Roseland Loc: Florida

Passenger bloodied, removed from airplane
April 10, 2017

Video of a passenger being slammed and then dragged from an overbooked United Airlines flight sparked an uproar Monday on social media, and a spokesman for the airline insisted that employees had no choice but to demand authorities remove the man.

As the flight waited to depart from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, officers could be seen grabbing the screaming man from a window seat, pulling him across the armrest and dragging him down the aisle by his arms. The airline was forcing the man to leave the flight because they’d oversold tickets and wanted to make room for four of its employees on the Sunday evening flight to Louisville, Kentucky.

According to social media reports, the elderly man was a doctor that insisted he needed to remain on the airplane because his patients were expecting him at the hospital the next day.
Other passengers on Flight 3411 are heard saying, “Please, my God,” ”What are you doing?” This is wrong,” ”Look at what you did to him” and “Busted his lip.”

Passenger Audra D. Bridges posted the video on Facebook. Her husband, Tyler Bridges, said United offered $400 and then $800 vouchers and a hotel stay for volunteers to give up their seats. When no one volunteered, a United manager came on the plane and announced that passengers would be chosen at random.
“We almost felt like we were being taken hostage,” Tyler Bridges said. “We were stuck there. You can’t do anything as a traveler. You’re relying on the airline.”

The plane was heading to Louisville from Chicago, which would have been a five hour drive for the United employees.
When airline employees named four customers who had to leave the plane, three of them did so. The fourth person refused to move, and police were called, United spokesman Charlie Hobart said.
Oscar Munoz, CEO of United Airlines’ parent company, described the event as “upsetting” and apologized for “having to re-accommodate these customers.”

When the manager approached the passenger, he said he was a doctor who needed to see patients in the morning, Bridges said. After the doctor was dragged from the plane, the four United employees then boarded to take his seat.
“People on the plane were letting them have it,” he said. “They were saying you should be ashamed to work for this company.”

A few minutes later, the man who was removed from the plane returned, looking dazed and saying he had to get home, Bridges said. Officers followed him to the back of the plane. Another man traveling with high school students stood up at that point and said they were getting off the plane, Bridges said.

About half of the passengers followed before United told everyone to get off, he said.
The man who was originally dragged down the aisle was removed from the plane again, and United employees made an announcement saying they had to “tidy up” the aircraft, Bridges said. Bridges’ wife told him she saw the man taken away on a stretcher, he saidAfter a three-hour delay the flight took off without the man aboard, Bridges said. A United employee apologized to passengers, he said.Airlines are allowed to sell more tickets than there are seats on the plane, and they routinely overbook flights because some people do not show up.

It’s not unusual for airlines to offer travel vouchers to encourage people to give up their seats, and there are no rules for this process. When an airline demands that a passenger give up a seat, the airline is required to pay compensation of double the passenger’s fare, up to $675, if the passenger can be placed on another flight that arrives one to two hours later than the first flight, or four times the ticket price, up to $1,350, for longer delays.

When they bump passengers, airlines are required to give those passengers a written description of their compensation rights.
Hobart declined to say how the airline compensated the passengers who were forced to leave the plane, saying he did not have those details from employees on the scene.

The Associated Press contributed to this article

Roseland Loc: Florida

There is a huge legal case here. The fault of UAL is over booking. The greed for money. They know how many seats their plane could accommodate, then why over book? Passengers who have booked and paid tickets in good faith, they have no right to remove them, unless they are terror hazards. But this passenger has no threat at all and he is a doctor. The only problem is he is an Asian. He has the right to refuse being kicked out because United accepted his booking and payment.

It so happened that this passenger has emergency trip as a doctor, the more reasons that UAL has no right to punch his refusal to leave. This is not a communist country. By all means the passenger has the right to fly. He was mislead and deceived by the UAL. He was confident that he could reach his destination on time for his urgent trip. And the worst thing UAL did to the passenger was punched him bloody, his nose and mouth were bleeding due to the punch of the UAL staff. Shame on UAL. I would not fly with that greedy airline.

The problem is UAL management, why they overbooked, and later on forcibly remove the passengers. Ladies and gentlemen, do you want these thing to happen to you?

I hope the passenger sue the UAL for millions of dollars, for non-compliance with the contract, for physical injuries, for emotional distress, and for public humiliation.

Wolf counselor Loc: Heart of Texas

Does this disturb or upset you ma'am ?

If so, tell us this, if you were in charge of this situation, how would you have handled it ?

Roseland Loc: Florida

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If I am the management, I would not allow over booking. The safety and comfort of my passengers is most important.
When you make an agreement with a client, sign paper work, both parties must follow the contract in good faith. The passenger has paid his ticket, he was given a seat number to fly. The passenger was hoping to get to his destination on time to meet his responsibilities to his patients as a doctor. Had the UAL did not book him at the beginning, he could have found another flight to fly. But he was cheated, his rights were violated.

