procedure happens before you scan your ticket and board the airplane.
There's a lot of nonsense regulations that different industries lobby to be put in place. I mistook the fact that there's a cap with what the airline is obligated to pay with what they are allowed to pay.
On overbooking, this is a solved problem: hold an auction where the max payoff is the risk in dollars X, distributed amongst Y passengers (the number of seats you need to free up). Start at some low anchor point ("$300 to get off the plane") and increment up until you have takers. If the total value exceeds X, write it off - you messed up.
I believe other airlines implement this in some capacity.
Yeah, there's also video from just prior to this incident where multiple people say "We'll get off for $1500" and the purser literally laughs and says "Yeah, that's not going to happen. People are going to need to leave the plane or it won't take off."
I definitely agree with the criticism that the media has focused on the video, as "shockertainment" rather than educating their viewers. The awareness of the law and skepticism in media is lacking, they pretty much disseminated incorrect relevant details. Many would decry a 46 page contract of carriage, but then also not aid the viewer in navigating that complex document.
At the very least, a journalist should ask the airline and the police:
-has a crime been committed?
-has a civil contract been committed?
-what breach of law or contract has been committed and can you cite this exactly?
-do you often threaten passengers with removal?
-how often are you asked to do non-criminal passenger extractions on behalf of the airline? which airlines?
Either the passenger committed a crime to cause forced removal, and it seems clear he didn't commit a crime (nor was in breach of the contract of carriage); or the police committed the crime of assault, an unlawful use of force. There's a crime here either way, and that outcome I think is interesting.
But no less interesting is that United appears to have a track record of using threats of violence to get passengers to do things that are not at all required by law, regulations, or their own contract of carriage.
http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united...
That passenger decided to acquiesce to the threats, and ended up having no real meaningful recourse, i.e. even for this reasonably affluent person, it wasn't worth it to sue.
Basically the contract is next to meaningless. This is might makes right. And if you won't stand your ground, aren't willing to get wrongfully arrested, and then sue at your own expense, the airline's threats will work and they'll get what they want.
If the information in this article is true, which seems to be the case after reading most of the linked sources, then a lot of the news articles that were cited are reporting false information. Now that immediately made me curious to see if Google Fact Check would flag these news articles as false or possibly false. Doing a quick search shows no Fact Check under any of the search results, so seems like the answer is no.
If Fact Check really becomes a thing, I hope that Google will be able to use current events like this as a bar for how fast Fact Check needs to respond to an event to make it useful. If they could find and source well researched information and immediately flag misreported news articles while a topic is at the forefront of the news, then it would immensely help educate people. For example:
My parents have not stopped talking about this since it happened and are still looking at and reading news about it. There was some misreported information that I had to clear up for them. If Fact Check worked, then it definitely would have prevented misinformation spreading to them and probably many others.
> This seems to reflect the deep internalization in America of deference to authority in the post 9/11 world, as well as reporters who appear to be insufficiently inquisitive. And there also seems to be a widespread perception that because it’s United’s plane, it can do what it sees fit. In fact, airlines are regulated and United is also bound to honor its own agreements.
I'm extremely pro-journalism (donate to various organizations, listen to podcasts hosted by journalists) but I'm completely baffled by how very few if any journalists dived into the details on what happened here in the very video, specifically the legalities and technicalities, compared to Redditors (who happen to be laywers) and bloggers. Going forward, readers who happen to be consumers and passengers could easily be adopting misinformation spread by trusted media sources and have the wrong frame of reference to view what happened.
Seems to me that what is most unfortunate is that surrounding passengers didn't support the passenger dragged off the plane. 4 or 5 people standing up and threatening something along the lines of "Why don't you take my seat too jackass; I don't want it anymore" would have been far more effective at righting this situation than proper media reporting or crying about passenger contracts.
Maybe in those few minutes, but in the long run a high-publicized international incident will be a million times more effective in creating conditions for improvements.
While that sounds like a nice thing to do on a personal level, it distracts from the real issue at hand - poor service and handling of a situation that was bad from the start. I strongly disagree that the passengers should have stepped up and taken the fall for poor practices from United. People don't need to be better humans - companies need to be held accountable for their actions and act better towards their customers.
