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Comment by jsemrau | Hacker News Reader

Time for regulating the oligopoly of the airline industry. Obviously the safety of passengers can not be ensured anymore.

https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/united-airlines-should-go...

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>Obviously the safety of passengers can not be ensured anymore.

Let's not be dramatic. Actual airline safety issues that lead to horrific deaths are not being discussed here. This is just piss poor customer service that could be encountered on any property (e.g. hotels that have overbooked, etc).

Trying to remember the last news story about someone being dragged out of a hotel room they've already checked into.

Trying to remember the last news story about someone being asked to leave their hotel room, refusing to do so, having police called, and continuing to refuse to do so.

People being kicked out of hotel rooms because of scheduling errors does happen. It's pretty rare.

I'd be surprised were it legal to have the police drag someone out of a room they've paid for and been checked into, merely because another guest wants that room.

Sure, you can ask, but on what legal basis do you have to apply violence?

The hotel is private property. If the owners of the property ask you to leave and you don't, you are trespassing.

These aren't just bums off the street. You signed a contract with the airline or hotel. You haven't violated the contract by making too much noise, or selling dope out of the room. I don't think your argument is valid, but IANAL.

This is incorrect. In a hotel, much like in an apartment, there are significant legal protections for tenants have paid and not violated any laws.

I doubt it's quite that simple. It's private property that serves the public. We've had court rulings saying you can't, e.g., refuse to rent your wedding venue to gay couples. If you make accommodations available to the public, there are legal responsibilities that go along with that.

I don't know what the specific regulations are surrounding hotel rooms, but certainly they're not "private property" in the same way that your house is.

Errors happen, of course, but has a hotel customer even been removed from a room post-check-in because a member of staff needs the room?

Edit: From a major chain at least. I'm sure all manner of poor decisions have been made by smaller/single location operators, though they aren't really comparable to United.

Dr. Dao didn't look like he had a particularly safe experience in the photographs.

It's not only the safety part. With hotel rooms in many cases you have a choice to just go to the hotel next door. If there is only one daily flight tough luck. You'd better find a hotel room.

After this questions will rightly be asked about how such a crew would react in an emergency. Save United employees first?

Airlines seem pretty regulated already. Maybe there's another word for what you want to happen?

Breaking up oligopolies via "antitrust"?

You want... more, smaller airlines?

YES.

The oligopoly of the big 4 is creating the problems. On some routes there is only one carries operating stifling competition.

This strategy of yours of feigning incredulousness instead of forming an articulate thought is ingenious and hilarious but I'm not sure it will be very effective here.

I'm just a stupid man asking questions

er, they're getting skewered in the media. United is paying the price for their mistake.

If they're regulated, next time they drag someone off a plane, they'll say "We were just following the handbook and were in accordance with federal regulations. Take it up with the FAA"

So no, no need to regulate the industry.

Also, the body you want to regulate them (the government) routinely does much, much worse to people.[0]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

Arguably, while it was United's policies that got the police involved, it was the police that did the bloodying. It's a prime example of government abuse of physical and legal power, and Chicago is apparently reviewing the whole situation to verify the officers acted in accordance with policy.

I agree; hard to see precisely how more government intervention should have been expected to fix this.

Clear regulation stating that a passenger may not be forced to leave for any but safety reasons once they're seated, rather than leaving it up to a contract, and providing sufficient funding to whichever organization enforces that regulation?

One of the more promising candidates for the cause of such great expense for various services and projects in the US versus other (generally more-regulation-heavy and more-worker-friendly) OECD states, as recently discussed on here (following a Slate Star Codex post on the topic) is the risk/expense of relying so heavily on contracts and lawsuits to sort out this kind of stuff on a case-by-case basis rather than simply stating that things will be a certain way through regulation, removing (or at least greatly reducing) the uncertainty.

http://m.imgur.com/L1GyFnt

There's more volatility in the stock to be sure, but I wouldn't call this "paying the price for this mistake" according to public perception just yet. I don't know airlines well enough, but if I were going to take a position, it'd be long. The initial dip in the stock price tapered off, and the current price in pre-market trading has reached parity with 4/7 despite the relative increase in volatility.

Aside from market perception, I don't think UAL is going to lose much in sales (I'd love to be proven wrong though!). Airlines do not seem to really need to compete or differentiate themselves in customer service to be profitable.

These controversies have an impact on the stock price that is like the "villain of the week" impact on a show's overall plot - it's entertaining this week, but next week no one is going to care.

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