Travelling in the US or with US airlines is not looking very good right now. Not just the United incident(s) but also TSA, Trump travel restrictions, flights constantly overbooked, massively late etc.
I wonder if it will start impacting traveller and tourism numbers at some point. I think anyone who doesn't really need to be in the US and/or is planning travelling with kids is likely to have some second thoughts at this point.
The company I work at (in Norway) had planed to take all 70 employees to NYC this summer to celebrate a milestone reached.
We just moved the whole thing to Paris instead as we had issues with all of the above, including employees that have visited "dangerous" countries.
The thing that pushed everyone over was when our former prime minster was harassed[1] at the border for having been to a meeting in Iran. It says in his passport that he was a former prime minster, but apparently none is safe from the US border guards.
Anecdotally I've noticed that for like 5 years now my friends and family have a pretty severe aversion to flying anywhere for anything.
From needing to show up hours before the flight, to the invasive screenings, the insane restrictions on what you can and cannot bring, the sentiment that if you check any baggage it's basically as good as gone, the ever increasing cost, the delays, and even things like the worry about if your ticket will actually get you on the damn plane!
If I have to choose between a 3 hour flight, and a 12 hour drive, the 12 hour drive is what I pick almost every time now. Ignoring "disasters" (massive accident, theft, etc...) I'm going to have all my stuff, I know i'm not going to waste hundreds of dollars on a ticket that will get "rejected" at the last second, i'll have a car when I get to my destination, i can bring whatever the fuck I want, and it's a fraction of the cost.
I am constantly surprised when reading about the US. You would think that there would be more similarities with New Zealand, my home country.
Anecdotally; I flew to Australia a few months ago on an economy-class ticket purchased at very short notice. My trip through both Auckland and Melbourne airports was very pleasant, and I had no need to even interact with any of the personnel the whole way through. The flight was full but not overbooked and we arrived early.
Reading the stories about travel to the US is very discouraging and erases any desire I had to visit. I suppose there isn't much of an incentive to improve anything in the US, because the economy doesn't rely on tourism to the same extent we do here.
United have always stunk. I'm thinking back about two decades on what was practically my first long-haul international trip. The return leg BOS-AMS on UAL was delayed due to equipment, then cancelled, then the replacement also delayed & cancelled, and so on, always with limited information and brusque, disinterested customer service. No apology, no compensation, and rerouting requests consistently denied. This continued for three days, and after three days of wandering the dreary halls of Boston Logan Airport my fellow detainees were on first-name terms.
Being a wet-behind-the-ears youth I had little idea of how abnormal this was, or how to properly and successfully complain to a gigantic company, and was also secretly enjoying my extra time in the US exploring the hidden places in and around an airport.
But some of the other passengers were frantic. Three days stuck at '90s-era Logan, because United couldn't get their act together and compounded their engineering & operational failures with dismally bad customer service. Some of them were missing major life events as a result.
Twentyish years on I have Legendary frequent flyer status, and exactly no dollars whatsoever were spent towards it with United. I choose to spend extra on friends and family routing with other airlines simply that they may avoid UAL. "Never again". Vote with your wallet.
It's never been easy to get into the US though, long before Trump they've been handing out arbitrary bans or doing nonsense like extraordinary rendition to 3rd world countries not respecting dual citizenship with Canada/Europe. I suspect nothing will happen because I can't remember a time where I didn't dread crossing the border all the way back to the Bush 1.0 presidency.
There's a NAFTA tribunal held once a week at major border crossings with Can/US not many people know about that can overturn the overzealous authority of border guards if anybody receives an arbitrary ban from entry I've had to use it a few times.
As for United Airlines monopolies allow this behavior to happen because where else are you going to go. United holds 73% of slots at Newark for example
> Travelling in the US or with US airlines is not looking very good right now.
As someone not living in the US, travelling to the US is not looking good either. I know of many, many people who have written off visiting the USA for the foreseeable future.
I'm one of those and I've spent many years in the US in the past (lived in NE and VA for 5 years in total and visited over 30 states). Sadly, as much as I enjoy visiting the States, it simply feels like too much of a liability to visit at the moment. I'll reconsider in 4 years if it hasn't got any worse.
> I wonder if it will start impacting traveller and tourism numbers at some point.
