notquiteaff

I am not a lawyer. But I don't see the word convicted in the article. It says:

"Anastasia was later charged with the felony crime of injury to an elderly individual, ordered to pay a fine, write a letter of apology and attend anger-management classes."

I went to Harris County Circuit court and searched cases.

http://www.hcdistrictclerk.com/eDocs/Public/Search.aspx

Search for the last name Anastasia and you find case "148497301010 - 3
Dismissed". Filed 10/14/2015 by the State of Texas against Alexandro Nestor Anastasia for Injury to Elderly. To see the details, I'd have to register.

The same search also returns the record for the civil case filed against United and two individuals (including Anastasia). Case number "201737998 - 7
Active - Civil"

Duke787

Agreed another ridiculous, tone-deaf response.

M60_to_LGA

Stuff like this has put me off flying UA at all. I've actually booked work travel and specifically asked the agent to book me on the cheapest, non-UA flight.

I haven't been a frequent UA traveler over the years, and my 30,000-ish flight miles/year aren't that big of a concern for them, but these violent episodes crossed a line with me.

Anyway, most of my flying is international, so I generally can and do avoid America's godawful airlines. If I have to fly domestic, I at least have reasonable confidence that AA and DL won't send mob goons to attack me.

chollie

This.

They should have researched any other smoking guns with the twin goals of settling the suits and dealing with the employees who caused the problem and those who witnessed it and didn't act to improve the situation.

Time to call the union out and make a big campaign of it internally. Point out to all employees that covering for a PoS in their midst just hurts the entire company.

cmdinnyc

Civil cases like this are usually not filed until close to the end of the statue of limitations, which is typically 2 years. There are many valid reasons for this.

1) The amount one of damages is not known right at the time of the incident. It often includes medical costs, which can take a long time to be known. There could be rehab that goes on for months, for example. And insurance plans may require you to pay them back out of any settlement or court judgement, so anyone suing will need / want to be able to recover more than their insurer paid.

2) Depending on the nature of the injuries, the long term effects (pain, loss of function) can take months to years to be well understood. How do you sue right away for damages when you don't know what they are?

3) As someone else pointed out, if there's a criminal case, you'd want that to be resolved first because it makes the civil case much easier.

Separately, airlines, and United in particular, are earning themselves a really bad reputation. How many customer service oriented companies and take these kinds of incidents coming up repeatedly and not suffer consequences?

MSPeconomist

For many employers, any employee physically attacking or threatening a customer or another employee would be a fireable offense with zero tolerance.

84fiero

And the criminal case was only resolved in March 2016. Looking at the dismissal document from the court website, it states under "reason": "restitution, letter of apology, anger management"

Kacee

But has not seemed to stop the general populace from buying BE fares on UA.

blueman2

I know we can jump to simple causes for this (unions, poor training, bad employees), but I can think of no single issue that could cause so many employees to fail to provide any assistance or empathy for this injured person. There is something very, very wrong with United. Darkly wrong.

halls120

Excellent point. I understand one employee with anger issues. What's the excuse for all the other employees not showing any compassion?

blueman2

Dear god, I just watched the entire 3 minute video here:

https://www.click2houston.com/video/...nger-to-ground

This is the saddest thing I have seen in a long time. The United employees LITERALLY turning their backs on this man they just knocked unconscious, pretending he is not even there while a bypasser tries to administer help.

Complete lack of any empathy. This is not just sad. It is not just maddening. It is scary!!

EDIT: My god, watch the video. 5 United employees directly witness the man being knocked unconscious. Most of the scatter like cockroaches afterwards, and 3 just walk around for a bit, then start talking amongst themselves trying to keep their backs to him so they do not look at him lying unconscious.

I am deeply concerned with United.

goodeats21

Agreed. But filling up planes with bottom-barrel-fare seekers isn't a winning strategy for United's financial performance.

When United Airlines is cemented in the public's mind as the worst service provider in a limited field, it will be very, very difficult to turn it around.

I believe United dramatically under-reacted to Dao, and continues to slid in the wrong direction.

spin88

This incident happened in 2015, since the employee was criminally charged, and it appears plea barganed, and doubtlessly United knew about the incident, why was it not investigated earlier? In an alternative world where United was a well run company, the statement would have said something like:

"we deeply regret the incident and after a comprehensive investigation terminated the employee involved and counseled and retrained other involved staff on addressing customer health emergencies. We have apologized and attempted unsuccessfully to resolve the matter with the effected customer."

United however due to horrible management and a toxic culture created by Smisik and his Smith Street Crew, is unable to do or say what a decent, and I might add smart company does in the event of a major incident like this.

As I said after Dao, anything about the airlines - and UA in particular - was going to be front page news. Newspeople travel, and they know how bad the Airlines are, United gave them a good lesson on what a good story reports about how bad United is make.

+1 This was my second thought. I can't believe that United did not reach out and make an offer that the passenger could not refuse. $750K to $1M "in consideration of personal injuries" so that it is tax free likely would have done the trick. They are going to pay far, far more in legal fees, the eventual settlement, and reputational damage.

p.s. Post now up with a piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.8f6b52edfd49 It is the third most read piece currently up on the Post. Lots of market for articles that point out how awful United is...

Beltway2A

I agree. Given how many of these situations occured in the past, it's becoming clearer that the Dao incident was simply a very public instance of UA's corrosive culture towards their self-loading freight.

chollie

To anyone who hasn't actually watched the video, watch it now. As an earlier poster noted, it's unbelievable.

I simply can't see any way UA can spin this to claim there were mitigating circumstances or the video is misleading. After seeing this video, I'm not only not surprised Dao happened, I'm not surprised at other incidents.

The employees who stood around and did nothing, not even call 911, should have been fired on the spot. No amount of re-training is going to be effective with people capable of behaving like that in a public place. At the very least, they should never be in any customer-interfacing position again.