http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/text-of-letter-from-united-ceo-defending-employees/ar-BBzGiwF?li=BBnb7KzFor 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.
Why do you think this is a problem? It's a private company and they can create whatever stipulations they want on their service. If you don't like the way the company is run, book with another company.