Awesome stuff you see on the internet
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@canefan maybe the crew were required to make the return journey? But yeah, as @Snowy says, poorly handled all round.
Always remember when I first flew form NZ - UK via Singapore (on Singapore and AirNZ) in 1999 the plane was well over half empty, I had rows and rows of seats to choose from, moved about freely, was awesome, wonder if they made any money on the flight (both legs were the same)
Never had such an empty plane again!
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@jegga said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
Weren't they getting bumped for united staff? The staff should be waiting for a flight with spare seats surely?
Nah. Has a knock on effect for the whole route structure if operating staff aren't where they are supposed to be. Could end up with thousands of passengers affected, not just one doctor. They must have needed them somewhere else. Normally those seats would have been allocated if it was a regular staff movement but it could have been due to a disruption (maintenance, weather, whatever).
Airline staff on personal travel are at the bottom of the heap if that is what you meant? I.E on standby?
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@jegga There are a few different reports on the status of the crew as well. Some actually said they were "off duty" but that doesn't mean that they weren't positioning to start a duty. Have also read that it was "police" that removed the pax which is very unlikely.
Fake news? Alternative facts? Just shit journalism I suspect.
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@jegga I was in NIce flying back to Heathrow and the BA flight we were due on ended up delayed several hours as a few of the crew had been delayed elsewhere and was no one to fly it apparently...so we got free food and beverages for a few extra hours at Nice airport.
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@Snowy I saw somewhere they were some sort of police specific to the airport like the New York subway has the transit cops . Fortunately they aren't armed .
Found it
3 Things to Know About the Officers in the United Airlines Fiasco
The 300-member unarmed airport police force is facing national scrutiny after officers dragged a passenger off a United flight.
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The earlier flight the crew were meant to use was cancelled - a common occurence in the USA from my experience.
United thought their minimum $800 offer would be enough to get 4 people to give up their seats. It wasn't. BTW, you are entitled to cash as well, not vouchers.
I used to fly in and out of O'Hare a lot and I always found their security staff to be over-officious.
This one hasn't been posted yet:
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I was just googling the same thing. To be employed as Chicago Department of Aviation security you have to be a state-certified police officer.
Thats why the reports are calling them CDA police officers. It's kind of true, but not really. They aren't a real police department and they have nothing to do with the Chicago PD.
Because of that certification requirement a lot of them work for police departments and do part time work for the CDA -
@Snowy said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
Just badly handled all around. As was mentioned above United could have made a PA to everybody on board with an offer that someone would take. Forcibly removing a passenger was always going to end in this shit fight.
WRT to overbooking - every airline that I have worked for does statistical analysis of the route / city pairs and calculates no show rates to determine how many extra seats to sell. This inevitably means that on the odd occasion when everyone shows up you have to give things away to rectify it. Once again a cost analysis is done to make it as efficient for them as possibble. Hard to quantify the publicity cost of dragging a doctor off a plane though.
Yep. Probably for a few hundred bucks more they could have gotten a volunteer. Instead, they created a PR nightmare, which the CEO made worse by being a cock, and lost hundreds of millions on the stock market. In the age of phones with cameras, roughing up a senior citizen is about the stupidest thing to do.
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@MajorRage Quite likely. Wasn't mentioned in the article I read, but it made me laugh. This is one of his "And there was me thinking Pepsi had already sorted the world peace thing."
@Mokey Yeah, damn phone cameras. You just can't get away with beating up geriatrics anymore, it's not like the good ole days.
I also suspect that the hundreds of millions written off the share price wasn't included in the cost analysis of overbooking that sector... -
@Mokey said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
@Snowy said in Awesome stuff you see on the internet:
Just badly handled all around. As was mentioned above United could have made a PA to everybody on board with an offer that someone would take. Forcibly removing a passenger was always going to end in this shit fight.
WRT to overbooking - every airline that I have worked for does statistical analysis of the route / city pairs and calculates no show rates to determine how many extra seats to sell. This inevitably means that on the odd occasion when everyone shows up you have to give things away to rectify it. Once again a cost analysis is done to make it as efficient for them as possibble. Hard to quantify the publicity cost of dragging a doctor off a plane though.
Yep. Probably for a few hundred bucks more they could have gotten a volunteer. Instead, they created a PR nightmare, which the CEO made worse by being a cock, and lost hundreds of millions on the stock market. In the age of phones with cameras, roughing up a senior citizen is about the stupidest thing to do.
Yep, just keep raising the money and the package, double the cash and 4 star hotel, double it again and 5 star hotel - mini bar and room service. Someone would have taken it eventually. That was just dumb.
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What everyone is missing is the Americans invented customer service. It's why they're so good at it.
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There is a maximum an airline can give a passenger to compensate them ($1350) but United were only prepared to offer $800.
Refer to Overbooking - Involuntary Bumping
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