wolf72

Poor leadership. Poor decision making by both him and his team.

He and his team should be sacked.

alanslegal

Interesting if true. I mean if their powers only allow them to detain, then Dr Dao was already "detained" in the sense that he was boxed in, seated in his window seat. Obviously public and private citizens have the common law right to self defense but there is no right allowed in this sense as Dr Dao wasn't going anywhere or going to hurt anyone physically. All he was doing was telling them go ahead, move me (and without authority IF they don't have those powers to do so).

BF263533

Now that this thread is truly confirmed The Mother Thread by breaking the 6371 reply record, will we see more constructive discussion on whether or not this incident will lead to a culture change at United that results in better customer service beyond improving only the IDB rules?

The only IDB problem I ever encountered was in Italy in 2000. I am more affected on a daily basis like selective flight cancellations of United Express flights due to weather, poor on-board service, contract agents at the airport who don't know what is going on, inflexibility on re-routing and re-booking during flight cancellations and mechanicals, hard and painful coach seats crammed too closely together, new airplane lavatories where the sinks are so small you can't fit your hands under the water faucet etc., etc.

Will this incident lead to Congress enacting more passenger protections?

Or will this incident just be a continuing soap opera starring Oscar Munoz as the Deer in the Headlights?

mauve

I think you're reading too much into that. They appear to be ILETSB certified officers, so I don't think the fact that their department restricts them from carrying or limits the scope of their arrest powers necessarily means they aren't police officers, particularly with respect to things like qualified immunity.

Bear4Asian

My apologies fastair. It must have been a false memory.

Rdenney

I flew this week and the topic came up before every leg among the FFs in the 1 and 2 boarding lines. Not one person in those lines expressed the opinion that Dao should have obeyed simply because obedience is required. Not one. Not one thought United had behaved appropriately. No GS flyers in those conversations, but golds, plats, and 1Ks aplenty. All had too much experienced being poorly treated (yes, maybe only on one in 20 flights, so non-FFs might never see it) to give United the benefit of any doubt.

I did hear it from non-flyers at my destination.

For sure, everyone was talking about it.

Fiordland

Being a Canadian perhaps I don't understand how the US law enforcement system works......

You have 300 officers, who are "ILETSB certified" (not quite certain what that is) who are hired and told by their employer (the city of Chicago) your not police officers, don't wear jackets that say your police officers and by the way you don't have the authority to arrest and charge people.

At the same time, they are not issued uniforms, instead they are given an allowance to buy their own uniforms and chose to get jackets that say "Police" (despite being told not to) and precede to cause physical injury to a paying passengers over a contractual dispute with an airline on the instruction of an airline employee.

This just sounds really bad.

Also concerning is the testimony of the United representative who said the Captain has full authority over the aircraft and the event, yet the Captain was not the one who called for the security personnel or instructed them to remove the passenger.

The internal accountability system sounds messed up on several fronts.

mauve

ILETSB is the state agency responsible for certifying law enforcement officers.

This may get bounced as political or off topic, but the real problem is that there is generally no civilian oversight of police agencies. The officers would probably say, for example, that their boss has no authority to tell them what their uniforms say.

But if you think this is bad, you should read about the Swedish gangster who founded his own private police department in California and almost managed to get the DHS to help him walk after he crashed a stolen Ferrari at 199 mph.

Or the fact that Alabama is now allowing churches to create their own police departments.

It's probably also worth noting that railroads have private police departments of their own, but airlines don't.

LondonElite

I suggest this excellent summary from The Travel Insider, along with this week's update to the original post.

http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/20...pril-2017.html

http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/20...pril-2017.html

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

Second article desperately tries to back-peddle the inaccuracies of the first article, and even then appears to get the law wrong:

ProleOnParole

But of course... we already know that he wasn't beaten up, just "re-accommodated."

An excellent summary indeed, if by "excellent" you mean "random" and by "summary" you mean "ramblings," in which case I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Rdenney

Edit: I wrote this after reading the first article, and apparently the author backpeddled on some of the things he said therein. But my point stands: A blog is just a guy with an opinion, like any of us, but in this case, he had not done much due diligence that would be expected of anyone claiming (even if by implication) journalistic integrity.

That article is filled with myth and lore. For one thing, the crew members were not on standby--they had positive space reservations. This has been widely reported, so the author of the blog didn't do very much homework, it seems to me.

He has also made several assumptions in his argument, which he depended on as being true without investigating their merits. One is that the order Dao received to deboard was "lawful". This is under extreme dispute, actually. The order to do so from the gate agent was unsupported by any plain reading of the CofC, and the officers did not have the authority to intervene in such as dispute in any case. They injured him, and then instead of treating his injuries, dragged him off the airplane while unconscious.

The author also used the word "specious" to describe Dao's claim that he is a doctor (he is) and had patients to see the next day (he did).

He said, "anyone with any sense knows that when things get tense, you comply with whatever the police officer is ordering you to do." Frankly, that is BS. It is not in the law. It might have prevented Dao from being injured in the way he was, but it would not have prevented other forms of injury, including injury to what he believed (correctly, as it turns out) was right. This is especially true when the cops 1.) don't act like cops, 2.) don't look like cops, and 3.) don't have the same authorities as cops (no matter what their state certifications). Dao didn't know that they lacked those authorities, but he did know that the guy who assaulted him was wearing jeans and a ball cap, looking much more like a bouncer than a bona fide police officer.

Fact is, most blogs are no more authoritative than a post in this thread from one of us.

Second Edit: Regarding the second article. He has now conflated "instructions from the flight crew" related to carrying out their duties, with "lawful orders from uniformed airline staff". Huh? What about orders from non-uniformed officers? He defined lawful as "any command to do any action which is not illegal." I'd love to see the legal citation on that one. So, he has elevated the gate agent to flight crew, and bestowed powers with an upside-down definition. An action cannot be both lawful and unlawful.

Let's stipulate that Dao, in at least some of his behavior, demonstrated some signs of DYKWIA. In the videos I saw, I didn't see much of that, but in the witness reports, there may have been a bit. The doctor part was true, but I really don't think that's much different than me stating I have to teach a class the next day and the students, who have paid to receive that teaching, will have their day ruined. Or someone stating that he works for himself and can't afford a day off, or the consequences of missed obligations. Surely there are four people on the plane who have that flexibility? Why pick me? The bit of DYKWIA might have been his claim that he has been traveling for 24 hours, although he had certainly been doing so for 10 or 12. But the question is this: Does demonstrating any hint of DYKWIA attitude warrant the application of physical force by police?

As the British would say, I think we have lost our sense of proportion.

BearX220

That's good to hear. Much less consensus on social media (where voices may or may not have as much actual experience of UA).

Artpen100

I'm not sure that there is much more to say on the incident itself, unless and until more information comes out as the lawsuit takes off.

But I think a good question is what will happen as a result.

My guess is:

UA, per their change in policy, will try harder to get crews where they need to go earlier and not deplane anyone for this reason (but will try to bounce them before they board).

Some additional number of flights may be cancelled because of lack of crew.

FAs will be less likely to call law enforcement for any reason. If they do, they will de-board the entire plan first. (This third consequence concerns me, as from experience I am more concerned about belligerent fellow passengers than this type of incident.)

Carl Johnson

In addition to the points you make, I'd like to point out that the sentence (from the article) quoted above is nothing but "when a mugger demands your wallet, hand it over - just do whatever it takes to get out of there uninjured." That's just practical advice, it doesn't set a legal standard, and Dr. Dao isn't at fault for failing to hand over his wallet to a mugger that happened to be wearing a t-shirt screen-printed with the word "police."