“Just Kill Me” – Bumped and Injured

Federal law unfortunately allows airlines to overbook available spaces. This “overbooking” practice stems from airlines’ statistical analysis of actual passenger practices, generally looking at average cancelations and no-shows. But where overbooking actually occurs, where there really are too many people holding confirmed boarding passes, federal statutes (14 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 250, etc.) and F.A.A. regulations under that law, are supposed to be determinative. Mostly, they deal with denying people with boarding passes from getting on the plane in the first place.

“In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily.” (§ 250.2a)

“Every carrier shall advise each passenger solicited to volunteer for denied boarding, no later than the time the carrier solicits that passenger to volunteer, whether he or she is in danger of being involuntarily denied boarding and, if so, the compensation the carrier is obligated to pay if the passenger is involuntarily denied boarding. If an insufficient number of volunteers come forward, the carrier may deny boarding to other passengers in accordance with its boarding priority rules.” (§ 250.2b(b))

United Airlines, relying on its “contract of carriage” with passengers – their own priority boarding rules that passengers are supposed to be aware of (right?!) – basically addresses a denial of boarding to include passengers who are already seated before the doors close. See an issue here? “United's contract of carriage says the airline can select passengers to bump to a later flight, based on a priority system that can take into account how much passengers paid, how often they fly, whether missing that flight could affect a connecting flight and how early they checked in. People with disabilities and unaccompanied minors are generally last to be bumped.” Chicago Tribune, April 10^th.

“In 2016, the nation’s 12 largest airlines removed 40,629 passengers involuntarily from flights, a rate of 0.62 passengers for every 10,000 fliers transported, according to the Department of Transportation. That rate is lower than the 0.73 passengers per 10,000 fliers in 2015.  United had a rate of 0.43 in 2016, according to the agency.” Los Angeles Times, April 11^th. There’s just something about the need to shove as many people as humanly possible into economy cabins

Now most of us who travel are watching as seats are getting smaller with less leg room so that more seats can be crammed into a smaller spaces. And so anything that deals with stuffing us into an aircraft gets pretty sensitive reactions. Here are the hard numbers from maphappy.org.:

Seat Pitch (in inches) (seat pitch, which is the distance from any one point on one seat to the same point on the seat in the next row, front or behind)
Year	American	Delta	United	Southwest
1985	31-33	31-33	32-36	31-35
1995	31-33	32-33	31-34	31-32
2014	30-32	30-33	30-31*	31-33

*32 inches on Boeing 787 only

Seat Width (in inches)
Year	American	Delta	UNITED	SOUTHWEST
1985	19-20	19-20	19.5-20	19
1995	18.5-23	18.5-23	18.5-23	18.5-23
2014	17.2-18.5	17.2-18.3	17-18.3	17

Which might be fine if airlines were suffering losses from escalating costs. But with fuel prices hitting lows for years, and as airlines are now charging ordinary economy travelers extra for baggage, food, blankets, pillows, changing a flight and entertainment, airlines have been very profitable for quite a while now, thank you. You can also pay for an enhanced economy ticket on many airlines these days and buy back some comfort. So when profitable airlines start getting violent against passengers, that they think they have a legal excuse just doesn’t cut it anymore.

“It all started with an overbooked passenger jet preparing to leave Chicago for Louisville, Ky… It ended with a passenger, who said he was a doctor who needed to get home, being dragged off the plane and left bloodied and muttering repeatedly, ‘Just kill me.’

“The incident, captured on video by several passengers, created a giant public relations headache Monday [4/10] for United Airlines, touching a nerve with a flying public frustrated with an industry that is reaping record earnings while squeezing more fliers into smaller seats… The Chicago-based carrier said it was following procedure Sunday night [4/9] when employees realized that the airline had overbooked an 80-seat jet and could not get enough passengers to voluntarily give up their seats.

“The airline randomly selected the unidentified man to boot from the flight. Videos show him with blood on his lip, screaming as airport police yank him out of his seat, then pull him down the aisle on his back while some other fliers call out in protest. Later, he returns briefly to the plane and appears disoriented, with blood smeared on his chin.” LA Times. A smart phone video of the events went viral, generating a tweet-storm. That he was Asian generated cries of discrimination as well. He claimed to be a doctor in need of seeing patients in what turned out to be an “alternative fact” according to TMZ.com. “Dr. David Dao was charged with 98 felony drug counts in 2003 for illegally prescribing and trafficking painkillers such as hydrocodone, OxyContin and Percocet, according to TMZ.

