I totally get that, but it’s a nuanced point that would be irrelevant to a marketing campaign targeting a temporarily weakened major player.
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He was not, but the severe injuries and getting knocked unconscious was directly caused by how rough security was treating him. Even if it was accidental, security is 100% culpable for the use of force.
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I completely agree with that.
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Oh. Good point.
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I looked at a couple of those stories and felt like I needed a shower; it’s literally muckraking bullshit of the lowest order. The dude and his wife are both around 70, both doctors, both immigrants, and raised something like six kids (five of which are now also doctors) in America. Meeting a younger dude at a hotel for a beej? Go nuts, Doc, you earned it.
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Now that is just crazy talk.
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It’s literally muckraking bullshit of the lowest order.
This strikes me as an example of how regular people don’t need hardcore privacy until they become ‘interesting’ to people with power, and by then its too late to do anything about it.
Also, congress is getting involved. They wrote a letter to United demanding an explanation. Guess which party isn’t on the list of senators who signed it.
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Nicely stated. I spend the first day arguing that it does not matter that he is a doctor and that he wasn’t denied boarding. He was a paying customer who was allowed on the plane to take the seat he paid for. He was roughly ejected because United found someone (an employee who had not made a reservation) more important than their customer that they had already seated. I don’t need any details beyond these to know that United has a sick culture.
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And it may have been a different doctor. The disciplinary action was a Dr. David Anh Duy Dao, there have been claims that the UA victim is Dr. David Thanh Duc Dao.
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United can now add heads to their job skills list.
BTW, CBC asked that guitar guy what he thought of the latest incident:
When my video went viral, I received letters from the flight attendants and the pilots associations, on their letterhead. I’m paraphrasing but they said, essentially, “If you think it’s bad flying with us, try working here.”
It sounds like their corporate culture needs some bleach.
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Interesting. Still the narrative of his past is a very thinly veiled excuse for distracting from the real issue, not that it’s working considering how big of a hit United’s stock has taken.
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United’s assholery towards their customers is getting a nice day in the spotlight. Here’s a new story about a businessman who bought a full price $1000 first class ticket and was ordered off the plane and threatened with being put in handcuffs because someone “more important” wanted the seat instead.
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The crew were apparently deadheading to Louisville because they needed to fly, not because they were using employee passes. It can happen, and they are high priority passengers.
But good grief, for the $3200+hotel they were willing to pay 4 passengers they could have hired a limo to drive the crew or the passengers the 4 hours to Louisville, with champagne and snacks. Or put them on a different airline that night or the next morning.
And I watched the video of Dao when he came back on the plane. He was “perseverating” - a scary neurological sign when seen in head injured people.
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Nitpick: I think you’re misusing the term reverse auction. http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-a-reverse-auction-purpose-goals.html [the full lesson is behind a paywall, but there’s enough material in the sample to understand]
It looks like Delta has actually experimented with using a true reverse auction to handle overbooking/similar. Interesting. https://www.budgettravel.com/article/delta-is-turning-the-flight-bumping-game-into-a-reverse-auction_11612
This incident is hurting United big time in China, where the story has gone viral. The narrative there is that Dr. Dao was specifically targeted because he is of Chinese ancestry. I have no idea if there is any truth to that claim but many Chinese people are understandably sensitive about anything that looks like anti-Chinese racism given how they’ve been treated by various Imperial powers over the last few centuries.
This is gonna cost United untold millions in China alone. They should have just kept upping the offer for someone to vacate their seat until someone decided it was too good to pass up, it would have saved them a lot of money and grief in the long run.
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(shamelessly borrowed by me from someplace)
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With regards to his unconsciousness, 3 men approached and placed hands on him. They began to lift him out of the seat at which point he hit his head on the armrest.
The rent-a-cops say he hit his head when he fell, implying it was his fault. Watch the video and ask how you can fall with 6 hands pulling you up and out. To me it looked like he was slammed in to the arm rest by the UA thugs. So, there is some debate as to how it happened. What is clear is that he was dragged away and then came back a bit later bleeding and covered in bruises. How did he get those bruises? Why wasn’t he given medical attention if his injuries happened on the plane? From my point of view it seems they knocked him out, dragged him off the plane, and then beat him some more for good measure which would explain the additional bruises and all the blood with no apparent medical attention.
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China is United’s biggest market as far as i understand. And i highly doubt the passenger was picked because of his race, but i’m willing to enjoy the schadenfreude of many Chinese customers giving United the cold shoulder.
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Suppose you were sleeping in your reserved hotel room, or eating at your reserved table in a restaurant, and the management decided to turf you out to make room for someone else. Would that be in any way legal, and would the cops carry out the eviction? Is there something special about airlines that makes this remotely legal?
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