http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/text-of-letter-from-united-ceo-defending-employees/ar-BBzGiwF?li=BBnb7Kz

For those who haven't seen it, United Airlines overbooked a flight, as all airlines often do. They attempted first to offer $1000 for 4 people to get off the plane because they overbooked. No one said yes. So, instead of saying, fuck it, $2000 a person, they asked randomly selected passengers to leave. One guy, a 60+ year old Asian doctor who had to get back to patients the next day, was one randomly selected. He refused to get off when asked nicely. So, United gets the police to physically drag him off the flight, dropping him causing him to cut open his lip in the process.

The CEO of United rather than emphatically apologizing and saying they should never use physical force against their customers, blamed the Asian doctor. He said the Asian guy "refused and became more disruptive and belligerent... our agents were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security... He repeatedly declined to leave... they physically removed him as he resisted."

The CEO didn't apologize and essentially just victim blamed the whole time basically saying, if he would've just complied to orders he would've been fine. Alright, true, but are you fucking kidding me? Take out the fact that he's a doctor, but the guy booked his flight, bought his ticket, didn't want to leave. The policy is supposed to be, keep raising the dollar amount til someone on the plane says "aight fuck it yeah i'll take $2500 to take a flight tomorrow." They didn't do that. They used physical force and in all likelihood will end up settling this case for millions.

Typically, I'm not really on the side of the victim. Typically I'd say, come on idiot you know you're about to get dragged off the plane, just leave. However, I can't really blame the guy for not wanting to leave. The most egregious part of this is the CEO barely even apologizing. He apologizes to his staff, but doesn't cave at all. He says the crew and security acted as they were supposed to. That's absolutely insane. Even if you don't believe it, at least lie and say you're so sorry for the victim and you'll be treating his family to a free anywhere in the world trip to mildly compensate what he went through, or something like that.

This is pretty terrible.

I would have accepted the voucher and got off the plane long before law enforcement got involved or offered to get off in his place. you're only seeing what the outraged self-righteous virtue-signaling female with the iphone wanted you to see. The airline has to stay on schedule and the passenger refused to voluntarily get off and no one else offered to get off in his place. He only has himself to blame for acting like a child.

also this:
http://www.state.ky.us/agencies/kbml/finalorders/22439.pdf

David Dao was indicted in 2003 by a grand jury for criminal acts of trafficking in a controlled substance, obtaining drugs by fraud and deceit, and unauthorized prescribing, dispensing, or administering of controlled substences.

During the investigation of all of this, it was discovered that he had become s-xually interested in a patient who was referred to him. During the initial evaluation, he performed a complete physical examination, including a genital examination, for the patient who had been referred for collapsed lungs and chest pain.

He then made the patient his office manager. Then he quit his job, and they ended up in some weird situation where prescriptions were exchanged for sexual acts.

In 2005 he lost his medical license.

In 2007 he completed a clinical skills assessment, which demonstrated that his knowledge was "outdated and also contained gaps that would not likely be fully explained by his time away from the practice."

He showed that he "lacked competence with acid-based disorders, ventilator management, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and current evaluation and treatment of shock," which is hysterically ironic considering his current predicament.

this is also not related to politics or religion and already has a thread in general chat where it belongs.

I'm on your side 99% of the time, as members of this PaRD forum can probably attest to. I disagree though. I agree, the airline has to stay on schedule. However, the AIRLINE is the company who purposely overbooks to save money. That's fine, it's legal to do that. However, you shouldn't forcibly drag people off the plane. I am fully aware the doctor was a nut and belligerent. There were 100+ other people on that plane, if you raise the dollar amount high enough, someone is going to leave without physical force. That should be the duty of the airline. Offer $10,000 if you have to. It's their stupid ass overbooking policy that creates these messes.

The problem people have is that the airline overbooked and wants the customers to pay for it
Then they even did that poorly by doing a random assignment of kicking people off

Rather than offering increasing amounts of money until someone gets off
Allowing the customers to feel that they made their own choices and not feel forced by the company

It's by far a better PR move

The reason this is exploding so much is also partly due to the endless amounts of stories about United Airlines negligence and lack of respect towards customers



There are no real discussions in general chat
It belongs here if you want anything close to a coherent thread

This post was edited by FroggyG on Apr 11 2017 06:56am

The discussion if the company is right applies to politics. Whether or not a company has the right to treat customers a certain way falls under political discussion guidelines.

I don't know how it got to the point that it did, but the police had to do their job and he only made it worse for himself by resisting the way he did. It's the captains plane, if they are told to remove a person, they remove that person and they don't ask twice.

You would think out of all the passengers on the plane, someone would have spoken up and taken his place if the airline was offering any amount of money. I'm more annoyed by the lady escalating the situation with her comments than anything else.

In a way, I agree. The security team was instructed to take the dude off the plane, so they did their job. I blame United for letting the situation escalate. They should have just forked over money til someone took the bait. The guy who got dragged off really didn't do anything wrong. Could he have not resisted? Sure, would've saved him from a fat lip. However, he was only brought into that crappy situation because of United. If United handled it better, it wouldn't have gotten to that point.



Apparently they offered vouchers up to $1k, but that's really not a lot of money and United refused to offer more. It's different too because they were already boarded. They're supposed to figure that shit out BEFORE boarding.

This post was edited by AspenSniper on Apr 11 2017 07:03am

If they had increased the dollar amount I would definitely jump on that
But they didn't

As per the whole security thing, the way that is handled is out of their control after they make the call. I'm not bashing them for that. But that whole result was due to their poor handling of the situation beforehand.

This post was edited by FroggyG on Apr 11 2017 07:03am