Well that United Airlines thing has pissed me off...

Strat_a_tat_tat

Garthy said:

Strat_a_tat_tat said:

Is there some reason why this doesn't appear to have been trending on FarceBook today? Seems odd if nobody's talking about it on there. Is there any reason why it wouldn't appear on FB?

Your Facebook feed isn't full of wasters replying "u ok hun?" to every story?

Errrr.... that's why I don't have a FB account.

dano

Shocking event.

It just demonstrates that underlying aggressiveness Americans have. Mix in the latest school shooting too.

Strat_a_tat_tat

dano said:

Shocking event.

It just demonstrates that underlying aggressiveness Americans have. Mix in the latest school shooting too.

Sadly, I don't think that sort of aggressive (I was only following orders) type of behaviour is the exclusive preserve of the Americans.

Sporky

Nor is it fair to suggest that this is typical of a nation of over 300 million.

Heartfeltdawn

What happened to that guy on the plane is what happens to people when they take off the seal on the bottom of Cornish pedals. 

HAL9000

Lodious said:

To be fair to United, Rayanair would have charged an extra 15quid for dragging you off.

Shocking footage has just emerged of a passenger being forcibly dragged on to a Ryanair flight.

TheBlueWolf

Wow.

Just wow 

Sambostar

So you're saying you don't like rules?  WTF is wrong with you obliging them?
 

notanon

Zimbardo experiment - most people become dangerous when you put them in charge and give them orders. IMO uniforms can make it even worse.

I've seen first hand awful behaviour and I've heard of far worse.

olafgarten

http://www.thingsinsquares.com/tale/united-airlines-passenger-removal-procedural-guidelines/

stickyfiddle

Heartfeltdawn said:

What happened to that guy on the plane is what happens to people when they take off the seal on the bottom of Cornish pedals. 

I always assumed that'd be more of an Ark of the Covenant thing..

strtdv

It's unlikely that even a large payout will touch the $200 million that has been wiped off their stock value as a result

Axe_meister

Last time I was in the States I got offered $500 to take a flight the next morning plus I was put up in a nice hotel.

Sesh

Even Hitler didn't drag people off planes.

randella

In the wake of this, AA's reaction does seem to be pointing towards the "if he'd have shut his face, not complained, and gone all placid we wouldn't have dragged him, bleeding, off the plane" school of thought that does seem to be turning into a thing in the US.

ICBM

randella said:

In the wake of this, AA's reaction does seem to be pointing towards the "if he'd have shut his face, not complained, and gone all placid we wouldn't have dragged him, bleeding, off the plane" school of thought that does seem to be turning into a thing in the US.

It's all over Airliners.net as well. For such an apparently 'freedom-loving' country obsessed with how bad 'the government' is, many of them seem remarkably keen to justify the sort of authoritarian behaviour typical of a police state.

RandallFlagg

According to Sean Spicer even Hitler never threw anyone off a plane so UA are really bad....

boogieman

I understand overselling the plane is common practice out there. I guess it must make financial sense, somehow, to pay a few volunteers to take a later flight. What I don't get is why they let all the passengers get on the plane first, THEN decide they needed the seats for off duty crew. If they'd bribed and bumped a few passengers before boarding there wouldn't have been this problem in the first place. The ground staff must be morons. Obviously not as big a moron as their CEO though. 

TheBlueWolf

Maybe I'm being dense, but if the plane *hadn't* been overbooked in the first place this incident wouldn't have happened at all.....

kaypeejay

Overselling is common practice everywhere. Listening to the radio last night, it seems that the Airline are well within their rights to bump people off planes as and when they see fit. The difference being, it is much easier to stop people getting on a plane that getting them off again. The usual practice is to offer increasing sums of money until they get people to volunteer. If it is all done off the plane then this does not have to happen. This was an appallingly bad mistake by the airline!