“According to a criminal complaint filed against him, Dao also allegedly solicited sex from a male patient in exchange for drug prescriptions… Dao, who attended medical school in Vietnam in the 1970s, was eventually convicted on six felony counts of obtaining drugs by fraud and deceit.

“Dao was placed on five years of supervised probation in January 2005, although he surrendered his medical license one month later, according to the Courier-Journal [from the USA Today network].” AOL.com, April 11^th. Technically, the flight wasn’t even “overbooked.” United just needed four seats for its “must-ride” crew members being transported to man a flight departing from Louisville the next day.

OK, even if Dr. Dao indeed turns out to be a bad guy, the damage from those viral images and negative public relations – shortly following a United ban of two teenaged passengers using company benefits wearing forbidden “leggings” – were monumental. Or were they?

“A Chicago airport police officer who helped drag the man from the seat has been put on leave pending an investigation, the city’s aviation department said… ‘The incident on United Flight 3411 was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the department,’ the agency said in a statement. [the officer was placed on paid leave]

A United spokesman said the man was delaying the flight by refusing to give up his seat. The flight was delayed by about two hours, according to online records… ‘We are focused on our customers, on getting them to their destination on time,’ United spokesman Charles Hobart said… United Chief Executive Oscar Munoz said the airline is reviewing the conduct of his employees… ‘This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United,’ he said in a statement. ‘I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers.’

“But public relations experts say United could have handled the incident more tactfully, perhaps by choosing another passenger to remove or by offering greater compensation to free up a seat. United Airlines declined to disclose how much money it offered to passengers to voluntarily give up their seats.

“‘This is what we call in crisis management ‘creating your own crisis,’ ’ said Eric Rose, a crisis management expert with Los Angeles-based Englander, Knabe & Allen. ‘They created their own crisis and handled it miserably.’… Although the incident may damage the airline’s image, it probably won’t do much harm to its bottom line. Investors appeared unshaken; shares of the airline’s parent company, United Continental Holdings, closed Monday [4/10] at $71.52, up 0.9%.

“‘This is going to have no financial impact on United,’ said Henry Harteveldt, an industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. ‘I don’t expect them to lose any meaningful revenue.’… He noted that most travelers choose airlines based on price, schedules, the carriers’ loyalty reward programs and whether their employers require them to fly on particular airlines.” LA Times.

But China was not amused at watching an apparently ethnic-Chinese (Vietnamese?) man dragged off of an American carrier. By Tuesday, April 11^th: “Shares of United Airlines parent United Continental Holdings Inc fell, after a passenger who appeared to be Asian was physically dragged off a flight on Sunday, prompting a backlash on Chinese social media on Tuesday [4/11]… United Airlines' decision to drag the passenger off a flight from Chicago to Louisville on Sunday [4/9] attracted more than 130 million views on [China’s] Weibo platform by Tuesday afternoon… The company got about 14 percent of its 2016 revenue from flying Pacific routes.” AOL.com, April 11^th. Down by $800 million.

With the stock down, United’s CEO knew that the only path left to him was to cop to how bad it really was: “Oscar Munoz, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement that United would take ‘full responsibility’ for the situation and that ‘no one should ever be mistreated this way.’… He committed to making changes to ensure that the situation would not repeat itself, adding that United would conduct ‘a thorough review of crew movement, our policies for incentivizing volunteers in these situations, how we handle oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforcement.’” New York Times, April 11^th. When pushed to the wall… Dr. Dao is about to get the biggest check of his life… along with his lawyers.

I guess airline execs live in their little world, where flying business class is slumming. Oh, and then there’s this little piece reported on United Airlines own Hub Magazine (March 17^th): “At its annual awards ceremony last night, PRWeek, the world's leading public relations publication, presented United CEO Oscar Munoz with its coveted Communicator of the Year Award in recognition of his embracing earnest, open communication with employees and customers as a catalyst for change at United.” In fairness, I personally don’t fly United much anyway, and I have to admit that I seem to be treated reasonably well on my primary carrier, American. I hope I am not alone.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think that you don’t matter to most airline executives these days, it just might be because you really don’t.