According to some, it already has:
"All this has resulted in an estimated loss of $185 million in business travel bookings from January 28 to February 4, as calculated by the Global Business Travel Association. The drop-off in tourism is predicted to result in 4.3 million fewer visitors this year, which adds up to a staggering loss of $7.4 billion in revenue for the US."
Imagine when they start asking for your passwords. Many of my colleagues said they really won't go anymore if that happens. It won't be long before conferences in the US will see diminished attendance from other parts of the world. In my field (biophysics) I'm pretty sure more local conferences are going to much more preferred in the future.
At Boston Logan airport me and some colleagues (+ the rest of the people on the plane waiting at customs) were once barked at: "The next person who forgot to fill out the back of his green form will be sent back to his home country!" No smiles, just a death stare while you put in your finger prints...
It's a shame, it's such a beautiful country but I could do without.
This is actually a really good thing if numbers are greatly hit. It'll hopefully lead to the entire US travel industry to focus on becoming the most travel friendly place it can be. But the hit needs to be big enough for shareholders to care.
My wife and I just got back from a trip to Italy. The flight was full on the way there. We went from Chicago to Rome. However on the way back we flew from Venice with a stop over in Madrid back to Chicago. The plane was only 1/3 full at most. I remember commenting to my wife how empty it was.
This is a direct consequence of charging for checked bags.
Now every flight takes twice as long to board and disembark because everyone is carrying as much carry on as they can and trying to stuff them into the overhead bins.
Annoyingly, they usually start making announcements about gate-checking bags for free so they are not really reducing the costs and they're encouraging passengers to drag their bags through security (slowing down that line) in the hope they can gate check the bag for free (or not at all) in order to save $100/bag.
The airlines should offer free bag check and charge $100/bag per carry-on in the overhead bins (under the seat is free still).
> I wonder if this is a first step of a large trend yet to develop.
I sure hope not. Isolation only fuels nationalism. Nationalism fuels irrational decisions. Irrational decisions lead to fascism.
If you want your people to dehumanize a culture, the first step is to isolate your people from that culture. Don't allow your people any opportunity to empathize with that culture. If you continue to isolate your people, you can breed an "us vs them" sentiment. This is perfect if you want to start a war with popular support.
We just hired an Indian national at the startup I work for. He's on an h1b visa after finishing his masters in CS. Everyone at the company has to be registered with Homeland security. I'm so pissed. I think maybe we've convinced the CEO to just not and see what happens.
Comment might be buried... But, the problem is the baroque overlaid combinations of [seat class, fare class, FF status, standby, cash vs FF purchase, time of arrival at gate, etc.] intersecting with [connecting flts, equipment, weather, etc.] leads to a large range of predictable conditions with uncertain outcomes. E.g. only one seat remaining, who gets it: passenger needing to make intl connection on a FF ticket or cash paying high status passenger?
This is a global optimization problem that can be easily solved - but there are many cases where on the ground discretion is required [last minute aircraft change, weather delay]. Poorly paid, under trained and under motivated staff will always drop the ball in this situation.
The solution for United here is two fold 1) Increase training, comp, authority and motivation of gate agents to solve problems with minimal disruption. This used to be the case a bankruptcy ago. This setup is not likely to return due to a simple reason: cost. United in bankruptcy blew up the pension promises to some of their most experienced staff. They left.
2) The best outcome for United is to reduce the complexity of their product so that customer expectations of service align with the company's ability to deliver.
tl;dr: United's service is too complex for their gate agents to deliver. Service should be simplified.
At the moment I wish United gets beaten up well for forced passenger removal earlier this week. However, IMO this article just tries to pile onto the "United stinks" meme and is poorly written (more emotions than facts). Some things missing (for me):
1. When did this happen? The article makes it look like this just happened, but does not mention a date. I suspect the omission is on purpose (if so, boo!; if not, sorry, but please add event date).
2. The fact that the guy bumped off is rich is irrelevant (and going on and on about it dulls the message).
3. The fact that the seat the guy was downgraded was noisy (people arguing on both sides) is irrelevant.
IMO the main point is valid -- the person was first to the seat and in general whoever gets into the seat first keeps it in case of a seat collision or a duplicate ticket. He should not have been asked to free it to another passenger (who should have been downgraded instead and compensated somehow). But conflating this with unrelated issue to get on a "United stinks" meme is a cheap trick. My 2c.
The information is missing from the story, but is available on other write ups of the same story.
