Originally Posted by
24left
Thread title is:
So how does UA win back the flying public?
Answer: Depends who you ask.
If you ask FFs, FTers you might get an answer than involves a seat sale and maybe throw in some additional EQMs, AQMs etc,
If you ask the general public, it will be a wide range of suggestions that might involve discipline and or "coaching" for all employees and mall cops involved.
If you ask the other pax who were on that flight, the answer might involve $$$ for the trauma they suffered watching all of this unfold.
Some might suggest that Oscar stop tweeting.
If you ask Wall Street, there will a different answer.
And if you ask the unfortunate man who was the recipient of all of this nastiness, I am quite sure there will be a different answer.
All of the above will look nice on a Venn Diagram.
Is there really just one answer to "So how does UA win back the flying public?"
Agreed. Folks new to Flyertalk may be a bit put off by economy passengers being referred to as 'kettles' or 'gate lice'. That's because many folks who post here are on elite status and are not subject to the same poor treatment as the general public. For them, there will be little sympathy for the folks in cattle class who bear the brunt of situations like this.
After obsessing on this story the last day or so, I still have a lot of questions. First, what was this passenger entitled to, and was it explained to him? Is the compensation cash, flight vouchers, or something else? Munoz said he was offered "$1000 compensation" which I assume to be a flight voucher he may not have wanted and a hotel room he definitely did not want.
You folks who say it doesn't matter if he was a doctor or not, I think that's fair. But you are also going to expect him to stand up and assist the airline if a passenger falls sick. I'm a doc, I've done this twice now, and in neither case did I ask for or get any consideration from the airline for assisting and preventing a diversion. Nor would I ever use my profession to say I should get preferential treatment, although Lufthansa actually does have a program for docs to register in consideration for this issue.
I hope lawmakers get involved in this to develop rules that provide for the same level of cash compensation for all passengers regardless of class of ticket to dissuade airlines from playing overbook roulette because they know they can bump passengers easily and profit by doing so, such as in the case of folks flying on award tickets.
Every passenger on that plane is just as important as every other passenger.