So, at this point what does it take? Before you fly, do you need to go to a federal court and get an order to be allowed to board and take your flight, and bring a couple US Marshals to the gate with you for enforcement? Would air crew still insist that they possess an absolute authority taking precedence over it? Could the pilot be arrested and dragged off for contempt?
When people defend airline crew making up policies on the spur of the moment with "well, you have to comply, nothing bad happens until you don't comply", do they think about the extremes they're going to push people to sooner or later? Or does this kind of stuff just not enter their minds?
they have adopted a fully authoritarian mentality because they have been given arbitrary authority with zero accountability. this is the Stanfrod Prison Experiment except in real life and in a crucial service industry. we're fucked.
there's a big difference between "terrible business" (as the ISPs are) and "creeping towards totalitarianism" (as the airlines are). I wouldn't use this as a case for market deregulation or whatever it is you imagine might improve things. This is really fundamentally a cultural issue and not an economic one.
The problem isn't that United Airlines has insufficient competition (probably true). The problem is that United staff and airport security staff are given inappropriate amounts of power with no checks and balances when things get out of hand and that our society has become so deranged and paranoiac that we let them get away with it.
Given how well United handles anything (or Republic for that matter) soon you will be required to beg for mercy before boarding. Why would anyone in their right mind fly United any more? An airline with no clue about customer service whatsoever, nor for that matter even following their own procedures. If the TSA and your own airline department in charge of such things says its OK you really don't have a leg to stand on when you get sued. Much less the court of public opinion.
> Why would anyone in their right mind fly United any more?
If they're like me and they don't live in a major metropolitan area, oftentimes the choice of airlines is limited and one airline might consistently be a lot cheaper than the other choices you might have depending on the airline network and required flight connections.
That's why when I see things like this happen I view it as obviously bad PR for United but it seems like consumers don't have much choice in many scenarios unless they want to pay substantially more per ticket.
Bezos may have written his annual letter with United in his mind. Not all companies understand how to delight customers and United is at the bottom of the barrel.
The battery. Federal regulations prohibit open, unsealed batteries in passenger flights. Plus some Samsung phones have an, ahem, bad habit of blowing up.
Seems ridiculous, though, to use Samsung phones as an excuse to specifically ban Segways, but the not do the same for every other piece of consumer electronics that contains a rechargeable lithium battery.
I think what was really going on there was a combination of confirmation bias and groupthink - everyone settled on a convenient, if specious, excuse, and at that point none of the United staff really cared if it made any sense, because they didn't want to have to stop and think about wtf they were doing.
I understand that it's about the Note 7, but what does a Note 7 have to do with a Segway?
How is this different from if they said "oh, we don't allow guns on the plane, therefore you can't bring red licorice" , or some similar complete non-sequitur ?
I have to say, a company has to try really hard to somehow come out worse than the TSA in a customer dissatisfaction story.
The customer does research online and contacts both United and the TSA to get pre-approval of bringing the device onboard.
At the airport, the TSA allowed it through their checkpoint. But he gets stopped at the gate because his itinerary actually reads: "passenger was advised he would NOT be allowed to board with device, and the device will not have to be checked, provided he can place device in overhead without crew assistance. Transferred passenger to TSA for clearance of device through security." As the author noted, one could read the itinerary note and work through the logic to recognize that it was likely a typo.
Now, I can understand the gate agent being somewhat skeptical. After all, he deals with dozens of cases each day and doesn't have all the context of every situation so he probably falls back on past decisions to deny approval. So the author gets United's Special Needs Services on the phone to reaffirm that the device was fine and that he should be let on. The gate agent delegates to the manager. Again, without full context, the manager simply assumes the item can't be brought on despite what was mentioned by Special Needs Services.
So in hopes of getting the answer he wanted, the manager contacts the TSA, and the TSA representative says device is perfectly fine. At this point, anyone could think to themselves, "okay those are two authorities who give the green light. I think that's perfectly fine."
But no! The manager then elevates it to the authority of the pilot, who acts all polite in person but then eventually communicates that he won't allow the device onboard. Manager gets the verdict he desires and the author is screwed.
First of, I would imagine that a special needs representative is far more adept at know which electronic devices would be safe onboard a vehicle than a pilot who is probably unlikely to know about every single new assistive device out there. But even if that were not 100% true, I think getting approval from the first two sources should've been good enough.
