Doctor dragged off United plane

[Pappy13]

Based on your response, it appears that the idea that "if you won't take $800 to scuttle your travel plans, you are not a decent person" is not an uncommon viewpoint in the airline industry.

Taking $800 to scuttle my travel plans and allow a doctor to meet his commitments and to provide a flight crew the opportunity to allow an entire A/C full of people to continue their travel plans is not an uncommon viewpoint for many outside the airline industry. I don't fly a lot and I've only been offered the chance to give up my seat once and I seriously considered it and that was just because the flight was overbooked. Under these circumstances I'd like to believe that I would have done it. Despite what you think Spider this happens all the time and many people are actually grateful for the extra $800 in their pocket and often are able to catch a later flight that day and just be a little inconvenienced. I'm actually a little shocked that no one took them up on the offer. No doubt that United was a little surprised as well based on their poor handling of the situation although this exact situation is exceedingly rare, most of the time people are just not allowed to board the A/C rather than having to actually remove them from the A/C after they have boarded so maybe United was just a bit unprepared for it. I think the situation could have been avoided by telling everyone that the flight would be delayed until someone gave up their seat. Eventually someone would have caved.

[Pappy13]

Or on the hand, what if it was a young black male that was traveling home from college on spring break, I can only imagine the headlines.

The chances of that happening are pretty small. The airlines don't use a random drawing. The system actually selects people based on several criteria like whether or not you are travelling alone, have a connecting flight, your final destination, your age, etc. Senior citizens and under 25 would likely not be chosen. As you pointed out profession is not one of the criteria although the airlines would likely have no way of knowing that anyway.

[masterfins]

Taking $800 to scuttle my travel plans and allow a doctor to meet his commitments and to provide a flight crew the opportunity to allow an entire A/C full of people to continue their travel plans is not an uncommon viewpoint for many outside the airline industry. I don't fly a lot and I've only been offered the chance to give up my seat once and I seriously considered it and that was just because the flight was overbooked. Under these circumstances I'd like to believe that I would have done it. Despite what you think Spider this happens all the time and many people are actually grateful for the extra $800 in their pocket and often are able to catch a later flight that day and just be a little inconvenienced. I'm actually a little shocked that no one took them up on the offer. No doubt that United was a little surprised as well based on their poor handling of the situation although this exact situation is exceedingly rare, most of the time people are just not allowed to board the A/C rather than having to actually remove them from the A/C after they have boarded so maybe United was just a bit unprepared for it. I think the situation could have been avoided by telling everyone that the flight would be delayed until someone gave up their seat. Eventually someone would have caved.

I rarely travel by air, but I have to wonder if some of the more "seasoned" passengers on the flight were holding out for the airline to make a better offer, because they have seen it happen before.  Probably ten years ago I was catching a connecting flight home and they asked for volunteers, and me and some family volunteered, as it was only going to be an extra three hours, for free tickets in the future.  They slowly added some of the volunteers to the flight (it turns out it was a weight issue because it was a small regional plane), I was the last let on the plane and they had to kick some other guy off because he was flying standby.  The flight crew wanted to let the guy stay, but the office kicked him off in place of me, because they didn't have to give him any perks because he was flying standby.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Years ago a friend of mine volunteered 6 flights in a row.  He was suppose to catch a Wednesday morning flight didn't get home until after everyone else was done eating on Thanksgiving, he got a decent mix of travel vouchers and cash, he said he got better at negotiating better deals on the later ones. He used the four round trip tickets he got on spring break working out a deal that he would provide the plane tickets if the other three friends split the cost of the hotel.

[Spider-Dan]

Taking $800 to scuttle my travel plans and allow a doctor to meet his commitments and to provide a flight crew the opportunity to allow an entire A/C full of people to continue their travel plans is not an uncommon viewpoint for many outside the airline industry.

You claimed that not volunteering to give up your seat for $800 means that you are not a decent person.  I'm sure there were many decent people on that flight who also had good reasons for not wanting to delay their travel.

Furthermore, you are falsely framing the choice as preventing an entire plane of people from continuing their plans, when in reality United could have chosen to simply increase the payoff until they had a taker.  The choice was actually about preserving United's profit margin, nothing more and nothing less.  Given that their best offer was still well below the federal limit, United obviously had room to continue sweetening the pot.

[Pappy13]

You claimed that not volunteering to give up your seat for $800 means that you are not a decent person.

Actually I merely claimed that there wasn't a single decent person on the flight. I'll admit that was a poor choice of words. I should have said there wasn't a single person willing to do the decent thing and give up their seat. You're right that doesn't mean that they're not decent people. Thanks for clarifying.

Just for fun I looked up the price of a 1 way ticket from O'Hare to Louisville Ky on United and depending upon when you purchased the ticket it would run you around $200 so the $800 was approximately 4X the 1 way fare, which is what the federal regulations say you are entitled to if delayed more than 2 hours. That was in no way a lowball price, that was a fair and reasonable offer. Yes I'm sure that United could have increased it if they wanted to, but I don't think they were simply being cheap. They made a fair offer and no one took it for whatever reason. Unfortunately United then decided to take a different approach. That was a mistake. The $800 offer for someone to give up their seat was not.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Turns out different airlines have different philosophies regarding bumping.  United views it as a cost to be minimized they ask for volunteers and offer less than they would have to pay if they bumped someone.  Spending more than the government mandated amount is a waste of money. Avoiding wasting money is important to being profitable.

