The story told by United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz was that Dr. David Dao was “disruptive and belligerent.” He Ignored the existence of a video that proved the lie, the words used to rationalize calling the police to remove a passenger who had the temerity to remain in the seat he paid for after he was ordered to leave, as the randomly chosen passenger, which put into action the event that followed.
Subsequent discussion ranged from the entirely irrelevant media smearing of Dao, because they could and lacked the depth of understanding why they shouldn’t, to the abuse of the scenario as an excuse to further the social justice agenda of “privilege.” The guy just wanted to get where he was going. The guy bought a plane ticket and, like anyone else on the plane, took his seat. That’s about as far as any reasonable person’s duty to the airline goes.
During the discussion surrounding this outrage, mostly nitpicking details and “explaining” them wrongly, both because the writers had no clue and the readers had even less, a rather old-school detail failed to filter through. To have Dao removed for his insolence, Chicago Aviation Police were called. The result was a person physically harmed.
This wasn’t a microaggression, where someone said a phrase that hurt Dao’s feelings. Words don’t draw blood. At most, they are used afterward to justify it, as Munoz tried to pull off by blaming Dao for what happened to him. Even then, had the words been anything other than a facial lie, who would have cared?
What does “disruptive and belligerent” actually mean? They’re descriptive, but conclusory and factless. They give an impression of Dao doing something bad without actually imparting any clue as what that was. Had there been no video showing Dao doing nothing to deserve the physical harm done to him, it might have been sufficient nonetheless.
All of this obscures a tangential question of why law enforcement intervened in a consumer transaction. When cops are involved, the justification must be worthy of execution, because that could be the ultimate outcome. Dao did nothing worth dying for. Despite Munoz’s lie, the police are not United Airlines enforcers when their paying customer doesn’t do as they demand.
In the real-time world, Dr. Dao was told by a flight attendant to do something that made absolutely no sense to him, and shouldn’t. To the extent there was an issue, it was between buyer and seller, the latter having the former’s money and choosing to deny the buyer the service for which it was paid. And the Chicago Aviation Police came in to enforce one side of this consumer transaction. It then used force because that’s the tool police use.
Even for those of the view that support the “obey now, grieve later” perspective, this scenario shifts the bar from allegations of some criminal conduct, no matter how far-fetched, to the use of force on behalf of one side in a commercial beef.
There was nothing in this situation that gave rise to any justification for police involvement. Dr. Dao was no different than any other paying passenger. There is no reasonable expectation that a paid, boarded*, passenger should leave a plane upon demand for no reason beyond someone told him to do so. And there is no explanation for why the police enforced United’s side in this matter beyond being the airline’s dumb muscle.
All the justifications and rationalizations for police use of force go out the window. If United wanted Dao off the flight, let their staff do their own dirty work. If anything, the cops should have been called in to protect Dao from United.
What would have happened had the police refused to intervene? Who cares? As with any other consumer dispute, it’s civil in nature and between two parties who disagree about their relative rights and duties. It would have left United in an untenable position? Tough nuggies. Had Dao in fact resisted his removal from the plane, as many people on the good guy curve would believe they were fully entitled to do, would it be better that he die for his insolence?
That can happen when the police choose to enforce one side in a consumer transaction by using force against the other. Never forget that any use of law enforcement has the potential to result in execution. The overarching question is whether this was something worth killing Dao over. Regardless of the outcome of any subsequent suit, or the social shaming and condemnation of United, or post-hoc recriminations about the involvement of the police, they wouldn’t be of much use to Dr. Dao if he was dead.
Update: United CEO Oscar Munoz has just announced that it will no longer use police to impose its will on passengers.
United Airlines Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz said the company would not use law enforcement officers to remove overbooked passengers from aircraft in the wake of a video that showed a forcible removal of a Chicago passenger on Sunday.
How, then, they will accomplish removal isn’t clear. Cash incentives might work. But that was tried on the Dao flight to the tune of $800, and didn’t work. What went wrong?
Munoz told ABC News that the problem resulted from a “system failure” that prevented employees from using “common sense” in the situation.
Who doesn’t hate when those darn system failures prevent employees from using common sense?
*United Airlines claims that a passenger isn’t “boarded” until the doors of the plane are closed and locked. Whether that’s so isn’t left to United to decide, despite the willingness of media to mindlessly accept whatever the airline says.
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In one very real sense, the people claiming this is no big deal are correct. It happens all the time.