It happened on April 1st. He was offered the difference in price between the first class seat and the economy seat. That seems like poor compensation since this is basically a form of denied boarding, which involves higher compensation. Perhaps technically, since he still had a seat, it's not denied boarding, but it's certainly worth more than the fare difference.
The relevant part is that the United staff specifically said he would be put in handcuffs if he didn't comply. That's the part to me that makes this fair game to bootstrap some attention from the other incident.
"IMO the main point is valid -- the person was first to the seat and in general whoever gets into the seat first keeps it in case of a seat collision or a duplicate ticket."
I would be extremely annoyed if I were in the same situation as this flyer.
However, I'm not really sure what United is supposed to do here ... according to the article they had a mechanical problem with the original plane and the replacement plane had fewer first class seats ...
So somebody has to not fly in the first class seat.
Again, I would be very, very upset - but as an outsider looking in, it seems a bit childish and primitive to assume that whoever raced to the seat first gets to keep it, regardless of any other factors.
Again, United has to downgrade somebody to coach in this situation - it seems reasonable that they sort that downgrade to the lowest "status" passenger.
The customer even paid premium price to be in first class and instead of being notified at the gate, like any respectable airline would do, he's asked to give his seat to somebody "more important" than him when already seated.
It doesn't make any sense, if that "more important person" came later, he should be the one getting compensated by the airline especially when the problem occurred because United needed to change the plane for a smaller one.
I don't develop games... But if I did I would create a game called "United flight agent". You would be standing in the aisle facing the rear of the plane. Each round you would have a goal number of passengers to forcibly remove.
You would walk up and down the aisle and punch out selected passengers. Once you had suitably subdued a passenger you click a security badge and the "Airport Rental Security" guys come and drag the passenger off.
The game timer would be a chart of United's share price. The round is over when the price hits zero.
The price could rise and fall with certain events:. A passenger stumbling back on the plane for instance.
The game would end immediately if you punched a baby - even United agents don't punch babies!
I'm appalled by how this frontal assault on human dignity is shielded by law. What many of us learned this week is that it seems to be perfectly legal to bump off poorer or less privileged people specifically from a plane.
This is boat allocation on Titanic all over again.
It's actually far worse than just a "pattern of behavior", it is how United and other airlines (mostly US, but rest of the world is catching on) have deliberately structured their enterprise and the entire customer experience.
Everything revolves around "privilege". Even 20 years ago, this used to be bad. On most European airlines' flights, you just waited at the gate until your flight was called, then got in line (with some minor prioritization) then flew.
Whenever I had the misfortune of flying United (an ever rarer occasion as I wizened up to the situation and later to "codeshare" flights), half the gate was at the counter, jockeying for perks and arguing status and privilege.
This has apparently now been codified with (last I checked) 6 separate cattle lanes for boarding. Also, when I was booked on United business (a mistake), the flight attendants apparently had to try to find certain "special" elite passengers and suck up to them, in order to get little "stars" on their cards. How utterly demeaning!
Again, the US has been on the frontier of this deplorable trend, but the rest of the world is catching up, with Heathrow being the first airport I've seen with separate security lines for first class passengers. Munich caught up a little later.
To me, it looks like the airlines in general (and it looks like United in particular) are so embedded in this completely artificial conception of segregating their passengers by privilege, that results like the ones we are seeing are not anomalies and not even outliers, but the logical and maybe even unescapable consequences.
Dear Airlines: I just want to get from A to B. I don't care the slightest bit about your weird privilege system, and your efforts of forcing me to care by making "non-privileged" travel hellish just make me consider alternatives including not flying, but certainly not flying with your airline.
Oh, and it doesn't have to be that way. Quite a few years ago I was on a multi-legged Star Alliance trip, with several legs across the US getting me from Maui to a Lufthansa flight out of JFK. The penultimate stopover was Chicago, but the United flight coming in to Chicago was late and the United flight leaving didn't wait for me. I tried the United counter, but for the longest time there was simply no-one there, and when someone showed up they told me it wasn't their problem. ??
Desperate, I searched a bit and found a Lufthansa hotline. After I told my sob-story, the operator said "Oh, you're in Chicago, why do you need to go to JFK? We have a flight leaving Chicago in 3 hours, let me just rebook you on that" Said, done. It was a normal economy ticket.
You included an interesting link. I think the difference between someone who has not yet boarded and someone who has already boarded is significant in terms of the time, effort and expectations of the individual.