There really isn't clarity here. The article argues that the flight wasn't overbooked, therefore UA couldn't kick anyone off. I agree if it wasn't overbooked, but it's not clear that that's evidently true. It's certainly gonna be contentious and probably up to a judge or jury to decide if it actually gets that far. I doubt it.
The more pressing matter is what do you do as a passenger when YOU are involuntarily denied boarding due to overbooking? Are you gonna sit in place, say, "I don't believe you." and wait for the stasi to take you away for a beating?
Has everyone watched the video? There is a point in the video where "things went wrong" and it happens right before the officer makes the decision to physically touch the passenger and begin to assault him in order to remove him.
Immediately before that point, there are a multitude of things that could have been done or done differently. The choice was made by that one individual to physically take hold of the passenger who was ultimately, peacefully, declining to deplane.
For example ... the officers could have:
1. Explained to the passenger and everyone around him about how he is single-handedly delaying everyone else's arrival home right now.
2. Gave several warnings, spaced out appropriately over time, that increased levels of escalation will be involved, up to and including the point of physical removal. In other words, telling him he will be forcefully removed against his will for not obeying the law.
... and so on with certainly more creative approaches that I wouldn't necessarily expect a typical police officer to think of and/or employ.
I believe this is exactly the kind of thing that will be resolved by the tools the market provides.
If they wanted volunteers to fly the next flight instead of this, they should have offered more than $400. Kind of like an auction: $500, $600, etc. and eventually enough people would have been incentivized to take the deal.
The company failed at that and now their competitors will get their business and increase their market shares at United's expense.
IANAL, but they might even be facing a very expensive lawsuit and will have to settle.
The market will ultimately work things out, I don't think the FAA should intervene much.
177 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadIf their occupancy ratio was lower, then there wouldn't have been a problem, they could have fit the crew in. If they reserved 4 seats for crew on every flight, again there wouldn't have been a problem.
If they had even reserved 2 seats and run sufficient flights such that the crew got to the target airport in time there wouldn't have been a problem.
If they had brought crew in from two different starting points - it would have been fine.
It's still overbooking, just not oversold tickets.
The airline played the game, ran too lean and paid the price.
Much like an ISP having all their IP traffic going down one pipe, and not having enough room to send out the customer invoices because everyone is watching Netflix.
And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.
> And at any rate, the flight was not oversold anyway. It was merely the 4 extra United employees who put the plane over capacity.
Well yes, that's the whole point of this discussion, that calling it "overbooking" or "oversales" is wrong.
The plane was fully booked and boarded at capacity, and then 4 more seats were cleared by physically removing passengers. Collapsing these events by saying it's an overbooking issue overlooks the very important timeline in between the plane being booked/boarded and then initiating a removal of said passengers, instead of denying them in the first place.
The request for 4 seats should've arrived before the boarding process (or at least before it ended), that's the problem.
Oversales: The airline sold too many tickets
It's a thin distinction to be sure, but it reads with rhetorical significance to me.
My understanding is that there was a lengthy conversation that took place before the outrage-inducing video starts. They did attempt to resolve the situation peacefully. At some point there is an impasse. Police are making a request and he's ignoring it. There are two ways that can go: 1) Police shrug their shoulders, leave, and let the man have his way; 2) He's going to be forcefully removed.
That is, as far as I can tell, the actual reality of the situation. And anybody advocating for outcome #1 probably has some thinking to do about what it actually means to have a police force at all.
Yet why does the forceful removal of that passenger justify knocking him down and dragging him off the plane? There's plenty of ways to forcefully remove someone from something without doing what they did.
Police is allowed to apply force, but that doesn't immediately give them the right to go loco.
Maybe there are better ways to resolve this situation wrt to the police and the airline. But I think basic common sense says that there are much better ways this passenger could have handled it, too. At some point it must have been obvious to any reasonable person that 1) the cops weren't going to change their minds; and that 2) force would eventually and inevitably be applied to resolve the situation in their favor.
That's not to downplay how horrendously the situation was handled. The airline deserves to pay damages, and he deserves the money. But, to suggest that he didn't help by not cooperating is one of the silliest ideas swirling around.
Again, I have come to expect very little of American police. The crew should have known better than calling the police. I blame more the crew and probably their textbook for unleashing the dogs, rather than the dogs biting.
