Man forcibly dragged off plane after refusing to give up seat to United employee
 

Has anyone else seen this story? I cannot believe United can get away with this treatment of a passenger. They physically pulled him out of his seat and dragged him by his ankles off the plane! There is a video online that is very disturbing. I imagine his lawsuit will be substantial.

He said he was a doctor and had to get back to his patients. Supposedly he was allowed back on the plane with blood on his face. What on earth is going on in this world of ours - have we all gone crazy?

Just recently someone mentioned flying to Australia on United and I suggested they look for another flight.

I saw it..............trying to decide if it's real and if it is..........what is the whole story.

I thought the same thing. There has to be more to the story or United is in for a big lawsuit.

I'm pretty sure they should just "write the check"!!

United Airlines passenger dragged off overbooked flight after refusing to give up seat - National | Globalnews.ca

Strange happenings.

None of this would have happened if the passenger agreed to get off when ordered even if he was right. After all he could have been a terrorist, who knows?

I believe they said flight was overbooked with no takers for a later flight. Picked name by random, according to what I heard. Should airline held up flight until he walked off on his own? Mistake made was letting him back on plane once decision was made. Overbooking is a fact of life, tickets and cancelations would be much more expensive without it.

Yes, overbooking is a fact of life, that doesn't make it right. If I pay $600 for a ticket, purchase it well in advance, I get to the airport on time, etc., I expect to have a seat on the plane. You make all your plans, and sometimes they can't be changed. This happened to me a couple of years ago, I was bumped from a United flight and unable to get a rescheduled flight until a few days later. This was to go to my son's wedding! I ended up paying a hefty price for a last minute ticket on another airline. This is wrong on so many levels.

:agree:

While overbooking is a fact of life these days, when it happens and no one steps forward immediately, the airline should suck it up and keep raising the offer...for volunteers to take another flight.

At some point, when the incentive is high enough...someone will volunteer to get off.

So call me stupid for not understanding, but if there are no takers, why is anyone that is already seated forced to give up their seat? Why aren't the passengers who are still waiting to get on the plane the ones to be bumped?

They chose names at random & he was one of them.

Remind me to be appreciative, that my last name isn't...'Random.'




:D

Thanks, Bonny, I understand that, but why was anyone chosen? If no one volunteered, why should anyone who has already boarded be forced to leave for someone else who most likely arrived at the airport late? If no one volunteers, why not just offer the vouchers to those who came late? Just trying to understand why this had to happen at all.

The seats were needed for another United Airlines flight crew to staff a flight leaving from the destination of this one.

I have been bumped before for a flight crew. I heard they upped the offer to $800 and an overnight hotel. The man said he was a doctor and had patients to see the next day. I read somewhere that the police are the ones who dragged him off the flight.

Excellent. That is what my husband and I did several years ago; the incentive was so good that we accepted it and had to wait only two more hours for another flight.

Sadly, United has the legal right to remove passengers. As a matter of fact, the crew can have anyone removed for any reason, should they so desire. (Southwest wins the award for most removed passengers.)

The security officer (not police) has been suspended for the way this was handled. The odds are the doctor will probably sue. I'm not convinced he would necessarily win if it would go to trial, but the odds are it will settle out of court. Twas an ugly scene but a legal action.

Strange the United didn't know that these pilots had to be on the flight and then they could have handled it at the gate before boarding. It was handled very poorly

not the passengers problem.....

they should of rescheduled the flight crew.....not the paying passengers....

No flight crew, nobody sitting on the plane the crew needed to get to, goes anywhere. Make four passengers mad or two hundred?
Guess who gets the seat...?
Not a difficult decision for a company.
Its not right, It's not the passengers fault but Like it or not, ultimately it was the passengers problem.
It should have been handled better than it was.

Overbooking... Only on an airline can they sell you something they have no intention of delivering!

United should have kept increasing the compensation for volunteering to give up your seat until they had a sufficient number of volunteers instead of randomly choosing passengers to displace. At some point, the compensation will get high enough that they will get a sufficient number of volunteers. I have seen it go to $1500. In the "good old days" before airlines became better at over booking, I would offer my seat, just in case it was needed, as soon as I got to the gate. I received quite a few free travel vouchers over the years for very little disruption of my travel plans.

It really doesn't work that way and I have seen hotels do it also. The airlines know, statistically, how many "no shows" they will have. Overbooking is a way to decrease the number of empty seats. They fully intend to get you to your destination. When it is done correctly, everybody wins, and is happy. In the small percentage of cases where they actually need people to give up their seats, they compensate them, and rebook them on the next available flight. It is best done by getting volunteers, who are usually overjoyed to give up their seats in exchange for compensation.

Am I missing something ? You know four of your employees have to be on this flight. You know their whereabouts ( i.e. in the terminal or just debarking from their previous flight, meaning you know they will be able to catch this flight to get to where they are needed ) Computers can tell you where they are every minute they work for you. Under those circumstances, why board the flight and sit a body in every seat ? If United knew it needed four seats for crew members why did they not simply reserve them and not sit someone else down in them ? This is a question a lawyer will ask and it will seem awfully logical to anyone listening including a member of a jury if it gets that far. ( It will not ) The doctor, if indeed the passenger was one, is going to be able to pay of any remaining student loan debt and buy a much bigger house after this one hits the civil legal system.