>Instead, the service rep offered to refund Fearns the difference between his first-class ticket and an economy ticket
So he paid the cost of first class but flied economy and when they get called out on it they think all they need to do is compensate for the difference? With the way he was treated?!
How can you call yourself "Customer care specialist" and think that is a way to treat customers?
In Pakistan Citizen didn't let a minster on board a flight, after it got delayed due to him. Citizen abused him and he had to leave the plane. I meant United is demonstrating something even worse than would happen in our 3rd world country, and all I get it now, the 1st World only got bit of money and tech and at the end of the day, they are just as big an assholes as we are.
First they beated a customer and now another one was moved to economy in order to make room for a certain high profile.. !!! So you truly see, this is the so-called first world, racism against minorities and immigrants despite 'they' invaded Red Indians land, and now they are demonstrating same 'social class' discrimination, that's common place in the 3rd World, minus the $+Tech, and there you have even worse of the 3rd World.
By the way, in the case of Dr Dao it was also not overbooking that caused him to get bumped off, but airline's assignment of lower priority to him than someone else. Just like in the parent article.
There were other misreportings as well, not to mention that some news outlets ran character assassination stories and almost nobody emphasised that Dr Dao was a senior.
"What United and all companies need to do is to train and empower workers to deal with specific issues as they arise,” she said. “Don’t just follow whatever is written in your policies."
Unfortunately that's so often the case - one may as well be conversing with a robot in many customer service situations. I can only imagine it's just as frustrating for the disempowered service reps.
Empowering local service reps often leads to worse things. The cases where a Muslim passenger or whatever was forced to leave because another passenger complained wasn't written into any policy, it was the result of local crew exercising their discretion.
Jeff Bezos' annual letter, released yesterday, had a good line (one of many) that immediately made me think of this United situations and broadly the crazy rules we've created for air travel and the culture that surrounds it all:
"It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second."
Been flying for 25 years, 1.5 million miles total, most of that on United. US airlines have been through hell over the last 16 years. Bankruptcies, union battles, fierce competition, and not to mention, the real threat that someone could blow up or intentionally crash the plane they're flying, all contributed to a mentality that the employees have to stick together to survive.
The end result is that US airline employees see their loyalty to each other as more important than customer service.
This mentality enables the micro-selling, endless class stratification, rigid authority and the generally unpleasant demeanor of staff. They're really not friendly in the US, and strikingly different from, say, Asia-based carriers.
Actually, the Obama administration allowed United to take over Continental when we already had so few competing airlines in this country as it is, so Obama should be blamed. We need more competition, not less.
With the consolidation of airlines, it is much harder than it was to say you don't want to fly with them anymore and they know it.
The case with the passenger being dragged off the plane was not regular United but some lower-cost airline that has a close business relationship with United.
The CEO should have set up an on-call executive that can quickly deal with situations like these two cases. It would not be very hard to do.
I have a good story to tell about El-Al (Israeli) airlines and US Air.
I was on a connecting flight on US Air to Newark to take El-Al. The US Air flight left late and arrived late. Israeli security escorted me and 2 other passengers onto the El-Al plane to Tel Aviv but the luggage did not make it.
El-Al opens all bags that don't travel with the passenger in a bomb chamber which is located at JFK. So it took 3 or 4 days to get my luggage. El-Al gave me $75 even though it was not their fault. US Air paid suit, shoes, etc. that I had to purchase.
So two days ago my 2-month old Dell UltraSharp monitor broke with flickering and some cosmetic damage. I reached out to Amazon rep because I bought from there. The repr and I spoke and did some testing. Eventually he said he would help me make an exception by sending me a replacement without any fees, a pre-paid return label, and do a two-day guarantee shipment, despite the return window has already passed (it was April 6th, last week).
I got my new monitor today, and I am happy.
The repr said because of my purchase history. I am a good customer to them, someone who have bought probably couple thousand dollars worth of goods from Amazon over the years.
AWS itself also offered to eliminate all of the charges on my account after a huge spike on billing (which is believed to be the results of network attacks) under no questions.
This is how you build a $300B company. You take constant short-term losses over long-term gains.
United Airline has a long fucking way to learn how to treat its customers. If customer B's flight had a mechanical failure, should do this:
UA: "Sorry, we have a mechanical problem, do you wish to take the next flight? We will offer you a voucher."
B: "No. I need to get there on time."
