Incompetent United Air Lines Physically Drags Passenger Off Plane For Their (Airline) Mistake

[Divine Wind]

United did not have to eject passengers to get their crew from Chicago to Louisville

Chicago O'Hare is a major hub and United must either have small aircraft or the ability to charter one on short notice. They decided ejecting passengers was cheaper

Wow. You really think airlines have multi-million dollar assets just laying around? Why not put passengers on them and make some money?

 

[Divine Wind]

Hell they could have shuttled them to Louisville in a car -- it's not even three hundred miles. Would have been a lot cheaper too. I could drive that distance for twenty bucks, and they're offering four passengers 800 each? That's just plain stupid.

1) Crew rest laws.

2) Time is money. If driving a car is so easy, then why is Dao bitching? He could have pocketed the money and rented a car. Easy peasy, eh?

 

[rightwinger]

Dao will have the sympathy of any court because he was in the right...

Disagreed, but time will tell. In the end, I suspect United will throw some money at him to shut him up and put this behind them and Dao will take plea deals from both the Feds and the State to avoid jail time.

Nobody goes to jail for refusing to leave an airplane...especially Dao
What...are they going to fine him for bleeding on an airplane?

 

[rightwinger]

Hell they could have shuttled them to Louisville in a car -- it's not even three hundred miles. Would have been a lot cheaper too. I could drive that distance for twenty bucks, and they're offering four passengers 800 each? That's just plain stupid.

1) Crew rest laws.

2) Time is money. If driving a car is so easy, then why is Dao bitching? He could have pocketed the money and rented a car. Easy peasy, eh?

Why didn't United charter a plane to fly them 300 miles?

 

[Divine Wind]

Plus...what about luggage? Did they only "randomly pick" from passengers with no checked luggage? If not, what about his luggage that went on without him? Or did they plan on delaying until his luggage was dug out from the hold?

No. Since he was involuntarily deplaned, checked luggage would go ahead of him.

 

[Divine Wind]

Hell they could have shuttled them to Louisville in a car -- it's not even three hundred miles. Would have been a lot cheaper too. I could drive that distance for twenty bucks, and they're offering four passengers 800 each? That's just plain stupid.

1) Crew rest laws.

2) Time is money. If driving a car is so easy, then why is Dao bitching? He could have pocketed the money and rented a car. Easy peasy, eh?

Why didn't United charter a plane to fly them 300 miles?

From who? It's not like calling an Uber where there are dozens of them just hanging around for work. It takes time to set up. My guess is that there was a time factor here; specifically crew rest regulations.

Fact Sheet – Pilot Flight Time, Rest, and Fatigue

Duty Limitations of an FAA Pilot

 

[rightwinger]

United did not have to eject passengers to get their crew from Chicago to Louisville

Chicago O'Hare is a major hub and United must either have small aircraft or the ability to charter one on short notice. They decided ejecting passengers was cheaper

Wow. You really think airlines have multi-million dollar assets just laying around? Why not put passengers on them and make some money?

At a major hub like O'Hare. I'm sure United has a corporate jet sitting around. If not, there are turboprops that seat 10-12 passengers that are available for hire

But ejecting passengers is cheaper

 

[rightwinger]

Hell they could have shuttled them to Louisville in a car -- it's not even three hundred miles. Would have been a lot cheaper too. I could drive that distance for twenty bucks, and they're offering four passengers 800 each? That's just plain stupid.

1) Crew rest laws.

2) Time is money. If driving a car is so easy, then why is Dao bitching? He could have pocketed the money and rented a car. Easy peasy, eh?

Why didn't United charter a plane to fly them 300 miles?

From who? It's not like calling an Uber where there are dozens of them just hanging around for work. It takes time to set up. My guess is that there was a time factor here; specifically crew rest regulations.

My guess is that United was too cheap and thought bullying passengers off the plane was a better option

 

[Divine Wind]

Nobody goes to jail for refusing to leave an airplane...especially Dao
What...are they going to fine him for bleeding on an airplane?

Are you disagreeing about the law on it or simply agreeing that Dao will take a plea deal to avoid jail?

 

[Divine Wind]

United did not have to eject passengers to get their crew from Chicago to Louisville

Chicago O'Hare is a major hub and United must either have small aircraft or the ability to charter one on short notice. They decided ejecting passengers was cheaper

Wow. You really think airlines have multi-million dollar assets just laying around? Why not put passengers on them and make some money?

At a major hub like O'Hare. I'm sure United has a corporate jet sitting around. If not, there are turboprops that seat 10-12 passengers that are available for hire

But ejecting passengers is cheaper

.....and your aviation expertise is based on what?

 

[airplanemechanic]

What law did Dao break?

Refusing the leave the aircraft when asked.

Expert suggests the law was broken on Flight 3411, but not by United Airlines

Andrew Harakas, partner and aviation expert at Clyde & Co law firm, told The Independent that Mr Dao was effectively obliged to disembark under federal law if asked to do so by staff.

