How Much Would United
Pay Today to Make It All Go Away?
George Hobica
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
6
Already this year we’ve had the Hawaiian Airlines “blanket”
incident, the United Airlines “leggings” incident, and now, much, much, much
worse, the United “dragged off the plane” public relations disaster.
All the facts aren't available yet, but it appears that the
passenger now famously dragged down
the aisle of a United plane operating from Chicago to Louisville, refused to
give up his seat for a United employee who had to travel that night.
United offered passengers financial compensation (reports say it
was as much as $800) to give up their seats but one passenger, who was already
seated and may have been "chosen by computer” (which probably means by
frequent flier status, fare paid, and when the flight was booked), refused the
compensation and was forcibly removed.
What shocks me is that the gate agent or station manager in
charge of the flight should have and could have increased the offer so that
some other passenger would have eventually grabbed it. What would it have
taken? A free flight on United anywhere in the world in first class? A few
thousand dollars? Five? Ten? Ten would have been the best investment United
made this year.
From what I can tell, this was not just a classic
"oversell" situation where United sold more seats on the plane than
there were seats, a situation governed by U.S. DOT rules. In
addition to being oversold, for some reason, United (actually, United Express)
needed to get employees to Louisville to operate a flight (didn't realize Louisville
was such a vital airport for United or its United Express subcontractor;
certainly hope these employees didn't need to get to Louisville "just
because").
Whatever it would have taken to get just one more passenger to
volunteer to deplane now looks like peanuts compared to the lost revenue from
passengers refusing to fly the not-so-friendly skies, and the lawsuit that will
certainly be filed and, no doubt, settled out of court. We're probably talking
hundreds of thousands here.
In my opinion, United's statements to the media so far are just
making matters worse.
Charlie Hobart, a United spokesman, told
the New York Times today: “we had asked several times, politely” for
the man to relinquish his seat before force was used.
“We had a customer who refused to leave the aircraft,” he told
The Times. “We have a number of customers on board that aircraft, and they want
to get to their destination on time and safely, and we want to work to get them
there."
“Since that customer refused to leave the aircraft, we had to
call the Chicago Police Department, and they came on board,” he continued.
United first sought volunteers to relinquish their seats with
compensation, but none stepped forward, Hobart told The Times. Four passengers
were selected to be bumped, and three left without incident, he said.
Even more shocking, the ejected passenger, now with a bloodied
face and obviously in shock, was let back on the plane. We will be hearing
about this story for days to come. Perhaps weeks.
The only possible silver lining: just as the industry learns how
to prevent the next accident by carefully studying what caused the last one, I
hope that airlines will similarly learn from this public relations disaster.
United could have negotiated with passengers by upping the bumping compensation
rather than resorting to force.
I’ll bet that today United would pay whatever it takes to make
this go away. They should have done that last night.
