Bumping passengers off of
planes
Bumping passengers from planes is much different that removing
passengers from planes. The former is done because the planes are overbooked.
The latter is done because passengers are creating unnecessary disturbances.
My wife and I have flown around Canada, the United States, Hawaii, Europe,
Africa, South America and Asia and it was only once in those many flights, that
I was bumped off of a plane. We were
flying from one Hawaiian island to another and for a reason I was never told
about, they had one passenger too many. The flight attendant made an
announcement. “I need one passenger to leave the plane and catch the next one
an hour and a half from now.” No one
volunteered. She walked to where my wife and I sat and looked at me and said,
“I am sorry Sir but I will have to ask you to be the person who will leave the
plane.” I asked her to wait for a minute. I spoke to my wife and told her where
in the airport to wait for me. Then I left the plane. Two and a half hours later,
the same plane returned and half and hour later, I was reunited with my wife. I
knew the owner of the airline and when I told him what had happened, he was
most apologetic and said that had I told the flight attendant that my wife and
I were sitting together, she would have chosen someone else. I actually did
tell the flight attendant that we were man and wife but it didn’t matter to
her.
Air Canada was ordered by the Canadian federal government to
pay compensation in cash to bumped passengers on domestic flights. It pays
$200/$400/$800 in cash, depending on the length of the delay, for flights
within Canada and from Canada to the U.S. It pays up to $650 and $1,300 for
bumping delays involving flights from the U.S. to Canada.
Now that may be satisfactory to some passengers if the delay isn’t too
long and it isn’t an overnight delay and they haven’t booked a hotel at their next
destination or they are catching another plane at their next destination or are
attending a conference and they are the guest speakers.
Airlines who bump passengers from flights when airlines sell
tickets to more people than they can transport, are essentially gambling with
their bumped passengers’ time and schedules.
Why do they sell tickets to more passengers than the planes
are able to carry? The reason is that
many times, there are cancellations and the extra ticket sales will make the
passenger list whole again. Unfortunately, when there are no cancelations, the
airline ends up with more passengers than the plane can carry.
The airline’s hungry pigs want full planes and to guarantee
that they will always have full planes as they slurp in their troughs, they
don’t care that they have to bump some of their passengers and thereby causing
havoc with their bumped passenger’s schedules. It all comes down to greed. Well, as we all know, greed can have serious
consequences. Just ask King Midas who faced the problem that everything he
touched turned into gold—including his daughter.
Compelling ticketed passengers to give up a seat because the
plane is overbooked can be costly, and as United Airlines has learned, it can
be very damaging to an airline's reputation and its shares and ticket sales.
A day after the forced removal of a passenger from a United
Airlines overbooked flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky provoked a
social media furor in the United States.
A similar outcry followed in China, after state-run news outlets there
described the man as being of Chinese descent. Further, millions of people word
wide watched on their television sets, as the airport security goons were dragging
the screaming passenger from the plane while children on the plane were crying
at what they were seeing and hearing. The reason for the removal? The plane was
overbooked.
By the evening of April 14th, the hashtag “United
forcibly removes passenger from plane” was the most popular topic on Weibo,
China’s equivalent of Twitter, garnering more than 270 million views and more
than 150,000 comments. Many Chinese social media users accused United Airline of
racism, while many others called for a boycott.
What really harmed United Airlines' and Chicago's airpport's security's images was the cellphone of a passenger who videotaped the incident for everyone world-wide to see on their television screens.
The controversy has threatened to hurt United’s revenue in China, where the airline began flying in 1986 and has steadily built a loyal customer base. As of last May, United had 96 departures a week to cities in mainland China and Hong Kong.
This would be a good time for the airline, Cathay Pacific to
take over that route. My wife and I have flown on that airline’s planes many
times in South Asia. One day while my wife and I were boarding one of their
planes, its pilot said to me, “You must
really like our planes. I often see you in them.” It is a good airline. The Chinese would love that airline to take
over the China mainland Hong Kong route also. If that happens; United can then fly home using
its rhetorical broken wings.
United has said that the passenger and three others were
selected to be removed from the flight after no one accepted the offer of a flight
voucher to leave voluntarily. The other three passengers left without incident.
United’s chief executive, Oscar Munoz, apologized for “having to re-accommodate
these customers,” called the episode “upsetting” and said the airline was
conducting a review. I wonder if he apologized to the Chinese passenger
personally.
Now we have all learned that the Airport security goons
broke the man’s nose, damaged his sinuses which will require reconstruction
surgery, broke two of his teeth and caused him to suffer from a concussion. He
has now sued United for five million dollars. No doubt the airline will settle
out of court since they don’t want the case to go to court and have all their
dirty laundry put on display. He has included
the City of Chicago that controls the airport for the actions of the airport’s
security goons that dragged the Chinese passenger off the plane in that claim.
If you were a bumped passenger who was flying to a city
where in two hours later, you were to sign a contract worth millions of dollars
and if you didn’t arrive on time and your competitor subsequently got the
contract, would United’s voucher and an apology from the president of the
airline smooth your ruffled feathers? I
doubt it.
I can’t even imagine in my
wildest thoughts as to just how many millions of dollars this particular
airline is going to lose as a direct result of their latest fiasco. I would be surprised if their ticket sales
didn’t suddenly get sucked down their rhetorical toilet. I for one; will never
fly on a United Airline plane and not just because of this particular glitch in
the airline’s history. Flying on one of United’s planes is not unlike buying a used
car that has been in many accidents and continues to rattle on.