“Once you’re a passenger on board an aircraft you can’t interfere with the crew performing their duties or the aircraft being operated, that’s the basic rule,” he said.

“Once you are on board an aircraft it is a general requirement of conditions that you obey the orders of the pilot and cabin crew,” he said, while adding that the orders often relate to safety instructions such as requiring passengers to fasten their seatbelts.

“Once you disobey an order of the cabin crew you are potentially in trouble, however unreasonable it is,” he added.

 

[Pogo]

Hell they could have shuttled them to Louisville in a car -- it's not even three hundred miles. Would have been a lot cheaper too. I could drive that distance for twenty bucks, and they're offering four passengers 800 each? That's just plain stupid.

1) Crew rest laws.

2) Time is money. If driving a car is so easy, then why is Dao bitching? He could have pocketed the money and rented a car. Easy peasy, eh?

I've been saying since I got to this thread that Chicago to Louisville is too short to justify a flight, hello?? That's true for passengers and it's true for United crew. They're all subject to the same laws of physics. The difference is, the passengers planned afuckinghead and paid for their seats. And I suspect after witnessing what they witnessed in the aisle, it's going to finally occur to them that they would have been better off driving, and next time will do just that. I guarantee you anybody who left Chicago in a car for Louisville at the same time any of these passengers headed for their plane, the car got there first.... and probably would have beat the plane even with no incidents. So much for "time is money" honey.

And once again --- United's offering four passengers 800 bucks each just to avoid thinking out of the box, and that's $3200 in future fare giveaways. I can drive them Chicago to Louisville for an expense of $20, Stoopid.

Hell, Nashville is further out from me than this run and I can hop in my car and drive there in at least the same time it would take to negotiate two airports to do it --- if not less time. There's a certain point where the amount of waiting around and shuttling around in airports, defeats the whole point of fast travel in the middle. Chicago to Louisville is below that point. It just IS. Which means it was simply not that critical that the crew had to be on that flight, "right now". Had they been due the next morning in Kuala Lumpur that would be different.

 

[Pogo]

What's interesting about this --- there's an Asian restaurant in Chicago I like to frequent where you can squat on the floor at a low table rather than traditional chairs.

The restaurant is called "Dao".

 

[Divine Wind]

I've been saying since I got to this thread that Chicago to Louisville is too short to justify a flight, hello??....

Yes you have, but thousands of passengers every month and several airlines disagree with you.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Re earlier posts on what they could have offered Fed regs allow them to pay up to $1,350 cash, not voucher, but cash. Another factor is they probably singled the guy out because he was a white male and kept provoking him over and over and over, to avoid 'discrimination' lawsuits. It's okay to abuse white males, after all.

Picaro

You professional victims never miss an opportunity to whine and cry about not getting everything handed to you on a silver platter.

Whatever your lot in life is your own doing. That you are a failure is not the fault of anyone but yourself.

Not to mention that the doctor is Asian and most certainly earned his doctorate, as did his wife.

Take responsibility for yourself and quit blaming others for your lack of balls and ambition.

 

[OnePercenter]

UAL stock is up! Who would have thought that a PR nightmare could be so profitable?

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Won't matter. United will make a generous offer to make him go away. If they do not, a jury will take a bite ten times the size of what United could have settled for.

Agree...I think United wants this one to go away
A lawsuit going to trial will bring this embarrassment back into the headlines

They will offer one of those "no admittance of fault" settlements

Of course they do. No airline wants bad PR, but this is now in the hands of the Feds and the State. Mr. Dao could end up on the No-Fly list due to his "law enforcement issues". 8 ways you can end up on the no-fly list

OTOH, I fail to see what lawsuit United needs to settle. Dao agreed to the terms of Carriage, all was done properly. Just because Dao refused to comply with lawful police orders is not the fault of United.

That's a good one

It will only add to his settlement with United

We'll see, but, again, this is out of United's hands. The laws Dao broke were State and Federal ones, not United's.

Tell it to the jury when they are assigning damages

Lets see....

United's ineptness provoked an incident on one of their planes that resulted in an entire planeload of passengers being terrorized
69 year old Dr Dao was roughed up, had his face slammed against an armrest, was knocked unconscious, was unable to treat his patients and now, as you are advocating is prohibited from flying

Maybe if they can find a jury full of airline executives United will have a chance

An as of the news this morning, he's still in the hospital.

But, UAL will get away with this, as will the thugs who assaulted him for the unforgivable sin of demanding to get what he paid for and then getting upset when he told he had to get off the plane.

 

[Divine Wind]

UAL stock is up! Who would have thought that a PR nightmare could be so profitable?

That didn't take long.

United Airlines and Pepsi’s PR scandals may not hurt their stocks
After a couple of days of outrage over a video showing a passenger being dragged from an airplane, shares of United Airlines parent United Continental Holdings Inc.UAL, -0.05% looked as though they would erase all the losses suffered following the incident. That is to say, while consumers may choose to pull their dollars from the brands, investors aren’t expecting that to hurt the company, at least not yet.

