Originally Posted by fastair

Maybe we need a line with higher priority than the GS area for people who feel their situation entitles them to be served immediately.

I mean come on. I sympathize...really, I do, but do you know how many people each day fly on any given airline for an emergency? If you have an emergency, and it happens 10's of thousands of times every day in this world (millions?) and the person lives FAR from you, the chances are, you will use a comercial airline.

So maybe there were other people in line that had other emergencies, like a job interview they will miss...a wedding, a cruise, a career making business meeting, and they were short of time.

I know...death is final..Maybe that should be the only exception...but why stop there..sickness as well......well, and weddings....and funerals...Bar Mitzvas and Christenings...and births...heck any "once in a lifetime events" should be a special line. As long as UA has the staff to handle everyone's special events at the same time when multiple people have emergencies at the same time (SFO is a big city...lots of people and UA is the big player there, so multiples are BOUND to happen sooner or later.)

I remember about a dozen years ago a flight to Europe was cncld late at night. About 5 passengers said "This was UNACCEPTABLE, they had emergencies, and would do ANYTHING, pay ANY cost to get to Europe immediately. Charter a plane and we will pay!"

An employee working with me flew out of Palwaukee airport for fun alot as a student pilot. She called up there, got a rate for a charter that would get the passenger to NYC in time for the Concorde, and gave a price of about 12k for the charter and 5k for SST. 4 of the 5 people's emergencies beacme moot, and 1 person chartered the plane for himself and bought a ticket on the SST. I never found out how that worked out, but I saw him pay for the SSt ticket.

What is a trivial thing to one person can be an emergency to another. One of my favorite retired co-workers used to say in a dry sense of humor voice "Poor planning on your part does not make for an emergency on ours."

Any journalist can blame anyone for anything, but in the end, Many people in line were willing to make an exception for this person. Not everyone is always willing. That doesn't make them bad. In a place where emergencies are common, one can react to everything and have chaos, or one can follow the SOP and sound cruel, but maintain order. In the end, there could have been many different outcomes based on many choices the passenger made. To pin it all on one choice that an agent made seems to be trying to externalize an internal problem. It's ez to blame others when we feel a loss of control. But in life, we are not in control of everything, and we need to not feel that others need to defer to our wills, when in fact each person is only accountable to themselves, their god, and possibly their govt/employer.)

Where would the blame be if the flight was oversold and not taking any more reservations? Who would they blame if there was no direct service, or the flight was a 7:30 flight? At a time like this for the passenger, trying to blame others seems like a poor priority and a sorry excuse to try to guilt others over a death that UA had nothing to do with.

And the posters on the original article that said "someone should be fired" need to get a clue. Firing someone for following policies will only result in UA having to pay that person for the time they are out of work, when they get rehired with back pay for wrongful termination. (I've read my contract...nothing the agent did is anywhere near disciplinable, let alone terminable.)

And how many times (to answer a previous poster) do we hear these things? When I worked in the lobby pre-chicken/web checkin at least once a week. At the gate, far less as the conversational interaction is not with every passenger like it was at initial checkin in the old days.