Hard to believe this happened here on Kauai, but it did.
22 thoughts on “United Airlines PR Nightmare Now Extends to Hawaii Flights”
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Home » Blog » Hawaii Travel News » United Airlines PR Nightmare Now Extends to Hawaii Flights
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.