Secondly, life is already really hard for those with physical disabilities. Especially when traveling, where there's a lot of stress on top of the unpredictabilities of the environment. So to be humiliated and endure additional physical pain for spurious reasons is quite inhumane, even for an airline.
Third, before the topic gets onto the economics of airlines (as it always gets to when it comes to customer experiences), I'd like to underline that the manager literally had to go out of his way to find a reason to deny the special needs of this individual. This isn't a case where the manager had to make a quick decision and had go with previous experiences, this is a person who disregarded explicit approvals from other agencies in order to validate their own belief.
Due to some historical quirks, the ADA doesn't actually apply to airlines the way you're expecting it to. There is federal law which applies, it's just not the ADA.
The basic history here is:
* In 1973 Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act. This is an ADA-like law which applies to federal agencies, contractors and some entities which receive federal funding.
* In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that the manner in which airlines benefit from federal funding is too indirect to cause them to be covered under the Rehabilitation Act.
* In response, Congress passed the Air Carrier Access Act, which applied Rehabilitation-Act-type standards to airlines.
* Later on in 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which went further in which types of entities it applied to.
The result is that for something that happens to you at an airport, you need someone familiar with the above laws to figure out which one applies to the particular people or entities who caused your problem. If it's the TSA or the airport itself, you use the Rehabilitation Act; if it's the airline, it's the Air Carrier Access Act; if it's someone else you probably use the ADA.
This is why, for example, this guy is working to slowly crack open the TSA using the Rehabilitation Act instead of the ADA, since the ADA isn't the law that applies to the TSA:
Affliate link and content sales capitalizing on trendy animosity. Hard to say if the story actually happened or it's more of a tall tale to make money.
They needed to describe the features of the device to explain why it was important they be able to keep that particular device with them - that they were being deprived of something more critical than the mere inconvenience of "just rent a substitute vehicle".
I was on the Jococruise so I can confirm that both port stops were tendered - I imagine what a pain it would be to get a standard motorized cart on and off the tender boats - they don't seem designed to handle that use case at all well.
I suspect this violates one or another aspect of the ADA. Especially as the OP followed the carrier's and the TSA's instructions and was given (verbal, but apparently authoritative) approval in advance.
If we had an Administration actually interested in these things: A first step would be to require the carrier to transmit written, authoritatively-signed approval in advance for all such accommodations granted. Yes, this will cost them something. At this point, let them eat that cost. If it were possible, I'd require them to create a separate accounting bucket for such expenses that can only be charged against gross profit and, to the best extent possible, cannot be charged back to ticket prices and therefore other customers' fares.
If their institution is so fucked up that they cannot properly and accurately accommodate legally-mandated behavior, then they should pay for this -- out of their own pocket, not the customers'.
This is a case where "hit them in the pocket" is quite appropriate. And, maybe it will have to come out of customers' pockets, ultimately. I see it as akin to Walmart, where the workforce is only sustainable because of substantial government program payouts -- tax dollars -- that subsidize it.
If United, et al.'s making money requires this level of disfunctional organization, then they need to find a better business model.
26 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 3911 ms ] threadWhen people defend airline crew making up policies on the spur of the moment with "well, you have to comply, nothing bad happens until you don't comply", do they think about the extremes they're going to push people to sooner or later? Or does this kind of stuff just not enter their minds?
In both cases there is no real competition, and new competitors are legally prevented from entering the market.
As a result the US are terrible in both categories by international standards.
The problem isn't that United Airlines has insufficient competition (probably true). The problem is that United staff and airport security staff are given inappropriate amounts of power with no checks and balances when things get out of hand and that our society has become so deranged and paranoiac that we let them get away with it.
If they're like me and they don't live in a major metropolitan area, oftentimes the choice of airlines is limited and one airline might consistently be a lot cheaper than the other choices you might have depending on the airline network and required flight connections.
That's why when I see things like this happen I view it as obviously bad PR for United but it seems like consumers don't have much choice in many scenarios unless they want to pay substantially more per ticket.
This is pure gibberish to me: what does a policy on Samsung phones have anything at all to do with Segways?
I think what was really going on there was a combination of confirmation bias and groupthink - everyone settled on a convenient, if specious, excuse, and at that point none of the United staff really cared if it made any sense, because they didn't want to have to stop and think about wtf they were doing.
