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0 pointsjacquesm9y ago0 comments

Legal hair splitting aside: there is a line that a company can not and should not cross, which is to alienate its paying customers. Once you pass that point it stops to matter whether or not you were legally in your right, you've lost in the one court that matters: the court of commerce.

If customers can no longer trust you to treat them with even the lowest degree of respect (and bodily integrity, already a sore point with air travelers is undeniably a part of that) then you're in trouble.

Witness the stock markets response today, no amount of legal wrangling will make that kind of beating right, besides the obvious ethical angles.

UA failed, then failed again during their initial apology and now may be able to put this behind them but it will be a very costly lesson.

0 pointsjacquesm9y ago0 comments

Witness the stock markets response today, no amount of legal wrangling will make that kind of beating right, besides the obvious ethical angles.

UA failed, then failed again during their initial apology and now may be able to put this behind them but it will be a very costly lesson.

0 comments

5 comments · 1 top-level

FabHK9y ago· 4 in thread

1. Paradoxically, I'm not sure they'll have significant commercial losses. Discriminating flyers weren't flying United before, I'd think, and most of those screaming now might well book United a week hence if it's $3.50 cheaper than the alternatives.

2. Companies (or any entity, really) should resist attempts to circumvent rules by cheating, e.g. by throwing a tantrum at the check-in counter when you don't get an upgrade. So, when the Involuntary Denied Boarding lottery comes up, and you don't get a seat, do you think it would be ok to force your way onto the plane and refuse to get off, in the hope that they might chose someone else? If not, how would you deal with such a case?

jacquesmOP9y ago

1 may be right, hard to know either way.

2 is incorrect. The people were already on the plane, it was not overbooked (but booked to capacity) and the people replacing the paying passengers were deadheading crew.

So there was absolutely no 'cheating' on the part of the passengers but plenty on the side of the airline, starting with claiming they were overbooked which they really weren't.

FabHK9y ago

Deadheading crew has higher priority than pax, because without crew planeloads of other pax don't fly. The airline had, for operational reasons, fewer seats than pax with confirmed reservations. Do you call it overbooked or not, who cares: something has to give, as is anticipated in the conditions of carriage, an entirely normal thing: sometimes you might not get on a flight, or even be bumped off a flight.

The 'cheating' is in refusing to disembark.

1 more reply

Apocryphon9y ago

The market disagrees with your first point.

FabHK9y ago

Share price was at $70 a month ago, 5 days ago, and now - it goes up and down.

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