Given that it was O'Hare, one of the busiest airports in the country - perhaps an hour.
Well, either they would wait or they'd find another pilot.
United airlines
- Thread starter birch
- Start date
If they could still stop serious crimes from being committed - pretty effective.
If someone told you "hey, your police officers will stop any crime against you, your family or your neighbors, but will henceforth be unable to remove nonviolent passengers from seats they purchased on airliners" I suspect your community would survive.
Or (here's a crazy, wild thought) - take off and deliver all their paying customers to their destination.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
The airline industry would tumble if planes started flying without crew.
We're getting pretty far away from practical matters here.
Except, as mentioned, they can't.
post 7:
"In layman terms, it means that a crew must be flown to an airport to man a flight in order to avoid cancellation of said flight due to crew unavailability. This is a federal DOT regulation, not an airline one. The airlines are required to do so to avoid disruption of air traffic."
Bullshit. It would merely become slightly more expensive to fly, and airlines wouldn't make quite as much money.
But in any case, no one is proposing that. It is perfectly acceptable to fly crew members on empty seats on airplanes.
No worries. Dedicate four seats on every aircraft to crew. After all - IT'S A REGULATION!
Don't want to do that? Then that's the airline's problem, not the passenger's.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Right. I agree that the industry needs to rethink this.
The things you suggest could not have helped in this case, only in the next case.
The things you suggest could not have helped in this case, only in the next case.
and there is always midway as well
Almost everything suggested here could have helped in this case. They are all better choices than the one made, and most of them were available.
No regulation specifies the particular plane the crew is to be flown on. There were lots of airplanes available.
For that matter, they could have rented a limo: https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Chicago/Louisville It's a five hour drive compared with a four hour flight - not counting the hours of delay involved in "otherwise accommodating" paying customers and cleaning up the blood.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
You have no idea if that's true.
At O'Hare? 45 minutes from Midway? Yeah, I do.
For example: http://www.talonairjets.com/fleet/ available on one hour's notice 24/7 at O'Hare. Note that even some of their helicopters can reach Louisville. And note that their frequent use of the term "accommodate" carries somewhat different implications than United Airlines executive usage.
There are a half dozen other such services from O'Hare, and more from nearby airports.
And it turns out United Airlines had an offer on the table, for discount service: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/16/united-airlines-pr-disaster-was-totally-avoidable.aspx
There are also larger aircraft charter operations out of O'Hare, such as the one run by United Airlines - the advantage of going with a big outfit like United, despite the higher cost of the larger plane, is that with a fleet of their size and a hub at O'Hare they are sure to have a plane available on short notice.
Personally, I'd have gone with the limo.
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There are 8 nonstops on Sundays from ORD to SDF.
Bells
Staff member
Within reason.
Keep in mind that the officer in question was suspended for having beaten a 65+ year old man to a pulp, resulting in facial injuries and nearly knocking him out for not getting out of a seat.
That kind of behaviour is not within their guidelines. So what does that tell you about how this fellow upheld the law?
Minimum force?
He pounded the guy's head into an armrest, multiple times. The first time to get him out of his seat and then when he got him into the aisle. He just about knocked a 69 year old man out, then dragged him down the aisle like he was a carcass. And you think that was minimum force?
He operated outside and well beyond the airport's operating procedure in doing what he did. Two police officers were calmly speaking to the doctor, when he walked up, and bashed the man's face into an armrest. That is not minimum force, nor is it acceptable force. The doctor was not being violent or threatening anyone.
He was not arrested or charged?
Their goal was to remove him from the plane. They are not allowed to actually bash peaceful passengers up to achieve that goal. That is why the officer in question was suspended.
He was verbally resisting. Two officers were speaking to him quite calmly, when the third approached and bashed his head into the armrest. By the video, it looked as though he lost consciousness. That is not resisting, Dave. That's called being badly injured and disorientated and possibly semi-conscious after having one's face bashed into armrests.
I don't know, offer to buy him a ticket on a different flight, so he could get home the same day? Possibly with another airline? Make the reward worthwhile and allows him to get home, instead of some dodgy credit that is limited? Listed to his reasons for needing to get home and possibly try to negotiate with another passenger?
All of which involve not bashing the face of a 69 year old man into an armrest and dragging his near unconscious body down the aisle, concussed and broken teeth due to the bashing, and then delaying the plane for hours as they cleaned up all the blood....
given that chicago is the 7th busiest metropolitan area in the world for air traffic its a rather reasonable assumption they could have found another plane
United lost 2.5 billion in four days. Any other alternative would have been cheaper. Thats what can happen when a company has bad policy with customers which is their business. Still with this loss, they will survive and thrive again once things get back on track. What does that say? They could and did change policy. They were not straining themselves or having to rob peter to pay paul. Customer service just got put on backburner because they have been able to get away with the before policy as people accepted it.
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DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Everyone has 20/20 hindsight.
Agreed. They are as cheap as they ever were. People get on Travelocity and choose whatever shows up as cheapest, whether it's United or not.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Spotted at the Science March last week. 
Airline management is supposed to have 20/100 foresight; failing that, apply common sense grounded in basic principles of decency; failing that, avoid making themselves odious in the eyes of their customers - the people who pay the bills, the reason the airline company exists.
There's a scene in the movie (and the book) "The Big Short", in which one of the guys who saw through the banks was primed for his insight by noticing how they treated their customers.
How, he asks, could they stay in business while treating their customers so shabbily? It turned out they couldn't. Abusing one's customers doesn't even pay, in the long run. Management is supposed to avoid that long run fate, by fending off the short run temptations.