Monday/ let us ‘re-accommodate’ you ..

United Airlines got extensive and extremely bad press today, for the brutal way they treated a passenger on a Chicago to Louisville flight on Sunday. The passenger was a doctor that had already boarded, and refused to give up his seat voluntarily (for a United Airlines employee); the doctor said he had patients to see the next morning.

The Chicago Airport Police came on board, and soon violently dragged him off the airplane. The passenger suffered injuries to his face in the process. The other passengers were just shocked. Some had recorded it and posted the incident on Facebook and Twitter. Adding insult to injury, the United Airlines CEO issued a cold-blooded ‘apology’ on Monday : “I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers”. Right. As a Twitter user noted : United made a business decision that that doctor’s humanity was worth less than $800. Make them pay for that. Said another tweet : ‘After what your goons did to a passenger on #flight3411, I will never fly with United again. There is NO excuse’.

(Tue 4/11/2017): from Thatcher A. Stone writing on CNN.com: Flying for vacation travel or work on a modern US carrier’s plane can be enjoyable and pleasant. Just do what you are told by the crew. And, to fulfill their part of the bargain, airlines need to follow the rules and treat passengers who get bumped fairly.

If United had taken a senior gate agent and brought him onto the airplane and said to the doctor, “here is our written policy about denied boarding. I know you are in a seat, but you are mistaken that we can’t remove you. But guess what? You will get refunded whatever you paid if we can get you to your destination within an hour and if it takes longer you could get up to 400 percent.”

He would likely have gotten up and gotten off the plane in a second.

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