UA: "Do you wish to take an economy seat? Our first-class is full."
B: "No. I am a priority seating customer." (<--- does this shit even exist?)
UA: "I understand. We will ask if anyone on the current flight is willing to give up."
UA: "HEY PEOPLE ANYONE WANT TO GIVE UP THEIR SEAT FOR X AMOUNT OF MONEY AND INCENTIVES?"
UA: "Okay no one. Increasing. We still have a few minutes left to auction a seat for an economy seat swap."
UA: "Sorry Sir / Madam. No one is willing and the flight is destined to leave now, so we can't hold up the 365 passengers onboard. We are sorry for your inconvenience, we will see if other airlines have seats available and we can help arrange a flight for you based on your continued support of United Airlines."
Now either B take it or leave it. Done. One airplane's delay is a delay for other 100 flights waiting to leave the airport on time.
Win 100 customers over 1 customer.
This is grade-school manner, fucking grade-school manner. Change your policy now if you are so serious about good customer service and fear of law suits.
Actually now I come to think of it, airlines should build an auction/seat auction app.
$1,000 does not sound like true full fare first (I.e. F class http://www.cwsi.net/m/united.htm), but my real guess is they had a global services customer they needed to get on the plane and this had paid less or had lower Frequent flyer status than the rest of the cabin
Forcing passengers to relinquish seats they've already sat down in is clearly a terrible policy. Once you're in your seat you should be "locked in", except in exceptional circumstances. Pulling someone out of a seat has a much higher emotional (and PR) cost than denying someone boarding in the first place.
[+] [-] tici_88|9 years ago|reply
I wonder if it will start impacting traveller and tourism numbers at some point. I think anyone who doesn't really need to be in the US and/or is planning travelling with kids is likely to have some second thoughts at this point.
Recently Canada's girl guides cancelled all trips to the US: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/14/canadian-girl-gui....
I wonder if this is a first step of a large trend yet to develop.
[+] [-] tyfon|9 years ago|reply
We just moved the whole thing to Paris instead as we had issues with all of the above, including employees that have visited "dangerous" countries.
The thing that pushed everyone over was when our former prime minster was harassed[1] at the border for having been to a meeting in Iran. It says in his passport that he was a former prime minster, but apparently none is safe from the US border guards.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/former-norwa...
[+] [-] Klathmon|9 years ago|reply
From needing to show up hours before the flight, to the invasive screenings, the insane restrictions on what you can and cannot bring, the sentiment that if you check any baggage it's basically as good as gone, the ever increasing cost, the delays, and even things like the worry about if your ticket will actually get you on the damn plane!
If I have to choose between a 3 hour flight, and a 12 hour drive, the 12 hour drive is what I pick almost every time now. Ignoring "disasters" (massive accident, theft, etc...) I'm going to have all my stuff, I know i'm not going to waste hundreds of dollars on a ticket that will get "rejected" at the last second, i'll have a car when I get to my destination, i can bring whatever the fuck I want, and it's a fraction of the cost.
[+] [-] nxtrafalgar|9 years ago|reply
Anecdotally; I flew to Australia a few months ago on an economy-class ticket purchased at very short notice. My trip through both Auckland and Melbourne airports was very pleasant, and I had no need to even interact with any of the personnel the whole way through. The flight was full but not overbooked and we arrived early.
Reading the stories about travel to the US is very discouraging and erases any desire I had to visit. I suppose there isn't much of an incentive to improve anything in the US, because the economy doesn't rely on tourism to the same extent we do here.
[+] [-] inopinatus|9 years ago|reply
Being a wet-behind-the-ears youth I had little idea of how abnormal this was, or how to properly and successfully complain to a gigantic company, and was also secretly enjoying my extra time in the US exploring the hidden places in and around an airport.
But some of the other passengers were frantic. Three days stuck at '90s-era Logan, because United couldn't get their act together and compounded their engineering & operational failures with dismally bad customer service. Some of them were missing major life events as a result.
Twentyish years on I have Legendary frequent flyer status, and exactly no dollars whatsoever were spent towards it with United. I choose to spend extra on friends and family routing with other airlines simply that they may avoid UAL. "Never again". Vote with your wallet.
[+] [-] hackermailman|9 years ago|reply
There's a NAFTA tribunal held once a week at major border crossings with Can/US not many people know about that can overturn the overzealous authority of border guards if anybody receives an arbitrary ban from entry I've had to use it a few times.