The admonition to avoid calling the cops unless you’re prepared for someone to die is often ignored, or not even known or understood, by aloof CEO and frustrated minion alike. Proprietors view cops and trespass laws as reliable tools to enforce their will.
The public gives the cops a pass for bad behavior, and this pass extends to all who call them. Various slogans are drilled into us to infantilize us and make us understand we are incapable of solving our own problems; the correct, responsible thing to do is to call a trained professional.
Obligstory gertruding: #NotAllCopsAreTools
There are two corollaries to the problem: the first is that there is a solution for every situation mankind creates. The second is that government is always the solution.
I am going to go with the government is ‘almost’ always the solution. The fact that airlines overbook flights regularly should be some sort of fraud, prosecuted by the government. That they don’t seems some sort of collusion.
As to the ‘system failure’ why doesn’t the government tell the airlines that when they get to say 90% full, they sell the remaining tickets as standby? Common sense doesn’t always belong to the line employees alone.
The cops, being the ‘reasonable’ people they are should have asked what law was being violated. That they didn’t puts a strain on anyone’s perception of ‘reasonable’ cops.
Many people agree with you. Over and over as they try to tweak regulations that never quite accomplish the goal of making everything wonderful.
Crisis and Leviathan. And to think that was written back in the 80s, when the government was still small and cute. Disobeying a flight attendant wasn’t even a federal crime!
The notion of having to obey stews upon pain of prison would not have made a for a good TV commercial back then, except to a small group of masochists.
This incident wasn’t a case of overbooking.
United wanted to make room for United employees.
Anyway, overbooking issues not dealt with by removing already-seated passengers.
United has joined my “no fly” list. Air travel has been so miserable for so long that it is already the choice of last resort. I will only book with any of them if a trip would be more than a day of driving and rail connections are not available.
I only fly Pan Am.
I hear Braniff is also pretty good.
Pan Am had the hottest stews, for sure.
Bah. PSA. As famous for hot pants and miniskirts as for low fares.
If you like that sort of thing.
I wonder if Dr. Dao will come up with something as catchy as Dave Carroll did with his ‘United Breaks Guitars’ song and video series? Somehow ‘United Breaks Heads’ doesn’t seem to lend itself to light lyrics.
I loved Dave Carroll’s song.
That can be the cover song for The Pogues Reunion Album.
I’ve been boreded on many a flight. That’s why airports have bars, although $10 beers and $12 drinks makes getting a buzz for the flight an expensive proposition.
I took a Southwestern flight, armed with a fistful of free drink coupons. I gave them all away.
I give my Southwest drink coupons away too! Makes everyone around me happy.
Well stated. As usual, we disagree about the tactics, but we do not disagree generally that United was beastly. The fact of the matter is that there’s ample legal basis for United to decide at any point that they don’t want someone on board, and they have every right to bounce customers. It seems par for United’s course that they do.
Once they have decided this, how would you have handled it differently? This is non-rhetorical: I am genuinely interested. The airline decided (stupidly) they wanted Dr. Dao off the plane, and said that they wouldn’t leave until he was not on board. When he refused, we have FAR §121.580 Prohibition on interference with crewmembers and several other statutes with identical language (e.g., 14 CFR 91.11, which says the same damned thing).
It’s a United thing, BUT they have the backup of the FARs on their side, as well as federal law. That’s likely because 99.999% of the time, when the airline wants someone off a plane, that someone is a complete ass. And remember, too, that despite the expenditure of billions since 9/11, every single passenger who tried to cause harm to a plane (a) had the stuffing beaten from them by angry passengers, and (b) was arrested by local law enforcement on the ground. The rules make this easy (as they did with the asshat executive who climbed aboard the drinks trolley and pooped) because most of the time that is exactly what we want: we want the person to stop interfering with the flight crew.
Yet here in this case, we have a bunch of Philadelphia lawyers and Starsky-and-Hutch-watchers opining on the laws in play here as if their insights should override 16-years of Post-9/11 reality aboard flights. These are:
1. All airlines suck; they just suck differently. United is the second worst airline on earth, after Aeroflot; and
2. Federal regulations are designed to give flight crew control of the cabin for safety’s sake, and to take action against passengers who make it hard to keep control; and
4. The indignities begin as you approach the airport and continue until you pay the exorbitant taxi or rental surcharges to leave; and
3. For all the Starsky-and-Hutch-watchers, kindly give three minutes of thought to how YOU would have done it differently than people who think about this every day (and admit you have likely never given thought to this before): when a passenger doesn’t want to cooperate (for whatever reason) there is a range of responses, but ultimately, someone clinging for dear life to an armrest so that you can’t pull him out of the chair must be (a) detached from the chair; (b) un-assed from the chair; and (c) led off the aircraft. There IS an easy way and there are MULTIPLE and dynamically appropriate hard ways.