UAL violated the passenger's rights, and must pay penalty for the damage done.
Hope this will serve the airline a lesson next time.

Wolf counselor Loc: Heart of Texas

I have to agree that overbooking should not be allowed.

You can manage my airline any time ma'am.

Now if I could just raise enough cash to buy out UAL, you would have the top management position.

L8erToots

I'm going to play Devils Advocate here, because I've been on the other side of this situation. First, some "facts" that I've read from this incident.
Yes, the flight was overbooked and the first batch of passengers were offered $400 and a free hotel room. Everyone boarded the flight, which was now NOT overbooked.
After the plane was boarded, 4 more seats were suddenly needed for airline mechanics. Passengers were offered $800 and a free hotel room, but there were no takers. At this time, random passengers were selected, including the doctor, who refused to give up his seat (I watched the video and I do believe his wife got up and followed him as he was dragged off the plane. Now, and this is just me - I'm thinking that's a quick $1,600 and a free hotel room for a little inconvenience...).
Now let's look at the "bigger picture"...the side I was on, along with about 250 other tired, weary passengers NOT being offered money and a comfy hotel room to pass 15 or so hours in while our connecting plane was broken down and a replacement part had to be flown in. Then, when the plane was finally fixed, we had to wait another 2-3 hours for another flight crew to fly in from somewhere because OUR crew was no longer able to fly because their "hours" were up and FAA has strict rules (kind of like truckers...when your driving hours are up, you shut off the engine no matter where you are). I was stuck last summer for 12 hours in two different airports when S/W Airlines systems went down...when one flight gets screwed up, it can be a domino effect that affects other airlines.
Employees, or their family members, fly on stand-by, which means paying passengers don't get bumped so they can fly, ever, for any reason. Airlines certainly don't offer passengers $800 for a seat so an employee can fly for "leisure".
The employees that needed to fly on that flight were MECHANICS. So that tells me (and that this was the case in this instance is conjuncture on my part, from having been in the same situation a few times in my flying experience) that on the other end of this flight was a broken down plane, with stranded passengers, and the mechanics on the other end were unable to fix it and these 4 were needed. This means that passengers had already been stranded at least 2 hours already (my guess).
SO...if you were in charge and you had a broken down plane (maybe a connecting flight like mine was, where everyone on the plane was from somewhere else and didn't have a home to go back to for a rescheduled flight) with 200 -250 passengers stranded at the airport, and you needed to fly in a crew to fix that plane from somewhere else, are you going to wait for a flight somewhere in the country that has room for exactly 4 mechanics, or are you going to find the closest 4 mechanics and fly them on the next flight, offering the paying passengers $800 and a hotel room for their inconvenience? And if no one wants to take that offer, what are you going to do? And if all but ONE selected passenger flat out refuses to give up their seat (and remember, no one else wanted to, not even for $800), then what? You still have 200-250 stranded passengers, that paid for you to fly them somewhere - what are you going to do for THEM? Keep them all stranded for who knows how many more hours because ONE passenger refuses to give up their seat? So you call on "the authorities" to remove this ONE passenger from his seat (because what are you going to do...just throw up your hands and say, "Well, no one wants to give up their seat, so I guess the passengers are in charge and we're just going to go ahead and take off". Really? And if that ONE passenger still refuses and starts screaming like a hurt puppy the minute his arm is touched to be escorted out of his seat, and goes totally limp like a three year old who doesn't want to go to bed...what would YOU do? Are you going to tell all those stranded passengers, "Well, sorry, couldn't get a passenger off because he was screaming and went limp, so...hang in there until we find a cooperative passenger".
Are we really getting to the point of total anarchy where no one has authority over anyone else or where no one has to comply with any authorities if we don't want to? Where we CAN act like self-centered, selfish, undisplined toddlers when we're faced with any inconvenience or asked to do something by any higher authority (and then reward such behavior with a big lawsuit pay-out when that authority has to EXERCISE their authority by force, if needed? I don't want to live in that kind of world and I certainly didn't raise my children to be that kind of citizen. I want to live in the kind of world where people think, "Hmmm, 4 mechanics have to fly somewhere and it's SO critical that the airline is willing to pay $3,200 and hotel rooms to make it happen. Maybe I can make a whole lot of people less stressed and their day a lot easier than mine would be by taking the money and putting up with a little inconvenience".
Just another point of view to ponder.

Progressive One

There wasn't overbooking..they wanted to bump this guy so their flight crew for another fight could get their sooner than by car or sonething like that.

He didn't want to give up his seat despite cash offered most times.......said he needed to get home...........