Thatguyatthebar

this one was good too:
http://m.imgur.com/TKLs9lo?r

BRAISKI

LOL, do you really think AC is much better?!

UA for sure screwed this up. But AC will not care, at the end of the day its about business and making money, lots of it!

Every other airline will now review their policy about yanking a paid customer. They might have to be more subtle.

eigenvector

Thanks for the info. The officer has now been suspended. I am actually surprised by the fast response from the Chicago Aviation Authority. We all know the (lack of) accountability that occurred when RCMP killed a passenger at YVR several years ago.

zrh2yvr

+1 . .

I was actually thinking of how AC would do it. Basically, this should never happen. Anyone with a seat on their boarding pass who boards the plane will basically not get deplaned. It would only be those who did not get a seat assignment. The only thing I could see happening is someone getting deplaned as the plane becomes fully checked before departure and there is a change in dead head crew requirements - thus someone becomes offloaded. However - in that situation, AC would likely make your boarding pass invalid and you would never get to your seat. This UA situation looks bad as they should never have been allowed to board at all.

Stranger

Let us be fair here. We are dealing with someone who refused to follow instructions from the crew. Ultimately had to be forcefully removed by security.

May look bad, may be terrible PR, but the guy was supposed to go on his own.

If you refuse to follow an order by the police, it's not physical assault.

vernonc

What ? I think we are first discussing UA's decision to kick a pax off a flight after he already boarded. Then the high handedness of the security staff at the airport. You must be one of the few who thinks this will end well for UA. I would most certainly hope that this would not be the preferred method by AC or Canadian security.
Refusing to follow an illegal order from the police does not make it ok for a physical assault. And I dont know if this is a lawful order. So if a police officer instructs you to stop filming in an arrest in a public place and you refuse so long as you are not interfering or causing a safety issue it is ok for the police to assault ? You need to read up on some recent cases. Specially in Canada.

CZAMFlyer

Absolute and utter nonsense. Perhaps if you were talking about disobeying a flight safety command, or any transgression of a law or private property, this comment might be valid. The airline staff and ORD mall cops completely overstepped their bounds in almost every conceivable fashion in this incident.

An "order from the police" is not the Word of God*.


*Spoiler alert: there is no God.

24left

Another one

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/28155807-post574.html

Just waiting for the MUGA hat

Stranger

Surely it was within the prerogatives of the airline to remove someone from the flight. Surely this was a lawful order.

Which does not necessarily mean this will end well for UA. To start with it's a PR disaster. It may well be that they could have asked for volunteers and offer enough, admittedly a big mistake. But that they did not was not a reason for the passenger to refuse the instruction to leave the aircraft.

If the security folks overdid it, or if the passenger could not be handled more gently I do not know. And if indeed they di, from a legal standpoint, it's not clear to me that UA should be on the hook, but whatever that security outfit was.

But it seems to me the issue again centers around removing a passenger woh had a ticket and a reservation on the flight.

Stranger

Agreed on there being no gods.

As to an order from police/security, if you don't follow one, and as long as the order is not abusive, surely they can use reasonable force. Whether it was or not I do not know. But surely the fellow should have left gracefully.

BTW this was apparently not a case of overbooking.

Jumper Jack

I am not leaving my seat until AC offers me something satisfactory. Bite me. Yeah sure beat me but that will only bring a mountain of poop opon their heads.
I am not going to follow these orders either in the same case. Under the right circumstance its called abuse of power, which in this case is both on UA and so called cops.

I can use it as a shield to defend myself from a legal point of view.
In the day of cellphone camera, I do not have to worry about a thing.

Stranger

Apart from a bloody nose. Perhaps getting arrested too.

Surely if they start getting too many copycats, these issues will end up needing a heavy-handed solution, if they are not to lose control. Bad PR only will go so far. And once they got the bad PR they no longer need to care all that much. They are already the bad guy. And anyway, it's probably is going to happy on other airlines too.

Jumper Jack

Sure, whatever. Thankfully the guy in question is a doctor so he will have the means to sue them.

I am surprised nobody got the balls on the flight stand up for the guy, I know I would take a stand.

Hopefully next time something like this happens more people will stand up and fight back(not physically obv) against these disgusting moves. This is not just bad PR, this is borderline criminal behavior.

UA is not getting off this time like they did with yoga pant gate, this one is going to seriously hurt them in every way.

24left

Well, aside from all the posters on the UA forum threatening to leave UA....

If I was sitting at AC HQ, I'm count myself lucky this list of stupid decisions isn't theirs and the CBC is busy chasing someone else today. Oscar's tweets have not helped matters.

http://gizmodo.com/lets-boycott-unit...nes-1794174586

CZAMFlyer

As always, there is a reasonable solution in the middle ground between these two wildly divergent views.

What I do hope comes out of this incident, is that airlines, including AC, take a good hard look at their own procedures and staff training to deal with similar incidents. There will hopefully be a large financial penalty for UA in terms of diverted revenue and canceled contracts, some involuntary career shifts for the applicable airline ground staff, and perhaps some criminal charges against the mall cops. I don't feel the corporate culture in any airline - within or outside Star Alliance - is such that it fosters such abuse of passengers. In other words, it was a failure by individuals and could just as likely have happened at AA or DL etc.

AC need do nothing punitive in this case - it has nothing to do with them and any actions or counsel on their part will be unnecessary and unwelcomed. They just have to make darned sure it never never ever happens to them.