5 Thoughts on UA 3411

1. Bad People Don't Have the Same Rights: There were some news media outlets that had taken to describing the negative aspects of the victim's background. Think about it: They're essentially saying that there are circumstances where it could have been okay to forcibly extricate a passenger and in the process give him a concussion, a broken nose, and cracked teeth. This arbitrary line demarcating the rights of people apparently comes at a low bar: Getting into trouble with the law. Speeding tickets? You're a bad person who doesn't enjoy the same rights as everyone else!
2. Blame Versus Responsibility: It's always easier to blame someone or something than to take responsibility. UAL's CEO initially blamed the victim likely because -- and you know it's true -- that's what their own employees said was the cause of the issue. If you're a flight attendant or gate agent, are you really going to take one for the team and accept responsibility? Not your problem -- you were following the guidelines that were written out by corporate, amirite? Nobody stepped in during the confrontation, as a result, to prevent the escalation of events. It's the same reason why United got a lot of bad press over a non-rev the previous week.
3. Culture: Years ago, I had booked a one-stop flight to Hawai'i on United because it was $100 cheaper. The first leg was a code-share flight with a regional airline but was postponed for four hours because of some mechanical issue. I ran all the way from one gate to the next and missed the plane by five minutes at the most, as I could see it taxiing out in front of me. That really pissed me off because (A) since they were code-shared, the folks in the first plane should have alerted the second to hold, and (B) they didn't even offer so much of a voucher for a free flight for their failure. That wasn't the first time I'd felt that United had a lousy culture of not caring, but it was the last time I flew them. Even if they're the cheapest flight, I will not fly with United. Granted, this may simply be confirmation bias, but I haven't had a bad flying incident ever since then.
4. Cheap and Stupid: The system of overbooking and offering vouchers is actually an economist's take -- specifically Julian Simon --on how to create efficiencies. It increases revenue and maximizes carrying capacity of airports and airline routes. In practice, you would never want a cap on vouchers, but that's where United's case highlights cheap and stupid. If they hadn't cheapened out, eventually they would have found people willing to take the cash. Instead, they stopped at $1,000. That's stupid because if they weren't willing to spend more than $1000 on a volunteer they could have simply booked their employees for later flights on other airlines for far less, then given them a split on the remaining money of the $1000 and still saved money. Now, they're facing a civil lawsuit and losses valued in the millions.
5. No One Stood Up and Yelled, "STOP!": From all of the people using their phones to record video of the event, you can hear a handful of people pleading for the confrontation to stop, but you don't hear anyone standing up and yelling, "STOP!" People were outraged and they wanted to step up and intervene, but they didn't. Just prior to his concussion the passenger was screaming, as if in pain, and not a single person attempted to intercede and end the incident. You'd like to think that you are better than that, but my experiences say otherwise. The vast majority of people are passive, complacent, or fearful, particularly in the face of someone with authority. I understand. I used to be that way a long time ago, I even wrote about the regrets from my inaction of my earlier years. When you stand up, your action informs and prevents others from ignoring their moral conscience. Stand up.