As for United Airlines monopolies allow this behavior to happen because where else are you going to go. United holds 73% of slots at Newark for example
[+] [-] welly|9 years ago|reply
As someone not living in the US, travelling to the US is not looking good either. I know of many, many people who have written off visiting the USA for the foreseeable future.
I'm one of those and I've spent many years in the US in the past (lived in NE and VA for 5 years in total and visited over 30 states). Sadly, as much as I enjoy visiting the States, it simply feels like too much of a liability to visit at the moment. I'll reconsider in 4 years if it hasn't got any worse.
[+] [-] draugadrotten|9 years ago|reply
According to some, it already has:
"All this has resulted in an estimated loss of $185 million in business travel bookings from January 28 to February 4, as calculated by the Global Business Travel Association. The drop-off in tourism is predicted to result in 4.3 million fewer visitors this year, which adds up to a staggering loss of $7.4 billion in revenue for the US."
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/trump-sl...
[+] [-] teekert|9 years ago|reply
At Boston Logan airport me and some colleagues (+ the rest of the people on the plane waiting at customs) were once barked at: "The next person who forgot to fill out the back of his green form will be sent back to his home country!" No smiles, just a death stare while you put in your finger prints... It's a shame, it's such a beautiful country but I could do without.
[+] [-] shimon_e|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janesvilleseo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsllc|9 years ago|reply
This is a direct consequence of charging for checked bags.
Now every flight takes twice as long to board and disembark because everyone is carrying as much carry on as they can and trying to stuff them into the overhead bins.
Annoyingly, they usually start making announcements about gate-checking bags for free so they are not really reducing the costs and they're encouraging passengers to drag their bags through security (slowing down that line) in the hope they can gate check the bag for free (or not at all) in order to save $100/bag.
The airlines should offer free bag check and charge $100/bag per carry-on in the overhead bins (under the seat is free still).
[+] [-] scriptkiddy|9 years ago|reply
I sure hope not. Isolation only fuels nationalism. Nationalism fuels irrational decisions. Irrational decisions lead to fascism.
If you want your people to dehumanize a culture, the first step is to isolate your people from that culture. Don't allow your people any opportunity to empathize with that culture. If you continue to isolate your people, you can breed an "us vs them" sentiment. This is perfect if you want to start a war with popular support.
[+] [-] exabrial|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unixhero|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkrawczykowski|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] njharman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gm-conspiracy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Johnnybe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhulla|9 years ago|reply
This is a global optimization problem that can be easily solved - but there are many cases where on the ground discretion is required [last minute aircraft change, weather delay]. Poorly paid, under trained and under motivated staff will always drop the ball in this situation.
The solution for United here is two fold 1) Increase training, comp, authority and motivation of gate agents to solve problems with minimal disruption. This used to be the case a bankruptcy ago. This setup is not likely to return due to a simple reason: cost. United in bankruptcy blew up the pension promises to some of their most experienced staff. They left.
2) The best outcome for United is to reduce the complexity of their product so that customer expectations of service align with the company's ability to deliver.
tl;dr: United's service is too complex for their gate agents to deliver. Service should be simplified.
[+] [-] ptero|9 years ago|reply
1. When did this happen? The article makes it look like this just happened, but does not mention a date. I suspect the omission is on purpose (if so, boo!; if not, sorry, but please add event date).
2. The fact that the guy bumped off is rich is irrelevant (and going on and on about it dulls the message).
3. The fact that the seat the guy was downgraded was noisy (people arguing on both sides) is irrelevant.
IMO the main point is valid -- the person was first to the seat and in general whoever gets into the seat first keeps it in case of a seat collision or a duplicate ticket. He should not have been asked to free it to another passenger (who should have been downgraded instead and compensated somehow). But conflating this with unrelated issue to get on a "United stinks" meme is a cheap trick. My 2c.
[+] [-] tyingq|9 years ago|reply
It happened on April 1st. He was offered the difference in price between the first class seat and the economy seat. That seems like poor compensation since this is basically a form of denied boarding, which involves higher compensation. Perhaps technically, since he still had a seat, it's not denied boarding, but it's certainly worth more than the fare difference.
The relevant part is that the United staff specifically said he would be put in handcuffs if he didn't comply. That's the part to me that makes this fair game to bootstrap some attention from the other incident.
[+] [-] rsync|9 years ago|reply
I would be extremely annoyed if I were in the same situation as this flyer.