Delta on the other hand recognizes that people who volunteer are typically thrilled with the experience and those who are invollentarily bumped are extremely pissed.  Keeping  customers happy is important to being profitable so if it requires offering a few hundred dollars more to have happy volunteer rather than a pissed off customer than that is money well spent.

Sounds like Pappy is defending the United method of doing business and Spider is advocating the Delta method.  I don't know which approach Southwest uses.  But I do know if I have a choice between United and Delta I am going to fly Delta.

[Spider-Dan]

United's stock dropped $255 million in value over this incident.  So how many successful instances of offering exactly what is required by federal regulations - no more, no less* - do you need to offset $255 million dollars?

*I say "no less," but they actually did open with a lowball offer of half of what is required, so...

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

United's stock dropped $255 million in value over this incident.  So how many successful instances of offering exactly what is required by federal regulations - no more, no less* - do you need to offset $255 million dollars?

*I say "no less," but they actually did open with a lowball offer of half of what is required, so...

Two different values.  Real question is does tha savings offset the loss in future sales.  The stock value drop suggests investors don't think so.

And actually they didn't offer half the federal min.  Federal min is lesser of 1250 or 4x.  And airlines are allowed to select the passengers that paid the lowest fare to bump.

[Pappy13]

Sounds like Pappy is defending the United method of doing business....

I'm defending their right to do business as they see fit. They did the appropriate thing in offering $400 initially and then $800 for someone to give up their seat and then picking 4 people after that. They did not do the appropriate thing by forcebly removing someone from the aircraft who refused. I think the appropriate thing to do would have been to tell everyone the aircraft wasn't going to leave until someone gave up their seat and waited it out. I think under those circumstances someone would have given up their seat, or at the very least the crowd would have turned against the holdout doc and I think they ALL would have wanted him off the aircraft at that point.

I don't know which approach Southwest uses.

I don't really think they have an approach, but I think it's pretty rare that we actually bump a paying customer off a flight. The reason I said paying customer is that non rev do get bumped all the time, but that's to be expected, they aren't paying customers. If you got a ticket chances are that you aren't getting bumped and I think that's true for the airline industry as a whole. Unusual circumstances do come up from time to time which is what happened to United.

[Pappy13]

Here's the real problem. I didn't know this was United's policy. Apparently they simply had a flight crew check in late after the aircraft had already been boarded. I don't know what's Southwest's policy on this, but like I said I think it's extremely rare to remove someone after they have already boarded, at least not to give his seat to a crew member.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/04/15/heres-one-thing-united-will-do-differently-after-the-infamous-fiasco-involving-dragged-passenger/?utm_term=.f25f0b436da1

[Spider-Dan]

They did not do the appropriate thing by forcebly removing someone from the aircraft who refused. I think the appropriate thing to do would have been to tell everyone the aircraft wasn't going to leave until someone gave up their seat and waited it out. I think under those circumstances someone would have given up their seat, or at the very least the crowd would have turned against the holdout doc and I think they ALL would have wanted him off the aircraft at that point.

In order for this course of action to work, the airline would have to publicly identify the doctor as the reason why the plane isn't leaving.  What you are advocating sounds a whole lot like, "Instead of getting the cops involved, why don't we let the people solve the problem themselves?"  If this doctor wasn't willing to get off the plane when uniformed police officers physically dragged him off, what exactly are you proposing will be different if the rest of the passengers are angry at him and there are no cops?

Once again: the airline's best offer was still $500 short of the federal limit, and you're already willing to implement mob intimidation?  This vision of Mad Max Airlines is bizarre.

[masterfins]

Once again: the airline's best offer was still $500 short of the federal limit, and you're already willing to implement mob intimidation?  This vision of Mad Max Airlines is bizarre.

If Spider's right about the Federal Limits, which I assume he is as no one has challenged it, I don't think United had the right to be forcibly dragging anyone off the plane unless they had.  It seems to me if this is the case, then the FAA should be levying some heavy fines against United for doing so.

[Spider-Dan]

Turns out that Hoodie only has part of the story as to why Delta's customers are a lot happier with their overbooking experience.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/how-delta-masters-the-game-of-overbooking-flights/

"Delta started this practice back in 2011, and it works like this: When passengers on overbooked flights check in online or at the check-in kiosk, they’re asked what the dollar value of the travel voucher they would accept as compensation for volunteering their seats. They give you a hint, too — “Delta accepts lower bids first.” By the time you reach the gate, the gate attendants already have a list of passengers to call up to confirm they’ll fly standby. If your bid is low enough, you’ll be on that list.

By having customers compete against one another to give up their seats, Delta ensures it can just about always lock in the lowest possible payout. How low can you go? The ground is the limit."

So it turns out that with some planning and foresight, Delta not only avoids irate customers bumped against their will, but also saves money in the process.  This is a black eye on United corporate leadership.  Their raises this year might be slightly less massive!

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

So to summerize by using a little common sense.  Delta is able to often offer substantial less to fix the overbooked flights, but is willing to spend substantially more if that is what it will take to prevent pissed off customers.  Otoh, United has a system where up until a few days ago, they dont even know flights will be overbooked if they need to transport their OWN employees.