They are not private security. They are essentially the security personnel of the Chicago Aviation dept. So, state employees at least.
Let's see: You carry on, we carry off Board as a doctor, leave as a patient You can run but you can't fly Would you like a neck pillow? Or a neck brace? You can take the $800 for another flight, or risk it all for our big surprise.... The captain has turned on the no passenger sign We can re-accommodate you the easy way... or the hard way We have an offer you can't refuse. No really. "We have Red Eye and Black Eye flights available!" We put the hospital in hospitality.
Amazing United is handling this so horribly... look at the twitter feed... they pinned the CEO's offensive tweet defending the employees involved and right under is the "sincere apology" tweet from the CEO. Jeez, at least unpin the offensive tweet if you are going to take the apologetic position... https://twitter.com/united?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
Apparently, they told the guy he was being chosen b/c he paid the lowest for his ticket/fare. If that is their policy, that is such crap. Purchasing early, with a promo, etc. should not have been why he was chosen. They guy probably wouldn't have agreed to leave, but if it's more of a random selection perhaps it's easier to accept. I can't help but be intrigued by this whole ordeal.
That's pretty common actually. Lowest fare class/ticket price is normal. What isn't normal is the passengers who paid 0 (non-revenue staff travel) getting ahead of you. If lowest price/fare class is the criteria, then the non-revenue staff are the ones who get bumped. So United messed up here. There is no such thing as "random" bumping. Everything has a system and there is always a priority. In this case, UA lied about the priority. If fare class/price is the criteria, then they'll get crushed in a lawsuit.
Thanks for your explanations, geeimsobored. I don't work in the airline industry, but am quite familiar with VDB and IDB and rules surrounding that, and I think you are spot on.
Airline customer service is notoriously horrible and I'm sure most people who have ever flown has experienced it's wrath at one point or another.
Their CS is among the worst of the worst, and United probably banks on people being pot committed to their flier miles to get away with it. A real apology should be to fix Customer Service up top but I'm skeptical that'll happen. At the very least, people who b**** and moan on social media will probably get more perks and attention. Wallets and purse strings only loosen up only after irreparable PR damage for these kinds of shitty companies.
One time I was assistant coach and when we loaded up the bus to go to the game, cheerleaders included, there weren't enough seats by one, so my boyz where just like let a cheerleader sit on his lap and were all good, and I was thinking, hey this will be a great 2-hour trip, but that's when I realized how expendable I was and they asked me to deport the bus for safety and drive to the game and meet them there. Bugger. I had to do a walk of shame off the bus. Everyone boo'd so it was funny, but embarassing. I did not resist.
Who is talking about murder? If you cause someone to have to physically remove you from an area and in the process you die during the process, assuming the intent was only to remove you and not to kill you, it's not murder. Eric Garner is a good example of this. He was a tubby b*stard who was in such poor health that lying on his stomach was enough to kill him yet he caused police officers to take him down on the ground due to him resisting arrest. That wasn't murder either.....unless we are blaming McDonald's for making him a tubby b*stard with ridiculously bad health issues. If you are an 80 year old, you should know that making someone physically restrain you, forcefully remove you, or arrest you are all situations that are potentially fatal for you. Given that, it's especially stupid if you choose to make those things happen. In these situations I have a lot more sympathy for the people just trying to do their jobs than I do the ******* causing things to go poorly because they don't know how to act right.
So in your mind, "excessive force" is just a thing that doesn't exist huh? All cops/security/whoever is giving orders should be allowed to use whatever force "to do their job".
Although I don't agree with you, I see where you are coming from. If you were in the position of security here, assessing the situation, do you think you would need much force to remove this passenger? I would use force, sure, but I don't think I need to knock a muthasucka out. Grab his arm, pin it behind him, grab his neck/head, force him out. Even if you take the better safe than sorry route, I feel there had to be so many ways to get this guy off without knocking him out.
Sure it exists, but I think some people believe that ANY force is "excessive force" and that's simply not the case. Using force is never what you want to happen because it can lead to people getting hurt......so that's why you have to be a complete moron to put people in a situation where they have to use force. Bottom line, if this guy was a more dignified person, no one would have laid a finger on him. He wasn't, so he gets what he gets.
That's kind of what I'm saying. Planes are cramped, and it wouldn't be easy to remove a passenger from what looked to be a window seat if they were resisting. Unless you had a taser, you are going to have to rely brute force to remove him and when you have to rely on brute force, it can get ugly. IMO it was just a terrible situation overall and it's why I certainly wouldn't have a job like that. I have a hell of a lot more sympathy for the employees that found themselves in an impossible situation than I do for the childish ******* that wouldn't just exit the plane on his own. I imagine situations like this happen more often than we think but they just never end this poorly because most people would just go along with it and then raise hell once back in the airport.