I think it was the police..............Chicago Aviation Police, which is a division of the Chicago Police Department. Fact check me.............but this is my understanding.

A lawsuit will obviously pull in United Airlines, but they followed the "contract" with the ticket holder........how the passenger was ejected maybe of question.

IMHO great post, but you are assuming too much. You are assuming that the people in charge of booking this flight had commonsense, quite obviously they did not and, unfortunately, lack of commonsense seems to be pervasive in our lives right now.

I'm assuming that until everyone checks in at the gate to board the plane, they don't know if everyone will show.

Yes it was the aviation police. And the regular Chicago police department got involved in explaining the incident and tweeted that the "69 year old Asian" "fell"
If you watch video it certainly does not look like the man "fell". And what his ethnicity had to do with the situation escapes me.

As to whether United acted in conformity with their contract is a legal question. You can read the contract, it has language about refusing to board passengers on oversold flights in rule 25, but that language all applies to BEFORE boarding. It seems once you are seated they must fly you unless rule 21 is invoked. There is nothing in rule 21 about overbooked removals. You are always required to follow the reasonable orders of the flight crew as to not endanger safety. [turn off your cell phone, put on your seat belt].

I would believe that removing a passenger for the convenience of the airline is not a safety issue. United had multiple other ways to get its crew to Louisville including simply driving them [under 5 hours drive time]. United failed to utilize any of several none-forceful methods to get its crew to Louisville and therefore is likely to not only loose in the court of public opinion [watch their stock go down today] but also in a court of law. Delta recently paid a family of three, $11,000 to give up seats on a flight. If United had upped their offer until they had 4 volunteers it would have avoided all this mess.

It is very possible that you are missing something. We don't know why a relief crew was needed. We don't know when United/Republic found out they needed a relief crew. We don't know that the crew was needed in Louisville, or if that was just a connection to somewhere else. We don't know how long it took to determine that the best course of action was to fly a crew from Chicago to Louisville (and perhaps on from there). We don't know when the gate agents got the word that they needed 4 seats on the flight to Louisville. We don't know how that need was expressed to the agents in Chicago.

I hate to comment until all the facts are in, but for the sake of discussion I will:

When you choose to fly, you voluntarily enter into an agreement with the service provider. You agree to follow the airline's rules and bumping proceedures. That's all you need to know. Once it was determined that this man was no longer able to take that flight he should have exited like a man, not a baby that must be drug off. He alone chose how he was going to leave the plane.

Police force is often not pretty. That's why society pays others to do it. Just remember the force is determined by the subject. I doubt the police just walked up and beat him up for fun. I also doubt the doctor line. If he is a doctor, are there no other doctors at his facility?

I avoid these airline problems by driving my truck when I travel. But even then I must play by the rules and I have no right to resist if I break those rules.

It was incredible how short sighted United was in this instance. As I understand it United offered up to $800 for volunteers. There were no takers. United could have offered more, all the way up to $1300 but did not. The drive to where the plane was going was only 290 miles. The flight crew was not needed until the next day. Why would you throw paying passengers off a plane to move your own employees when they could have driven? I will never fly this airline again.

Allegiant does not over book.....

There is absolutely no reason to over book flights. Airlines should treat flights just like cruise lines treat cabins. You bought it, its yours. If you don't show up, tough luck unless you buy insurance. Then this does not happen. If you need to move a flight crew then those seats do not get sold. This is all about greed by the airlines and enough stroke in Washington to make it happen. So the little guy takes the beating. Vote with your wallet and his changes!

Not following legal instructions by the flight crew is cause for consequences. Flying is a priveledge, not a right. Hooray for United.

I agree. There has to be more to the story than this. When a person of authority asks you to leave, I think you should leave.

:bigbow: for United..United bumped.0004..%of it's passagers last year, that is a great record. .And for all of the people who say sue ..Shows how much you know...airlines do a great job and for all of you people who fly up north for $100 and complain ...And think the airline should kiss your ---nothing to stop you from driving... Read the airline rules and their rights before make statements. As for the person who supposedly is a doctor and was chosen because he was Chinese. I would not care if you were the Pope. When a person on authority tell you to get off.......Get off.

More details of the doctor are coming out.............trading drugs for sex.

What will we learn tomorrow???

:popcorn:

Say WHAT? The fellow who was dragged out? He is a slimy soul? How'd they know? Who knew? How did they know?

Come on kiddo... tell us more.

Obviously I can't verify, but I can share what is being reported...................

According to documents filed with the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, Dao was arrested in 2003 on the drug-related offenses following an undercover investigation.

The board’s probe into the criminal charges found that Dao became sexually interested in a male patient, Brian Case, whom he gave a physical examination to, including a genital examination, and whom he eventually made his office manager.

Case quit that job due to “inappropriate” remarks made by Dao, who then pursued him and arranged to give him prescription drugs in exchange for sexual acts, according to the documents, filed last year.

In 2004, Dao was convicted on a slew of felony counts of obtaining drugs by fraud or deceit and was later placed on five years of supervised probation, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.

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