However, I'm not really sure what United is supposed to do here ... according to the article they had a mechanical problem with the original plane and the replacement plane had fewer first class seats ...
So somebody has to not fly in the first class seat.
Again, I would be very, very upset - but as an outsider looking in, it seems a bit childish and primitive to assume that whoever raced to the seat first gets to keep it, regardless of any other factors.
Again, United has to downgrade somebody to coach in this situation - it seems reasonable that they sort that downgrade to the lowest "status" passenger.
[+] [-] gkfasdfasdf|9 years ago|reply
Your point #2 and #3 are valid.
[+] [-] Belphemur|9 years ago|reply
The customer even paid premium price to be in first class and instead of being notified at the gate, like any respectable airline would do, he's asked to give his seat to somebody "more important" than him when already seated.
It doesn't make any sense, if that "more important person" came later, he should be the one getting compensated by the airline especially when the problem occurred because United needed to change the plane for a smaller one.
You don't kick customer, you compensate them.
[+] [-] tech4all|9 years ago|reply
You would walk up and down the aisle and punch out selected passengers. Once you had suitably subdued a passenger you click a security badge and the "Airport Rental Security" guys come and drag the passenger off.
The game timer would be a chart of United's share price. The round is over when the price hits zero.
The price could rise and fall with certain events:. A passenger stumbling back on the plane for instance.
The game would end immediately if you punched a baby - even United agents don't punch babies!
Feel free to run with it!!
[+] [-] cryodesign|9 years ago|reply
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vr-game-voluntary-disemba...
[+] [-] antognini|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gm-conspiracy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeswin|9 years ago|reply
This is boat allocation on Titanic all over again.
[+] [-] paulgb|9 years ago|reply
I hope for United's sake these are anomalies and not a pattern of behavior.
[+] [-] mpweiher|9 years ago|reply
It's actually far worse than just a "pattern of behavior", it is how United and other airlines (mostly US, but rest of the world is catching on) have deliberately structured their enterprise and the entire customer experience.
Everything revolves around "privilege". Even 20 years ago, this used to be bad. On most European airlines' flights, you just waited at the gate until your flight was called, then got in line (with some minor prioritization) then flew.
Whenever I had the misfortune of flying United (an ever rarer occasion as I wizened up to the situation and later to "codeshare" flights), half the gate was at the counter, jockeying for perks and arguing status and privilege.
This has apparently now been codified with (last I checked) 6 separate cattle lanes for boarding. Also, when I was booked on United business (a mistake), the flight attendants apparently had to try to find certain "special" elite passengers and suck up to them, in order to get little "stars" on their cards. How utterly demeaning!
Again, the US has been on the frontier of this deplorable trend, but the rest of the world is catching up, with Heathrow being the first airport I've seen with separate security lines for first class passengers. Munich caught up a little later.
To me, it looks like the airlines in general (and it looks like United in particular) are so embedded in this completely artificial conception of segregating their passengers by privilege, that results like the ones we are seeing are not anomalies and not even outliers, but the logical and maybe even unescapable consequences.
Dear Airlines: I just want to get from A to B. I don't care the slightest bit about your weird privilege system, and your efforts of forcing me to care by making "non-privileged" travel hellish just make me consider alternatives including not flying, but certainly not flying with your airline.
Oh, and it doesn't have to be that way. Quite a few years ago I was on a multi-legged Star Alliance trip, with several legs across the US getting me from Maui to a Lufthansa flight out of JFK. The penultimate stopover was Chicago, but the United flight coming in to Chicago was late and the United flight leaving didn't wait for me. I tried the United counter, but for the longest time there was simply no-one there, and when someone showed up they told me it wasn't their problem. ??
Desperate, I searched a bit and found a Lufthansa hotline. After I told my sob-story, the operator said "Oh, you're in Chicago, why do you need to go to JFK? We have a flight leaving Chicago in 3 hours, let me just rebook you on that" Said, done. It was a normal economy ticket.
Service.
Update: Check out https://thepointsguy.com/2016/04/top-perks-united-global-ser... This is a thing?!?
[+] [-] robotcookies|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olodus|9 years ago|reply
So he paid the cost of first class but flied economy and when they get called out on it they think all they need to do is compensate for the difference? With the way he was treated?! How can you call yourself "Customer care specialist" and think that is a way to treat customers?