Ultimately, Dr. Dao chose to stay and fight his extradition from the aircraft – and I don’t actually blame him for feeling that way, but at the end of the day, under CURRENT laws in the United States, he was interfering with a flight crew, and refusing a lawful order from the poor flatfoot who had to go get the guy. This wasn’t a police issue. It was a United issue through and through, and United should ave done a LOT more to get the guy off willingly, such as PAYING HIM MORE MONEY, or rolling out a different plane (or, as the auto executives learned in 2008) renting them a Chevy.
This whole thing began because United valued its staff over its paying customers. They should suffer eternally from diarrhea and hemorrhoids while being immersed in a tank of lemon juice.
Ample authority? A bit of an overstatement. Declining to leave a plane for which you have a paid ticket, a confirmed reservation and have been boarded doesn’t quite fit under FAR §121.580:
Arguable, perhaps. Ample? Not at all. But the “what would you do” question is the logical fallacy of begging the question. The correct answer is not create an untenable situation in the first place, as your question assumes that untenable situations are unavoidable. They are not only avoidable, but easily avoidable.
1. Offer more money, as much as is necessary to get a paid customer to give up his seat, because United’s problem isn’t the customer’s problem.
2. Plan ahead. It’s not a mystery how bodies at one place, that need to be at another place, get there.
3. Find an alternative means, from a cool Lambo to American Airlines to a Greyhound bus, if necessary.
4. Never forcibly remove a customer who has done nothing to violate FAR §121.580 under any circumstances.
But that’s just the United side. From the cop side, muttering the words “ample authority” doesn’t create either a duty or authority to use physical force against a person. Here’s the kicker. He can tell a cop to kiss his ass, because this is America, he’s done nothing and they have no lawful basis to use force. It’s a problem? Too bad.
And you used the word “never” in reference to a law enforcement issue. Never? So someone can punch the FA for giving him a warm bloody Mary for $9 and the airlines should never eject? Silly.
Punching a flight attendant, Nick? Punching. All the words matter.
Well, they tried to get the police to drag their air crew all the way to Louisville, but the cops said they wouldn’t do it, and there wasn’t anybody they could call to beat the uncooperative cops, so…
If only the feds were willing to jump in and teach those recalcitrant local cops a lesson. But if not, who would beat up the feds?
I think I would have asked the head flight attendant to get on the PA. “We need four seats for a flight crew who has to get there or another flight will be delayed. Who is willing to help us out by taking he next flight at (time)? We’re willing to give you $400 in compensation. First come, first served.”
They had already sought volunteers and came up empty.
What they don’t seem to be able to grasp is that most people who are still willing to fly at all are only doing it because they really need to be somewhere on a schedule. Bumping to another flight for $X doesn’t work for that. It doesn’t surprise me that they are running out of takers for that deal.
I, for one, think the cop’s absolute certainty is adorable. Dangerously, murderously adorable. Not the slightest clue what he’s talking about, but certain enough to kill over it. Hope he doesn’t scare easily.
Nick is no killer cop, but he also doesn’t seem to recognize the path down which his argument leads for cops who are.
He may not want to be, but if it comes to that, you don’t think he would pull the trigger if, say, the guy was big, chose to fight back and took a poke at him? They’re never killer cops until they kill. That combo of arrogance and ignorance has deadly all over it.
Well, you’re conflating the issues. In that statute interference is what happened, and I certainly would never say someone can’t tell a cop to go soak his head. However, the regulation’s interpretation in practice for years for the reasons I list are far clearer than you state. I don’t like the cops being goons for UA any more than you, but the cop didn’t get grabby because of what Dr. Dao said, but for his interference with the flight crew and refusal to obey a legal order. You said it best about Dr. Dao’s rights now – this is a civil matter and I hope he pursues it. The cop will be cleared and United will pay millions for not offering thousands.
First, it’s not a statute. It’s a regulation. Second, whether it happened is a mixed question of law and fact. Third, if you repeat the bald assertion three times, then it becomes real. More to the point, it’s a civil action now, but if cops killed him in the mistaken grasp of their power and authority, it would be a civil action by his estate.