How is this different from if they said "oh, we don't allow guns on the plane, therefore you can't bring red licorice" , or some similar complete non-sequitur ?
The customer does research online and contacts both United and the TSA to get pre-approval of bringing the device onboard.
At the airport, the TSA allowed it through their checkpoint. But he gets stopped at the gate because his itinerary actually reads: "passenger was advised he would NOT be allowed to board with device, and the device will not have to be checked, provided he can place device in overhead without crew assistance. Transferred passenger to TSA for clearance of device through security." As the author noted, one could read the itinerary note and work through the logic to recognize that it was likely a typo.
Now, I can understand the gate agent being somewhat skeptical. After all, he deals with dozens of cases each day and doesn't have all the context of every situation so he probably falls back on past decisions to deny approval. So the author gets United's Special Needs Services on the phone to reaffirm that the device was fine and that he should be let on. The gate agent delegates to the manager. Again, without full context, the manager simply assumes the item can't be brought on despite what was mentioned by Special Needs Services.
So in hopes of getting the answer he wanted, the manager contacts the TSA, and the TSA representative says device is perfectly fine. At this point, anyone could think to themselves, "okay those are two authorities who give the green light. I think that's perfectly fine."
But no! The manager then elevates it to the authority of the pilot, who acts all polite in person but then eventually communicates that he won't allow the device onboard. Manager gets the verdict he desires and the author is screwed.
First of, I would imagine that a special needs representative is far more adept at know which electronic devices would be safe onboard a vehicle than a pilot who is probably unlikely to know about every single new assistive device out there. But even if that were not 100% true, I think getting approval from the first two sources should've been good enough.
Secondly, life is already really hard for those with physical disabilities. Especially when traveling, where there's a lot of stress on top of the unpredictabilities of the environment. So to be humiliated and endure additional physical pain for spurious reasons is quite inhumane, even for an airline.
Third, before the topic gets onto the economics of airlines (as it always gets to when it comes to customer experiences), I'd like to underline that the manager literally had to go out of his way to find a reason to deny the special needs of this individual. This isn't a case where the manager had to make a quick decision and had go with previous experiences, this is a person who disregarded explicit approvals from other agencies in order to validate their own belief.
OP from Medium should name and shame the fools that caused this problem.
The basic history here is:
* In 1973 Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act. This is an ADA-like law which applies to federal agencies, contractors and some entities which receive federal funding.
* In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that the manner in which airlines benefit from federal funding is too indirect to cause them to be covered under the Rehabilitation Act.
* In response, Congress passed the Air Carrier Access Act, which applied Rehabilitation-Act-type standards to airlines.
* Later on in 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which went further in which types of entities it applied to.
The result is that for something that happens to you at an airport, you need someone familiar with the above laws to figure out which one applies to the particular people or entities who caused your problem. If it's the TSA or the airport itself, you use the Rehabilitation Act; if it's the airline, it's the Air Carrier Access Act; if it's someone else you probably use the ADA.
This is why, for example, this guy is working to slowly crack open the TSA using the Rehabilitation Act instead of the ADA, since the ADA isn't the law that applies to the TSA:
https://s.ai/tsa/legal/rehab_act/
For someone complaining, the post goes on and on into the minutiae of features!! Suspicious
I was on the Jococruise so I can confirm that both port stops were tendered - I imagine what a pain it would be to get a standard motorized cart on and off the tender boats - they don't seem designed to handle that use case at all well.
If we had an Administration actually interested in these things: A first step would be to require the carrier to transmit written, authoritatively-signed approval in advance for all such accommodations granted. Yes, this will cost them something. At this point, let them eat that cost. If it were possible, I'd require them to create a separate accounting bucket for such expenses that can only be charged against gross profit and, to the best extent possible, cannot be charged back to ticket prices and therefore other customers' fares.
If their institution is so fucked up that they cannot properly and accurately accommodate legally-mandated behavior, then they should pay for this -- out of their own pocket, not the customers'.
This is a case where "hit them in the pocket" is quite appropriate. And, maybe it will have to come out of customers' pockets, ultimately. I see it as akin to Walmart, where the workforce is only sustainable because of substantial government program payouts -- tax dollars -- that subsidize it.
If United, et al.'s making money requires this level of disfunctional organization, then they need to find a better business model.