Wow, I’m surprised this agreement doesn’t cover a situation like this more clearly.
If they hadn’t already boarded him, this would still probably be an “Oversold Flight”:
Since a seat that is needed for United employees would not be an ‘available seat’, they could deny boarding involuntarily on the grounds the the flight is oversold.
But the only right they have is to “deny boarding”, a term that I don’t see further defined. Clearly, this doctor wasn’t denied boarding, he’s sitting on the plane, he’s been boarded. Beyond that, they may be able to change his seat (it isn’t clear if 4(D) applies after boarding), but I wouldn’t read that to increase the scope of the right to deny boarding, or to revoke boarding once it’s been granted.
Thanks for linking, Pandora. I just assumed that the agreement would be maximally airline-friendly, but I think this gives the doctor a pretty strong case that United did not have the right under the contract to remove him from the plane.
I’m a little bewildered by the reporting on the doctor’s history, it seems entirely irrelevant to the interpretation of the contract between him and United.
The reason I brought it up is because someone mentioned of an incident which supposedly happened some years ago with the airline (It is not verified and needs to be confirmed but it does raise some interesting questions). Some years back, UA needed to get a certain passenger off the plane because he had some problems with the law (I do not know specifics) so the airline, unbeknownst to the rest of the people at the time, decided to have an “overbooking” situation in order to get him off the plane, which it did. The flight was not technically “overbooked” as well, so one may think that the “overbooking” situation is used by airline for other reasons. In that particular case it was supposedly done for safety and security reasons. So, I am wondering if the computer algorithm which selects at random, is not all that random after all. Dr. Dao had six previous felony charges so could it be that the airline was aware of his criminal history before hand and it had something to do with random selection? (this could also bring the safety and security issue into play as justification)
United has not claimed that its passenger management was commandeered by the police in order to apprehend a passenger. That seems like it would an affirmative defense to their breach of contract (i.e., yes they broke their promise to Dao, but it was OK because the police made them do it).
Moreover, since the police were called anyway, and had to physically subdue and remove him anyway, it doesn’t seem likely that that’s what happened.
Kris, I don’t follow. Can you plug in some arbitrary values to help me follow? What’s the significance of him having flown zero times? A thousand?
That was in reference to Pandora’s comment about their computer picking him out due to his felonies. I presume the largest airlines all use the same program or similar ones. United is not the only airline that purposely overlooks or boots people off due to overbooking. They just have had no loud complaints yet.
So I tried the impersonal philosophizing approach and that was more painful than a root canal in the olden days. That’s not gonna happen again anytime soon.
Crap giblib. After rereading my activities in that thread, I did crack once, but only once until I was targeted as just another…honey. It’s difficult to be a bland, run-of-the-mill honey.
Wendy, from what I read it seems like Anderson was the one who cracked–you seemed to keep your cool–but I do have to hand it to Mr. Anderson, he kept his cool for a good long while at least.
I didn’t see anything wrong with your style of argumentation or its content, but it did seem you couldn’t muster up the passion to go into depth about your thoughts and feelings on the subject. To me, your attempts at keeping cool (or impersonal, I guess you’d say) seem to throw out the baby with the bath water–to suppress the passion but at the cost of the inspiration to say what you want to say–like being overwhelmed with the feeling of “why bother”. ← Would you say this is in the ball park?
Well, that’s good news. It means tedium is all you have to wade through… that is, if you really wanna try this “dispassionate” thing (which, in my experience, isn’t really a matter of dispassion, but knowing where to channel your passion).
You could try this:
Just write one paragraph. 4 or 5 sentences max. Try it in a moment where you have that “why bother” feeling, but plow ahead anyway. Dissect your thoughts, figure out the best way to express your feelings, structure your words in a relatively coherent/logical way–and take your time, hit “preview” more than once–there’s no rush. You know you can do it because tedium never stopped anyone. It can be done.
The least you’ll get out of it is a sample of what you can do, a measure of how well you can perform even without the passion. And if you like it, if it exceeds your expectations, that can be reinforcing. Reinforcement in turn can attach passion to that which would otherwise be devoid of passion–indirectly at first, of course–but after a while, you can start having fun with it. And fun is an awesome passion to be motivated by–it yields the best products.
I started thinking of your name as short for Gibberish. That’s a cute avatar, though. Did you get it from Cloud Atlas? Good movie, dealing with time epochs and interconnectivity. Lot’s of great lessons in it. Got to love the words whispered in the ear, especially the unhelpful ones. That was sarcasm. It was almost unnoticeable so I had to mention it. Isn’t that a fun fact? That if people don’t know you’re joking or sarcastic, you might actually have to tell them? So much fun.
So uninspired that I’ve wasted a perfectly good day cleaning. Have thought about rabble rousing, but there’s not even anyone around who piques my interest. Where’s MP? Buying Mum more perfume? Pow, pow!
curtsying Curtain closing. The passion has left the building.
That’s not gonna happen again anytime soon. 
It’s difficult to be a bland, run-of-the-mill honey.