Airline travel hit a new low this week. What’s your take on the United Airlines (UAL) debacle? Since you can’t drive to Hawaii, and we have a strong reliance on air travel, all of us will need to get on board to demand changes.
We haven’t found many people who aren’t talking about the UAL passenger being violently thrown off the plane to make room for an employee. It has caught the attention of the world and also the tone deaf responses from UAL as they continue to grovel while their stock tumbles.
But it didn’t stop there, and like many things, the long tail headed straight for Hawaii flights in an incident from last week. We perked up when we saw this newly reported threat happened on our home island, Kauai, where United is facing yet another big problem.
A United Airlines customer on Kauai was threatened to be placed in handcuffs.
Geoff Fearns, age 59, was removed from his seat on the UAL flight from Kauai to LAX. Ferns, who heads a real estate investment company, had been attending a conference. Heading home, he purchased a $1,000 full-price first class ticket. Fearns boarded the plane and was enjoying a pre-departure drink when a UAL employee told him he would need to get off the flight. When asked why he needed to, “they said the flight was overfull.” Fearns was told he would be placed in cuffs if he did not comply.
United indicated that due to mechanical issues with an aircraft, planes had been changed to one with fewer first class seats that resulted in the oversold condition. Fearns said that United resorted to its “how to screw over customers” guidelines and determined that someone else had higher priority than he did.
As in the more recent UAL incident, the airline again failed to appropriately deal with this problem at the gate before boarding commenced. Instead, Fearns was allowed to take his seat and was never advised that there was a problem until the incident nearly became violent.
Could United make this nightmare worse? You betcha! Fearns indicated that he wanted to get home and the only compromise offered him was an economy class middle seat between a couple who were fighting.
So how did United step up to the plate to rectify their wrongs? Fearns asked for a full refund of his first class ticket and for United to make a charitable donation. They refused. Instead, they offered to provide the difference in cost between the first class fare and the economy fare, plus $500 in future flight credit. Somehow, however, we are doubtful that this customer plans on flying the friendly skies anytime soon. When asked about returning to another United flight, the Fearns responded, “Are you kidding?” This meager compensation stands in sharp contrast to today’s news that all passengers on the other UAL nightmare flight are to receive complete refunds.
The Los Angeles Times reached out to UAL about this incident and their inquiry was not responded to.
We do know some of the UAL staff here on Kauai and have inquired to see what they know about this incident. While this is getting to be too common an incident for United, this stands as antithetical to a normal airline experience on Kauai. In this case, the customer said that crew members apologized en route for what had happened.
Fearns is considering suing United Airlines.
In terms of getting bumped, here’s how airlines that fly to Hawaii rank from most to least deplanements on their Hawaii flights.
Delta Airlines (worse than United!)
United
America
Alaska
Virgin America
Hawaiian Airlines (least likely to get bumped).
Katrina, Stephanie and Kim have succumbed to the airlines tactics of misdirection. The issue is the airlines practices of overbooking, knowing they can do so because of their “fine print” where the penalty to them is less a slap on the hand for overbooking.
So when an incident happens the airlines hide behind their policies citing they were within their right. The real misdirection comes from the unseen parties, the real culprits, who makes it possible for them to do so, their highly paid lobbyists in WA DC who provide high level of incentives to the people who are in power to create the kind of laws that the airline to operate with very little impunity.
The fine print on an airlines ticket allows the airlines to be lazy in how to avoid incidents. First, developing the right software to prevent overbooking. Two, if and when there is an overbooking, announce it to the passengers on the flight, BEFORE, boarding begins with incentive levels sufficient to entice a passenger to give up their existing seat for the incentive. Once in their seats, what passenger doesn’t believe that the seat they paid for is now theirs and will be traveling to their destination without incident?
If the “fine print” was reworded to say that once the passengers are in their seats that “fine print” is now null and void I can assure you that an incident of dragging out a passenger kicking and screaming all over the internet would never have occurred. Immigrants are treated better.
There is no question to any rational person, regardless of the airlines “fine print” should the Dr have been physically mishandled. A more appropriate deescalation management and a customer oriented techniques should have been employed.
UAL and the law enforcement personnel that were involved are now being educated on the impact of not doing so. Everyone with a cell phone camera are watching. Its not just big brother any longer.
Overbooking practices and “fine print” that allows the airlines to do so that ignores a paying customers rights needs to be reexamined along with unveiling the real highly paid lobbyists who lay the groundwork for the airlines to do so.
I’d like to point out what I feel is a critical interpretation issue about what airlines can and can’t do. It’s clearly obvious that airlines have a very wide latitude in forcing customers to comply. For many reasons, especially for safety, this is critically important.
However, as I see it, the contract of carriage specifies the airline may deny BOARDING for a large number of reasons. The issues here are that the passengers were GRANTED boarding and the airline, in their mistake wants passengers to DE-PLANE. IMHO once the airline granted boarding, they are in violation of their contract of carriage in any attempt to force a customer off the plane due to their mistake. This isn’t a safety, weather or mechanical issue. This is an out right error on the part of United. If they wanted to be able to exercise their power and deny boarding for virtually any reason, they shoyld have done. They gave up their right to boot a passenger for non safety reasons once they granted boarding.
I find it abhorrent that the right to deny boarding is being used to force deplaining. I find it abhorrent that United wants to enforce rules against passengers yet not follow those rules. In the gentleman’s case in this article, not enough details are provided. Even if United had a right to deplane him, his $500 compensation and fare downgrade do not appear to he in line with what United should have done. And in the case of the doctor the other day, United failed to offer the maximum they could of before lying that passengers would be selected at random. There are algorithms which prioritize who is selected. At a minimum, no airline with any inteligence would allow the random selection of an 8 year old where the mother was on the flight, or vice versa. And I bet Bo one in 1st class would be selected. The only reason this article covers a 1st class passenger is because the replacement plane has fewer 1st class seats than the original plane.