United’s stock initially erased all of its post-scandal losses, rallying as much as 1.4% in intraday trade Wednesday, to briefly rise above its 50-day moving average. This comes after Tuesday’s early stock plunge had wiped about $255 million off its market cap.

Analysts were mostly upbeat this week, as they focused on the carrier’s investor presentation Monday. Wolfe Research reiterated its outperform rating on the stock, based on strong traffic for the airline in March and in-line passenger revenue per available seat mile. Cowen & Co. analysts also pointed to the traffic data, making no mention of the passenger incident, and raised their stock price target.

Shares of United were down 1% midday Wednesday, compared with the S&P 500’sSPX, -0.41% drop of 0.5%.

All of these stock moves come after a viral video surfaced from a United flight Sunday, in which law enforcement dragged a paying passenger from the plane after he failed to volunteer his seat. Oscar Munoz, the United Chief Executive, apologized days later.


VERTICAL - United Airlines Passenger Violently Removed From Flight
(0:39)
A man was dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight from Chicago O’Hare to Louisville, Ky, on Sunday night after agents couldn’t find volunteers to leave the plane and selected four passengers at random. A passenger captured video of the ordeal. Photo: Tyler Bridges via Storyful

Similarly, after a wave of outrage over a commercial, shares of Pepsi PEP, +1.72%surged to an all-time intraday high of $133.73 Wednesday. The stock was on track for a record close, above its previous record of $112.45 on March 28.

In the days following the PR snafu, Pepsi’s stock had fallen as much as 0.4% on a closing basis to a 2 1/2-week low of $111.58 on April 6, and as much as 0.7% on an intraday basis to a 3-week low of $111.35 on Tuesday.

See also: Why you, too, could get dragged off a plane if the airline overbooks your flights

The Pepsi commercial featured model Kendall Jenner joining a protest and then offering a police officer a can of Pepsi, which appeared to resolve all tensions. Social media erupted with users angry about the commercialization of social movements, among other issues, and Pepsi pulled the advertisement and apologized last Wednesday.

Pablo Zuanic, a Susquehanna analyst, does expect the commercial to affect the brand, in addition to a slew of other issues, but is positive on the stock. He upgraded Pepsi to positive from neutral Wednesday, based on the hypothesis that the time is now ripe for a joint buyout bid by Kraft Heinz Co. KHC, +1.30% and Anheuser-BuschBUD, -0.04%

JetBlue Airways Corp. JBLU, -1.18% saw a similar bounceback effect in its stock in 2007, after the airline kept passengers on its planes for up to 11 hours as it waited out bad weather. About a week after the incident, JetBlue shares had bounced back to where they were before, helped by an analyst upgrade. The company later reported quarterly earnings that were hurt by the incident.

For United, this latest scandal comes just weeks after the carrier endured a wave of negative attention after barring two young girls from boarding a plane because their leggings were deemed inappropriate.

 

[Divine Wind]

Agree...I think United wants this one to go away
A lawsuit going to trial will bring this embarrassment back into the headlines

They will offer one of those "no admittance of fault" settlements

Of course they do. No airline wants bad PR, but this is now in the hands of the Feds and the State. Mr. Dao could end up on the No-Fly list due to his "law enforcement issues". 8 ways you can end up on the no-fly list

OTOH, I fail to see what lawsuit United needs to settle. Dao agreed to the terms of Carriage, all was done properly. Just because Dao refused to comply with lawful police orders is not the fault of United.

That's a good one

It will only add to his settlement with United

We'll see, but, again, this is out of United's hands. The laws Dao broke were State and Federal ones, not United's.

Tell it to the jury when they are assigning damages

Lets see....

United's ineptness provoked an incident on one of their planes that resulted in an entire planeload of passengers being terrorized
69 year old Dr Dao was roughed up, had his face slammed against an armrest, was knocked unconscious, was unable to treat his patients and now, as you are advocating is prohibited from flying

Maybe if they can find a jury full of airline executives United will have a chance

As of the news this morning, he's still in the hospital.

In a rubber room?

 

[Pogo]

I've been saying since I got to this thread that Chicago to Louisville is too short to justify a flight, hello??....

Yes you have, but thousands of passengers every month and several airlines disagree with you.

Ummm don't think so Chuckles. They just never bothered to calculate the time and cost. They're robot zombies murmuring "must.......... take.......... plane....." instead of giving it a moment's thought.

One time I went to Asheville airport to catch the first leg of a trip to Oregon. "Sorry" they told me at the airport, "your plane is late and we can't get you to your connection in Charlotte". "OK" I said, "fuck it, I'll drive to Charlotte". And I did, and I made it, easily, ahead of when the first plane was supposed to arrive.there.

The unwashed are just too lazy to figure out that air travel involves a lot of waiting around doing nothing and a lot of shuttling to and from places you wouldn't need to be in if you weren't taking a plane.

Oh and on the flight back from Oregon, the plane coming into Charlotte was late, and wasn't going to make the connection back to Asheville. Didn't matter to me -- I had my car.