Is there reason why life is so cheap except when it’s a cop’s? Is there a reason why cops sincerely believe they have the slightest clue what the law provides? Lawyers and judges argue and ponder these issues. You are certain enough that you would kill someone over it. Do you see any disconnect here, or is it because you’ve been trained to believe and act, let the courts figure it out later. As long as it’s the other guy who’s dead, not the cop.
I think that might be a stretch to call the gate agents and their manager flight crew.
SHG,
“However, the regulation’s interpretation in practice for years for the reasons I list are far clearer than you state”
Definitely true.
Like Nick said, there are several other regs that come into play. For example the aircraft is being “operated” between the time any person boards that aircraft with the intention of flight and until all persons have disembarked the aircraft. This makes the pilot in command , “the final authority as to the operation of that aircraft.”
Yes,”… ooh ooh ohh, I have partially extraneous information and I need to show everyone how smart I am…”
Please add to the list.
Non-lawyers often indulge in a very common and very dangerous fantasy. Things they believe are actually real. The law says one thing, usually uncontroversial and employed by airlines as it’s convenient and in whatever manner they prefer to interpret it to be. The notion gets repeated because it’s uncontroverial, and non-lawyers confuse this repetition with law. But law isn’t what airlines say, cops say, or stuff you believe. Law is what laws say and what the courts interpreting the laws say.
In fact, airlines contend that the plane is not in operation, and no passenger is “boarded,” until the doors have been close and locked, and anything before that is the “boarding process” such that a passenger who is inside and seated in his assigned seat isn’t actually boarded, and can therefore be removed because he’s not boarded. That’s what airlines say. But law isn’t what airlines say. See how that works?
Speaking of Muscle…
Are Christian Warriors who gel their hair and trim their own beards a Chicago thing that became a New York thing or is it that the other way around?
P.S. If you know this Mr. Izzo guy can you please tell him to put in a word for all the unemployed Carnies out there looking for corporate security gigs in his next vlog post? They could sure use the cash and let’s face it the country is ready.
At the risk of offending everybody, I’ll say this for United: they treat you like a king. Granted, that’s Rodney King, but the point stands.
That was pretty lame. Just sayin’.
It was well received in Texas and the UK, but I guess NY/NJ is a tougher crowd. I’ll have to remember that, if I ever decide to pursue comedy as a career.
How about this one? Given the time of year, ISIS in Afghanistan *really* screwed up when they chose not to mark the lintels of the doors to their tunnel complex with the blood of a lamb.
Too complicated. Simple is good, like “United: we put the hospital in hospitality.” And don’t forget their training video.
You realize that Brits are just too gentlemanly to tell you the truth, right?
Not being a lawyer, I would like to know how trespassing laws fit in to this. As the plane is United’s property can they not legally tell someone to leave? If that person refuses, is it not trespassing and thus ok to request police assistance? Sure they failed to fulfill their end of a service agreement and that part is a civil matter, but is the refusal to leave someone else’s property regardless of how ridiculous the situation not a criminal issue?
Would you? Would you really like to know how trespassing laws fit into this? Did something give you the impression that this was a free legal question and answer site?
$2. Pay at the right.
Considering much of the original post discussed law enforcement intervening in a consumer transaction, I would consider questioning whether trespassing laws could be applied as a discussion of the topic rather than asking for free legal advice.
Fee paid. Do I get a cookie? Ken would at least give me free advice on protecting myself from ponies.
Ken is a pony slut, but since you paid, the answer is no, trespassing has nothing to do with it. A ticket is a license, similar to a tenancy, in that it confers a right to be on someone else’s property for a limited time and purpose. Had he not paid and been granted a license to be there, it could be trespass, but since he did and was, that isn’t an issue. There is no trespassing component to this at all. It’s just a matter of contract.
Selling your opinions for $2?
How many can I get at that price?
You’re 95% cheaper than Just Answers and their attorneys don’t offer real legal advice either.
That was yesterday’s internet special price. So sad you missed it.
SHG; You mistakenly start that the airline offered a cash incentive of$800.00. This is incorrect. They offered a travel voucher for &800.00 which is worth much less., coming with all types of restrictions. They should offer straight cash.
It’s a very big difference.
A very good point, really. Certainly I would rather have $800 than a “voucher” for “$800 worth” of experiences with this airline. I’m not sure I could well tolerate that many beatings at my age.
This will come as a surprise (not) to Munoz, but he won’t be able to buy dinner at Le Cirque with a United voucher. Nor will anyone else.