I found this law which, from a layman's perspective and based on my understanding of the sequence of events, the passenger violated: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46504
"An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. However, if a dangerous weapon is used in assaulting or intimidating the member or attendant, the individual shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life."
If a flight attendant asked him to get off the plane and he belligerently refused, that would seem to be a violation of this law.
Note that I'm not arguing that the original request was justified OR that the police response was justified.
49 U.S. Code § 46501 - Definitions (1) “aircraft in flight” means an aircraft from the moment all external doors are closed following boarding— (2) “special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States” includes any of the following aircraft in flight:
And to preempt more of this nonsense, FAR 91.3 and 91.11 don't apply either, those are for operational safety purposes. This is a contract of carriage issue, and what the airline tried to do is not in that contract.
The passenger was within his right to peacefully refuse to cooperate, in this instance, as reported.
There's room for them to have different authority than other Chicago police, I haven't found anything in a couple minutes of looking, but they aren't private security or anything like that.
Instead they chose a side to favor by force.
The police won't arbitrate a civil matter.
> they could asked the airline to cancel the flight and seek damages in a court. Then, and only then, they could remove anyone from the plane as it wasn't part of a contract anymore but just the airline's property.
If they asked the airplane to cancel the flight they could then remove the man from the plane? You're arguing that if United cancelled the flight for everyone that would render the contract of carriage moot for all and then the person would no longer have a claim to a seat?
If the flight was canceled, the contract wouldn't be moot but the case would need to be resolved outside the plane anyway. As the plane wouldn't be anymore part of the problem, the airline could ask for the passenger to be removed on the ground that he was trespassing. The passenger could also ask the police make sure that the plane stays grounded.
Your position strikes me as compatible with an authoritarian police state. And that is not the system of government we have in the U.S.
It is part of the job description for police to, at all times evaluate the legality of what they're doing. Otherwise, they are just hired thugs, might makes right, let a judge sort it out. And if they are merely hired thugs, that makes them untrustworthy by default as civil servants, and will even be viewed as capricious. What's the standard of the moment?
And in fact, that's why Black Lives Matter is even a thing. The police aren't trusted in some communities, because they have so often simply reacted with force. That's what the politics requires, and is a betrayal in those communities. Use force now, sort out the injustices later (maybe). That's a recipe for loss of trust, other than, do what they say or they will beat your ass. That's not justice in any possible sense of a civil society.
I'm seeing the suggestion that United broke the law which doesn't quite seem to be what this article is saying. The article is saying they breached their own contract of carriage. This would allow for damages afterwards in civil procedures but i can't imagine how it gives the man the right to ignore the order of crew and airport police to get off the plane.
The contract wouldn't even enter into it. If there's a grievance, then it should be handled later. The police aren't there to litigate that issue. They're there to resolve the immediate conflict.
Crucially, it doesn't matter that the contract is 100% in your favor. That's not what the police are there to discern.
Everybody is trying to play amateur aviation attorney, but this is really about understanding the role of police in resolving disputes like this one.
Including you.
You're right that it's not the responsibility of police to determine all details of who's right and who's wrong, especially considering contracts that can take days for a trained contract lawyer to understand. They do have a responsibility to ensure that the person requesting removal is the owner of the property, and the person being removed is not a co-owner, but that's about as far as it goes.
However, that's not the only issue being discussed here. Just as we should get too hung up on the "FAA regulated aircraft" portion, we shouldn't get hung up on the "police role" portion either. The more important question is United/Republic's role. Were they in a position to require this passenger's removal, or was that breach of contract? What about the issues of crew logistics and voluntary-deboarding incentives? If you want to broaden the focus, let's broaden it all the way.
Neither 49USC§46501 nor 14CFR§91 applied at the time in question, according to applicable definitions (e.g. "crewmember" and "flight time") which anyone who presumes to interpret law can and should look up near the rules themselves. Absent either of those, the passenger had all the rights he would have in any other time and place. He had a contract establishing his right to be where he was. United/Republic had already recognized that right by allowing him to board in the first place. He had done nothing since to waive or nullify his rights under that contract. Thus, at that moment and under those circumstances, he was under no obligation to comply with the order that was given.