An Ontario woman was given an United Airline fight voucher because she
volunteered to be bumped off their plane she was on that was going to Orlando
Florida. The
woman said that she and her family waited 10 hours in the Newark airport before
getting on the next flight. She says they didn't get to Orlando until
after 1:30 a.m., which meant they couldn't use one of the day passes they had
bought for Disney World.
In early May, the woman went on
the United Airlines website to use her voucher to book another flight to
Florida over this year's Christmas holidays. But when she entered the voucher's
PIN, she says it didn't work. She then called United's toll-free customer
service number and was told her voucher was not valid.
United Airlines
apologized to the Ontario woman for mistakenly cancelling the $1,000
travel voucher she received for volunteering to give up her seat on an
overbooked flight, delaying her trip to Disney World in Florida. But United hadn't
said why it didn't respond to the woman's complaint for more than six weeks,
and only responded and fixed the problem after being contacted by CBC News.
Airline consumer advocates say
that getting off an overbooked flight in exchange for a voucher can be a
crapshoot because flights are so full these days, you might not get another
flight for the day you want. Experts say the offer of a voucher also highlights
the gamble passengers take when offering to give up their seats in return for a
voucher that offers a discount off a future flight.
Passengers
shouldn't voluntarily give up their seats without getting a boarding pass for
the next flight, "because a promise that you're going to get on the
next flight isn't the same as getting a seat assignment." If you do
get off the flight, instead of a voucher;
passengers can and should demand cash.
In 2009,
Canadian musician Dave Carroll tried and failed to get United to pay for a
guitar he says was broken during a flight. Frustrated by United's response,
Carroll wrote the song United Breaks Guitars. The YouTube
video went viral. Four days after it was posted, United's stock had
fallen 10 per cent. United apologized and asked to use the video to train its
employees and help change its corporate culture. If they were trained, the results are not
apparent yet.
United is still struggling to fix
customer service issues after some well-publicized mistakes in the past hit
them in their corporate butt.
According to the Department of Transportation data, U.S.
airlines forced only six out of every thousand passengers to give up their
seats on oversold planes last year. It is the lowest rate since the government
began tracking the practice in 1995.
According
to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, a total of 631,939,829 passengers
boarded domestic flights in the United States in the year 2010. This
averages to 1.73 million passengers flying per day. Considering just how many
thousands there are in 631,939,829 passengers, this could amount to thousands
of passengers a year that are bumped from their planes. The way I see it, the airline industry has to improve their problem of
overbooking.
First of all, once they have booked everyone who purchased the tickets either
ahead of time or at the counter and those persons are on the plane, none of
those passengers should be ordered to leave the plane so that someone else will
take their seat. If the airline offers cash as an incentive and a passenger
accepts the offer to leave the plane; then that is OK.
Every passenger plane has a bumper seat in the cockpit so if another
captain is flying to another city to fly another plane; that is where the
captain will sit.
In the days when passengers would be permitted to visit the cockpits to
watch the pilots flying their planes, on one of my many trips, at my request, I was brought to
the cockpit by the flight attendant. When the captain asked me why I was flying
to San Francisco, I told him that the California Department of Corrections had invited
me as a criminologist to visit all of their prisons. The captain and co-pilot were intrigued as I
told them of the prisons in the USA and Canada that I had already visited. As we were flying over the City of Oakland and
approaching the bay that separates Oakland and San Francisco, the captain said
it was too late for me to return to my seat and invited me to sit in the empty
bumper seat. I am probably the only passenger who ever sat in the cockpit of a
plane while it was landing at an airport.
And now, I am going to tell you a true story that will make you will see
the irony. Many years ago, a politician was a late arrival and demanded that
someone be taken off the plane that was already full. A young man was chosen to
vacate his seat and leave the plane. The politician said to the young man, “Don’t
fret sonny. Some day in the future, if you ae a politician, you can also take over
the seat of a passenger,” Twenty minutes later when the plane was in the air,
it suddenly took a nosedive and crashed. Everyone in the plane was killed.
I would have loved to have seen the expression on the face of that politician
as the plane was spiraling downward. Unfortunately, I would have had to also be
in that plane to see his face.
Considering just how many passenger planes there are in flight in the
world at any one time, the chances of being killed in a plane crash is very
remote. But as fate would have it, I ended up in one such crash.
I was in a plane that crash-landed at an airport. The rear engine caught
fire when the plane hit the runway and the captain quickly moved the plane to
the terminal so that everyone could get off safely.
I was sitting in the window seat but I couldn’t undo my seat belt since I
had broken my right upper arm years earlier and the bone fused my arm to the extent
that I can’t move it backwards. My wife who was standing in the aisle tried to unbuckle
me but she was pushed away by the passengers who were moving very quickly to
the forward part of the plane. Within a minute, I was the only person left in
the plane. The smoke began choking me so naturally I was scared that I would be
burned to death. My wife told one of the flight attendants that I was still
buckled in my seat. The flight attendant ran into the plane (I was in the
middle of the plane) and she unbuckled me and dragged me out of the plane.
Was it fate that saved me? They
say that the chances of being killed in a car crash is very slim indeed considering how many cars are on the road at
any one time. Well I was in a car crash when another car T-boned my car at a
hundred miles an hour. It took the firemen twenty minutes to release me from
the car. I end up in the hospital for two weeks.
I am a survivor. I am in my eighties and no matter how many times I have
cheated death (including three heart attacks and living with only 27 % of my
heart functioning) I am still around.
What is my secret to longevity? Only the good people die when they are young. My
wife says I am so bad, I will actually outlive God. But then, she tends to exaggerate.
I have told my wife a million times not to exaggerate.
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