United Airlines - Board the plane as a doctor, leave as a patient!
- Thread starter Avenged7Fold
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Well, I think they offered $800 in free flight coupons with themselves, is that right? One thing I know as a longtime capitalist is that if people wont bite at the current price, you have to change that price. Also, offering actual money might have helped.
I doubt it will be forgotten. UA already were not my airline of choice when flying to the USA (which I did around four times for business last year) simply because my experiences on them have been pretty poor. The planes they put me on were shabbier and more cramped than Virgin Atlantic (my preferred), the staff less pleasant and despite booking a vegetarian meal in advance they have twice either failed to provide one or brought me something they claimed was vegetarian but which was not. This just cements them as someone to avoid. I'd love to be a unique and special *********, but I'm pretty sure I'm an ordinary person so I daresay a lot of others will feel the same. This is now the first thing people think about when you say United Airlines to them today.
Why you think people don't remember highly public incidents, I have no idea. People remember the tiniest of slights for a very long time. People are like that. Hell, does the phrase "wrong sort of leaves" ring a bell with anyone? I still hear people make jokes about that today and it was a one-time excuse for one train delay. And it didn't even involve beating up a doctor who wanted to do his shift at a hospital today!
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Make sure to avoid UA as well
I wonder what percentage of passengers have to change their behaviour for it to matter?
Soldato
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i dont understand how they overbooked the flight, like wtf!?
anyway i'm sure there were incentives for the person that volunteered to leave, like we'll get you on the next flight, maybe a free hotel stay etc
it would be really really inconvenient and i would not have volunteered , and i would have been mightily p'ed off to be picked
picked this guy was and he made a show of it. big new sensation? nah,
anyway i'm sure there were incentives for the person that volunteered to leave, like we'll get you on the next flight, maybe a free hotel stay etc
it would be really really inconvenient and i would not have volunteered , and i would have been mightily p'ed off to be picked
picked this guy was and he made a show of it. big new sensation? nah,
Make sure to avoid UA as well
Hell, you're quick. I edited my post within around ten seconds of posting it! Typo.
They didn't overbook it. They decided they needed to move four employees to a different airport for a shift and attempted to remove four boarded passengers before take off.
An offer was made of $800 worth of United Airlines vouchers. Nobody considered that worth it. And indeed this person who got beaten up had a shift at the hospital where they are a doctor so it would have been extremely selfish, not to mention potentially costing someone's life, for him to accept.
Especially if they told you how much your missing the flight was worth (their vouchers) and you had important reasons you needed to catch the flight.
picked this guy was and he made a show of it. big new sensation? nah,
According to the man sitting in front of him who was interviewed, the passenger didn't do anything more than just keep repeating that he needed to go home and had to work. Hardly deliberately "making a big show of it." He is a sixty-nine year old doctor who got beaten for needing to go home. Not sure why you find that worth picking on him for.
She didn't know what she was talking about and was giving wrong information. Mixing up EU and US carriers and laws.
she's no expert.
lawl
United Airlines lost nearly a BILLION dollars in market value this morning!
Serves them bloody right, disgusting behaviour and shame on anyone defending them
United Airlines shares plummet after passenger dragged from plane
Source = The Guardian
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Pretty much OTT from UA especially as this was just to deadhead staff - don't they have jump seats on board for that? Only flew with UA once to/from the States. On the way out they cancelled our connecting flight from San Francisco to Seattle and we ended up on an Alaska Airline flight 3 hours later wife and me at opposite ends of the plane. On the way home, brand new (then) 777 over the pond had none of the entertainment equipment functioning on our side of the plane and they couldn't dim the lights either. Needless to say we didn't spend the $50 "voucher" we got on another UA flight...
Caporegime
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$100,000 seems cheap.
That CEO will have some serious explanations to do to the board and their next shareholders meeting.
That CEO will have some serious explanations to do to the board and their next shareholders meeting.
Ben Carson....
United Airlines didn't lose a penny; their shareholders lost a billion dollars, most of which will be made back when this blows over and the news moves on to the new flavour of the week when Trump invades South Korea by accident or Kim Kardashian slips and flashes her woojit. Shares have little, or nothing, to do with the real success or value of a company, you only have to look at the relative market cap of Ford and Tesla to see that.
This isn't a case of overbooking AFAIK - overbooking is where you sell more tickets than you have seats thus some (late) passengers might get turned away when checking in - though the idea is that passengers frequently miss flights so they'll overbook by that expected amount. Airlines are legally allowed to do this.
In this case though the passengers have checked in already but are being asked (and offered money) to give up their seats as some staff members now need to be transported - this doesn't fall under the rules re: overbooking, the passengers have already checked in and been allocated seating.
I think technically the pilot can order anyone off the plane but really, in this case, the guy might well have a legal case even just using the way he was manhandled out of his seat.
IMO the airline ought to have offered more money if they still needed volunteers.
Caporegime
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Imagine if you are a share holde, woke up and lost 30 million and next week is your quarterly AGM.
You will have some questions to the CEO.
It is simplistic to imagine that a fall in share price doesn't matter. A lot of employees have bonuses calculated based on share price or share price average. Senior management usually has stock in the company itself and share options. These devalue and no, stock doesn't automatically bounce back up to where it was before. Depressed share price allows others to opportunistically buy up interest in your company for cheap. Sometimes that matters. Falling share price affects your credit as a company and can affect interest rates on loans you have or plan to take.
If the $1billion UA lost today suddenly reappears tomorrow, then you are correct that it wont really have much impact on the company itself. But it probably wont and that starts to have knock on effects.
Also, you are ANSWERABLE to your shareholders. If they lose money (effectively, through devaluation), they will not be happy. Saying "I didn't lose any money because of what I did, my boss did" seldom ends well.