If they'd closed the doors, 49USC§46501 would apply. If they had left the gate, 14CFR§91 would. Those would have been different cases, but we're not here to discuss different cases. Anybody who wants to treat rules as sacrosanct should do so based on a full and accurate understanding of those rules.
https://chicago.taleo.net/careersection/100/jobdetail.ftl?jo...
And I imagine they must have some sort of law enforcement authority.
Doesn't mean it wasn't illegal to do what they did though.
This is correct and I believe it's by design.
Law enforcement officers are selected for high aggression and high intelligence is often/usually penalized in the screening process. In a lawsuit against New London CT, the courts found it legal to disqualify a candidate for being too smart.
I would argue that the unconscious paying customer with a bloody head paid the price.
The cop got suspended. That's paying a price, too. And it may not be the end of the price he pays.
With trust that low it was probably only a matter of time before a dispute escalated into unnecessary use of force.
Many (some? most? warning, weasel words) airports operate at capacity so just adding more flights might not have been possible even if they wanted to
See, for example, the fights going on at Love Field over gate space
They could have started the process before the flight booked, asking for volunteers before they got seated and attached to the idea of being on that flight. If they had no volunteers, they could probably have randomly selected passengers to deny boarding, and rejected them at the gate. While I am offended by them violently dragging the man out of his seat and off the plane, if the ticket scanner doesn't blink green the passenger likely won't force his way onto the plane, and if he was injured by security while doing so, public opinion would not be so united against the airline.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, they just didn't follow through with the correct way to free up seats, which is increasing the bid.
Some family cleared something like $13,000 in amex gift cards during the delta debacle last week by volunteering their seats multiple times. If you keep increasing the bid, you will find a price at which someone will give up their seat.
They broke federal law by breaking their contract of carriage. I don't know what is so difficult to understand about that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/dealbook/wells-f...
https://darkpatterns.org/
"When you use the web, you don’t read every word on every page - you skim read and make assumptions. If a company wants to trick you into doing something, they can take advantage of this by making a page look like it is saying one thing when it is in fact saying another."
United behaved despicably, but not illegally.
American and United are two of the most poorly run mega-corps in the US. Customers hate them, but need to fly. Warren Buffet thinks they're notoriously bad investments. Why?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-big-bet-on-...
This still doesn't refute my primary argument.
As far as the companies being bad investments, it's most likely due to their extremely low margins and ROI.
The FAA regulates an immense amount of things that are trivial and those regulations are very hard to update. The FAA issues the vast majority of regulations[0].
[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%...
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg86618/html/CHRG-11...
Get rid of the FAA and it's only a matter of time before what was illegal ends up taking down a full airliner, killing hundreds or even thousands of people and ruins flying for everyone.
I don't know how you can back that up. Who has done an analysis on the percent of them that have made a material impact on safety.
> Get rid of the FAA
I didn't say that. I just said they're in the way of innovation and customer satisfaction. Maybe we don't have to be extreme. Maybe we could just modernize them?
I found the argument interesting that United should have lied and just invented a plane swap with a smaller body. Would have left the affected passengers is a weak position.
There is so much wrong on all levels including the reaction of the CEO. This will be a case study for long time.
From what I've read, they weren't in a grey area, they were doing something that was specifically illegal. A grey area is when it may or may not be illegal. This wasn't grey.
(I'm not implying it would, I'm curious to read an analysis that covers it)
United still screwed up in a lot of ways. So did Republic. So most of all did the aviation "police" - an organization that seems to consist largely of people thrown out of CPD for exactly the kind of misconduct visible on the video. But somewhere in there I think there's a fourth group that screwed up - the people whose sudden appearance triggered the whole mess.
The problem is that people now believe that. In fact, lawsuits against big companies often are settled on very favorable terms for the customer. As the article points out, United violated their own contract of carriage and FAA regulations. This is going to cost them.
It'd be a cake walk alright ... for the airline.
Pilots have similar powers to the captain of a civilian naval vessel, and can legally refuse to carry passengers or order them off the aircraft: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-extra-ordinary-powers-tha...
Moreover, refusing to leave the premises when requested or to comply with the police when they arrived, is unquestionably against the law.