[+] [-] ijafri|9 years ago|reply
First they beated a customer and now another one was moved to economy in order to make room for a certain high profile.. !!! So you truly see, this is the so-called first world, racism against minorities and immigrants despite 'they' invaded Red Indians land, and now they are demonstrating same 'social class' discrimination, that's common place in the 3rd World, minus the $+Tech, and there you have even worse of the 3rd World.
[+] [-] adekok|9 years ago|reply
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag...
and explain where it allows them to refuse transport to a well-behaved passenger after boarding?
Rule 21 seems to apply, but nothing there looks like "United can refuse to transport you 'just cause'".
I've seen lots of people claim this behavior is legal, all without a shred of evidence to back them up.
[+] [-] boomka|9 years ago|reply
There were other misreportings as well, not to mention that some news outlets ran character assassination stories and almost nobody emphasised that Dr Dao was a senior.
The best piece I've seen deconstructing this is http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-remo...
[+] [-] marcosscriven|9 years ago|reply
"What United and all companies need to do is to train and empower workers to deal with specific issues as they arise,” she said. “Don’t just follow whatever is written in your policies."
Unfortunately that's so often the case - one may as well be conversing with a robot in many customer service situations. I can only imagine it's just as frustrating for the disempowered service reps.
[+] [-] rayiner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bedhead|9 years ago|reply
"It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second."
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|9 years ago|reply
The end result is that US airline employees see their loyalty to each other as more important than customer service.
This mentality enables the micro-selling, endless class stratification, rigid authority and the generally unpleasant demeanor of staff. They're really not friendly in the US, and strikingly different from, say, Asia-based carriers.
[+] [-] davidf18|9 years ago|reply
With the consolidation of airlines, it is much harder than it was to say you don't want to fly with them anymore and they know it.
The case with the passenger being dragged off the plane was not regular United but some lower-cost airline that has a close business relationship with United.
The CEO should have set up an on-call executive that can quickly deal with situations like these two cases. It would not be very hard to do.
[+] [-] davidf18|9 years ago|reply
I was on a connecting flight on US Air to Newark to take El-Al. The US Air flight left late and arrived late. Israeli security escorted me and 2 other passengers onto the El-Al plane to Tel Aviv but the luggage did not make it.
El-Al opens all bags that don't travel with the passenger in a bomb chamber which is located at JFK. So it took 3 or 4 days to get my luggage. El-Al gave me $75 even though it was not their fault. US Air paid suit, shoes, etc. that I had to purchase.
[+] [-] jsemrau|9 years ago|reply
https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/united-airlines-should-go...
[+] [-] yeukhon|9 years ago|reply
I got my new monitor today, and I am happy.
The repr said because of my purchase history. I am a good customer to them, someone who have bought probably couple thousand dollars worth of goods from Amazon over the years.
AWS itself also offered to eliminate all of the charges on my account after a huge spike on billing (which is believed to be the results of network attacks) under no questions.
This is how you build a $300B company. You take constant short-term losses over long-term gains.
United Airline has a long fucking way to learn how to treat its customers. If customer B's flight had a mechanical failure, should do this:
UA: "Sorry, we have a mechanical problem, do you wish to take the next flight? We will offer you a voucher."
B: "No. I need to get there on time."
UA: "Do you wish to take an economy seat? Our first-class is full."
B: "No. I am a priority seating customer." (<--- does this shit even exist?)
UA: "I understand. We will ask if anyone on the current flight is willing to give up."
UA: "HEY PEOPLE ANYONE WANT TO GIVE UP THEIR SEAT FOR X AMOUNT OF MONEY AND INCENTIVES?"
UA: "Okay no one. Increasing. We still have a few minutes left to auction a seat for an economy seat swap."
UA: "Sorry Sir / Madam. No one is willing and the flight is destined to leave now, so we can't hold up the 365 passengers onboard. We are sorry for your inconvenience, we will see if other airlines have seats available and we can help arrange a flight for you based on your continued support of United Airlines."
Now either B take it or leave it. Done. One airplane's delay is a delay for other 100 flights waiting to leave the airport on time.
Win 100 customers over 1 customer.
This is grade-school manner, fucking grade-school manner. Change your policy now if you are so serious about good customer service and fear of law suits.
Actually now I come to think of it, airlines should build an auction/seat auction app.
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbcgerard|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] URSpider94|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlrobinson|9 years ago|reply