2017 Apr 11^th

The ability to take pictures most anywhere might eventually help to civilize this country. It has at least embarrassed a police department one of whose members is seen firing about a dozen shots into the back of a black man frantically trying to run away from him. The officer claimed he was in mortal danger.

Now we have photographic evidence of three thugs employed by United Airlines “re-accommodating” a passenger by pulling him out of his seat into the airplane’s aisle and then dragging him out of the plane. The reason for this brutality is entirely understandable: the airline needed four seats to relocate some employees who where needed elsewhere…and could not be inconvenienced by taking a bus. The airline was willing to pay a considerable sum to designated passengers willing to give up their seats but if one of them refused then apparently thuggery was in order.

The other passengers who witnessed this mess were outraged by what they saw.  What if the person “re-accommodated” by being pulled from his seat and dragged down the aisle had been a 75-year-old grandmother? The four airline employees who subsequently took the vacated seats received no little abuse from the other passengers. What happened wasn’t their fault but if they had refused the seats they likely would have been fired.

The next day has Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United Airlines sending a message congratulating his employees for the fine way they handled this incident. Is that unbelievable? It is, but that’s what happened. Here is the message:
"This situation was unfortunately compounded when one of the passengers we politely asked to deplane refused, and it became necessary to contact Chicago Aviation Security Officers to help," the letter says. "While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right." One of these “Chicago Aviation Security Officers” involved in this action has been suspended. I guess the CEO, Oscar Munoz, is in no danger of losing his 6.7 million a year job.( It is now several hours later and Munoz has managed a much more conciliatory response to this public disaster.)

There is not much doubt that UAL will face a lawsuit for considerable damage. There in nothing in the fine print of their passenger contract that allows them to do what they did. If a flight is overbooked they can deny boarding to waiting passengers with tickets but this passenger had already boarded and was in his seat.

This is not rocket science. All they had to do was to offer progressively more money to any passenger who would be willing to give up a seat. Why push this one seat holder to give up his seat when he was adamant about staying where he was? Were the airline officials on a power trip or did they want to solve the problem? The answer is obvious and it will be expensive.