Even a jury has to operates within the constraints of the law or be overturned on appeal. Remember, the airline would be the defendant and has the right to appeal.
Sure, being bumped is lousy behavior by the airline but the doctor doesn't have a legal leg to stand on for his tantrum. If anything, the airline could probably sue him for delaying the flight and win.
One might think that, but TFA points out that there are regulations covering when a passenger can be bumped. The demand that the passenger leave may have violated these rules. The police order in that case was mistaken, a point also raised in TFA.
Those regulations do not trump the pilot's authority to directly order a passenger removed for disrupting a flight, even for trivial reasons. See this article that discusses various airlines' history of expelling passengers (warning: autoplaying video with sound), http://fortune.com/2016/05/11/airlines-kicked-off-passengers..., or the FAA regulation directly, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title14-vol2/pdf/CFR-...
Moreover, the police order may have been mistaken but that in no way absolves the individual from complying with said order. He should have resolved the issue with litigation afterwards.
(Again, to make my position clear, the airline behaved quite badly but so did the passenger.)
Passenger was not disrupting the flight in any way. Passenger was behaving properly and then was forced to leave for the convenience of the airlines at great inconvenience to himself, despite the fact that he was as entitled to remain on the flight as any other passenger -- as in this was unfair to him and him alone. It was also made clear to him that he was not responsible for being forced to leave as well as the fact that all the other passengers felt the exact same way as the passenger who was being forced to leave.
By making him an agent of his company's customer service to remove a passenger who is in compliance with the law, regulations, and the company's own contract of carriage, and then use FAR 91.3(a) as an excuse to say the pilot must be obeyed is poor logic. And I am a pilot (and a former CFII). I think it makes flights less safe to inject the company's demands into the cockpit. They do not matter, what matters is safety. That's what his FAR is about, not to enable the pilot to be an ass to passengers on behalf of his moronic company.
And claiming otherwise damages the necessary trust that we're supposed to have, and should have, with pilots and crew. Their primary purpose is to save your life. It is not to pour sodas, or appease the company CEOs profit needs by being jerks to passengers, and throwing them off for business reasons.
As for the police, I think that was an illegal assault on the part of the officer, and given the available information the passenger wasn't breaking any laws, so the police being there was inappropriate in the first place, they shouldn't have intervened and should know that.
Edited a few times to remove foul language :-D
Too many places I frequent have had crews, and especially airline pilots, basically pulling the "my word is law, there is no appeal and no review and nobody above me but God and even He only has an advisory role" crap.
More recently, examples of pilots refusing to fly with Muslims on board. It's more of this "what I say goes" logic, and the gate agents were not able to tell the pilot to take the corn cob out, and take these passengers to their destination.
Except that's not who dragged him off. Representatives of a customer safety federal aviation department physically dragged him. I don't think everyone fully understands the sequence or "players" involved (I had to look it up too). - http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-united-pa...
Otherwise, you're absolutely correct about voluntary vs compulsory.
A police officer would still be liable for not properly restraining and ensuring the safety of the "victim".
Some additional information from the Wikipedia article on airport police that seems to be relevant: "The City of Chicago Department of Aviation Police perform safety, security and law enforcement functions at O'Hare International Airport & Midway Airport. The department was formerly called the Department of Aviation Special Police. The Chicago Police Department Airport Unit also performs many of the law enforcement duties in and around Chicago area airports." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_police) However, that information may or may not be current.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Please throw away your throwaway account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_in_command
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Civilly I can give you, but substantively?
> The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything?
I don't understand how you can claim I'm not commenting "substantively" when I'm correcting blatantly wrong info with citations.
Technically the blacks in the South had the right to vote after the Civil War. It took another hundred years of struggle to also secure the practical right. Theoretical rights don't matter much for those who can't exert them.
Well, no -- they just don't have much bargaining power. Which is different.
I don't want to make it partisan but with all due respect TOS is not the law (oh btw, please keep pushing to repeal the CFAA in the US). We don't live in a libertarian "paradise".
I've heard of anecdotes where a judge throws a pre-nuptial agreement because it was too one-sided? I think the same should apply to terms of service and arbitration clauses. They cannot supersede the law or become the law.
Something people are not talking about is why isn't there a lawsuit against the police department? They're the ones who did the actual assaulting?
See, for just one example, AT&T v Concepcion.
Your rights are replaced with a contract you didn't quite realize you agreed to. As such, you have no rights against a corporation. The arbitration kangaroo court is not required to observe the law. A meeting of the minds is not required where a contract with a corporation is concerned, as a human doesn't have to realize their rights were stripped by the contract.
When everything is privatized, you will have no rights remaining.
This goes double for Y Combinator-enabled companies because they operate under the guise of being better for their people, their customers, and their industry than others.
I don't think it's fair of you to criticize either the length or the obscurity of terms of service. After all, you could replace nearly all of them with:
" 1. We have every right of every kind and can do anything, without being liable for anything.
2. you have no rights of any kind and may do nothing, except those afforded by law, which you hereby waive as far as legally possible. "
More forward-thinking startups might add something to the effect of "Of course this does not mean we are Satan! We will naturally make an effort to provide roughly the service you have paid for. However, nothing in this section should be construed as a statement that we shall not act like Satan in any particular instance. We reserve the right to be Satan at any time and our sole discretion without providing any prior written warning. You've been warned."
Did I miss anything?
(1) When the meaning of a term (e.g. "boarding") is ambiguous or undefined, courts are required to interpret it in the way less favorable to the drafter of the contract.
(2) If the conditions under which one party may do something are enumerated, they may not do it for reasons other than those on the list.
Both principles of legal interpretation go against United in this case. Remember, this is civil law - not criminal. The burden of proof is very different. While many such contracts are too one-sided, rules such as these exist to ensure that they can't be entirely so. A completely one-sided contract might even violate the requirement that it involve mutual consideration, making it a legal non-entity.
"Lawyer here. This myth that passengers don't have rights needs to go away, ASAP. Here is how United illegally kicked him off the plane:
1. First of all, it's airline spin to call this an overbooking. The statutory provision granting them the ability to deny boarding is about "OVERSALES", specifically defines as booking more reserved confirmed seats than there are available. This is not what happened. They did not overbook the flight; they had a fully booked flight, and not only did everyone already have a reserved confirmed seat, they were all sitting in them. The law allowing them to denying boarding in the event of an oversale does not apply.
2. Even if it did apply, the law is unambiguously clear that airlines have to give preference to everyone with reserved confirmed seats when choosing to involuntarily deny boarding. They have to always choose the solution that will affect the least amount of reserved confirmed seats. This rule is straightforward, and United makes very clear in their own contract of carriage that employees of their own or of other carriers may be denied boarding without compensation because they do not have reserved confirmed seats. On its face, it's clear that what they did was illegal-- they gave preference to their employees over people who had reserved confirmed seats, in violation of 14 CFR 250.2a.
3. Furthermore, even if you try and twist this into a legal application of 250.2a and say that United had the right to deny him boarding in the event of an overbooking; they did NOT have the right to kick him off the plane. Their contract of carriage highlights there is a complete difference in rights after you've boarded and sat on the plane, and Rule 21 goes over the specific scenarios where you could get kicked off. NONE of them apply here. He did absolutely nothing wrong and shouldn't have been targeted. He's going to leave with a hefty settlement after this fiasco."
Pure and simple.
The huge, 350-million US domestic market is served by 4-5 major airlines, while the EU with 500 million people is served by tens of airlines. I recently flew from Barcelona to Nice for 30 euros, round-trip (with seat assignment).
Where are the (potentially Mexican or Canadian-based) low cost airlines? That's right, none to be seen.
Let's hope this bust-up brings some legislative measures to introduce more competitive practices in the airline industry.
Otherwise we will soon be paying for the right to pee in-flight really soon.
If you mean by distance, sure, but you can drive anywhere in the US, and there are a lot of people that do choose to drive semi-long distances (10-12 hours) over flying when fuel is cheap because they enjoy driving. It's less of an option when the distance is something like 30-40 hours, i.e. from LA to NYC.
> the lousy economics of airlines combined with their oligopoly status in the US says they will be extremely reluctant to make anything beyond bare minimum changes
It sounds like you agree with the author.
Which is understanding the cause, not looking at the symptoms.
I'm in the upper midwest and we have two or three low cost airlines. Sun Country is the biggest (and based in MN). Spirit Airlines also has a decent presence. Sun Country flies to lots of places. First class ticket to Anchorage cost me ~$700 last time I flew with them, less than an economy seat on Delta.
In the EU, many (most?) airports are privately owned. In the US, they're almost always state owned. Furthermore, the Port Authority generally owns all the airports in the area.
In many EU areas, that's not the case. There's 6 airports in the London area and they all compete to offer the lowest landing fees to win airlines.
Ryanair capitalised on this and really injected all the competition in the market by only flying from 'secondary' airports.
I'm not sure the same thing could happen in the US. There isn't the same level of competition for airports, and without that I think it's hard for any airline to really make any difference.
As in, among other reasons, is United in the wrong here because the maximum they offered for volunteers was $800, not the regulated $1350?
So bumping the person that paid the least for their ticket would mean they have to pay them the least.
Judging by personal anecdotes I've read around the web, airlines may be willing to pay more if they are in a bind. But note that this whole voluntary/involuntary bumping procedure happens before you scan your ticket and board the airplane.
[1]: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights
I believe other airlines implement this in some capacity.
At the very least, a journalist should ask the airline and the police: -has a crime been committed? -has a civil contract been committed? -what breach of law or contract has been committed and can you cite this exactly? -do you often threaten passengers with removal? -how often are you asked to do non-criminal passenger extractions on behalf of the airline? which airlines?
Either the passenger committed a crime to cause forced removal, and it seems clear he didn't commit a crime (nor was in breach of the contract of carriage); or the police committed the crime of assault, an unlawful use of force. There's a crime here either way, and that outcome I think is interesting.
But no less interesting is that United appears to have a track record of using threats of violence to get passengers to do things that are not at all required by law, regulations, or their own contract of carriage. http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-united...
That passenger decided to acquiesce to the threats, and ended up having no real meaningful recourse, i.e. even for this reasonably affluent person, it wasn't worth it to sue.
Basically the contract is next to meaningless. This is might makes right. And if you won't stand your ground, aren't willing to get wrongfully arrested, and then sue at your own expense, the airline's threats will work and they'll get what they want.
If Fact Check really becomes a thing, I hope that Google will be able to use current events like this as a bar for how fast Fact Check needs to respond to an event to make it useful. If they could find and source well researched information and immediately flag misreported news articles while a topic is at the forefront of the news, then it would immensely help educate people. For example:
My parents have not stopped talking about this since it happened and are still looking at and reading news about it. There was some misreported information that I had to clear up for them. If Fact Check worked, then it definitely would have prevented misinformation spreading to them and probably many others.
I'm extremely pro-journalism (donate to various organizations, listen to podcasts hosted by journalists) but I'm completely baffled by how very few if any journalists dived into the details on what happened here in the very video, specifically the legalities and technicalities, compared to Redditors (who happen to be laywers) and bloggers. Going forward, readers who happen to be consumers and passengers could easily be adopting misinformation spread by trusted media sources and have the wrong frame of reference to view what happened.
Exactly.
The more pressing matter is what do you do as a passenger when YOU are involuntarily denied boarding due to overbooking? Are you gonna sit in place, say, "I don't believe you." and wait for the stasi to take you away for a beating?
Immediately before that point, there are a multitude of things that could have been done or done differently. The choice was made by that one individual to physically take hold of the passenger who was ultimately, peacefully, declining to deplane.
For example ... the officers could have:
1. Explained to the passenger and everyone around him about how he is single-handedly delaying everyone else's arrival home right now.
2. Gave several warnings, spaced out appropriately over time, that increased levels of escalation will be involved, up to and including the point of physical removal. In other words, telling him he will be forcefully removed against his will for not obeying the law.
... and so on with certainly more creative approaches that I wouldn't necessarily expect a typical police officer to think of and/or employ.
If they wanted volunteers to fly the next flight instead of this, they should have offered more than $400. Kind of like an auction: $500, $600, etc. and eventually enough people would have been incentivized to take the deal.
The company failed at that and now their competitors will get their business and increase their market shares at United's expense.
IANAL, but they might even be facing a very expensive lawsuit and will have to settle.
The market will ultimately work things out, I don't think the FAA should intervene much.