Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

At the moment I wish United gets beaten up well for forced passenger removal earlier this week. However, IMO this article just tries to pile onto the "United stinks" meme and is poorly written (more emotions than facts). Some things missing (for me):

1. When did this happen? The article makes it look like this just happened, but does not mention a date. I suspect the omission is on purpose (if so, boo!; if not, sorry, but please add event date).

2. The fact that the guy bumped off is rich is irrelevant (and going on and on about it dulls the message).

3. The fact that the seat the guy was downgraded was noisy (people arguing on both sides) is irrelevant.

IMO the main point is valid -- the person was first to the seat and in general whoever gets into the seat first keeps it in case of a seat collision or a duplicate ticket. He should not have been asked to free it to another passenger (who should have been downgraded instead and compensated somehow). But conflating this with unrelated issue to get on a "United stinks" meme is a cheap trick. My 2c.

The information is missing from the story, but is available on other write ups of the same story.

It happened on April 1st. He was offered the difference in price between the first class seat and the economy seat. That seems like poor compensation since this is basically a form of denied boarding, which involves higher compensation. Perhaps technically, since he still had a seat, it's not denied boarding, but it's certainly worth more than the fare difference.

The relevant part is that the United staff specifically said he would be put in handcuffs if he didn't comply. That's the part to me that makes this fair game to bootstrap some attention from the other incident.

Any verification that handcuffs were threatened? A guy saying it's so while also claiming he's considering a lawsuit doesn't lend much credibility -- he has a financial incentive to hyperbolize.

There's not proof, but in his letter to United he asked only for a full refund. He did ask them to donate $25k to the charity of his choice, which seems an odd request if your goal is extortion.

He doesn't appear to need the money: http://www.tripacificllc.com/team.html

Edit: Also, he has a JD from Stanford. Lol...United picked the wrong guy.

"IMO the main point is valid -- the person was first to the seat and in general whoever gets into the seat first keeps it in case of a seat collision or a duplicate ticket."

I would be extremely annoyed if I were in the same situation as this flyer.

However, I'm not really sure what United is supposed to do here ... according to the article they had a mechanical problem with the original plane and the replacement plane had fewer first class seats ...

So somebody has to not fly in the first class seat.

Again, I would be very, very upset - but as an outsider looking in, it seems a bit childish and primitive to assume that whoever raced to the seat first gets to keep it, regardless of any other factors.

Again, United has to downgrade somebody to coach in this situation - it seems reasonable that they sort that downgrade to the lowest "status" passenger.

Oh come on, it's not a race to the seats. This should've been handled at the gate before boarding. United knew it didn't have enough seats, when the plane changed, they should have made seating adjustments then.

Again, I would be very, very upset - but as an outsider looking in, it seems a bit childish and primitive to assume that whoever raced to the seat first gets to keep it, regardless of any other factors.

It isn't like a city bus where you can elbow your way to the front of the line and grab a seat. There's an assigned seating process that's 100% controlled by the airline. If they screw it up, that's on their heads.

It is an entirely reasonable expectation that once you've been issued a boarding pass, board the plane, put your bag up, belt in, and get a drink that you are sitting in that seat. There's nothing childish or primitive about having that expectation.

Duplicate / messed up tickets happen and IME (I travel roughly once a month and saw this maybe 3-4 times) the "first in" is always how things are resolved. Whoever is first keeps his seat, whoever is late is reseated, gets an apology and some goodies especially if this is a downgrade / later flight. I think (but not 100% sure) this might even be codified in some airlines policies.

I saw duplicate assigned seats, I saw seats assigned in the toilet -- the plane had last row of ABC seats and lavatory where DEF seats would be. Sure enough two people show up with tickets in the DEF section. After some (weary) chuckles the folks just got squeezed into any open seats.

What is messed up about this case though was the lack of clear policy (so the person does not feel he is discriminated against), threats instead of apology and no compensation.

I am also surprised at the price: $1000 for a first class ticket on a long flight is low. Was that be one of the "gate upgrades" he purchased instead of the real first class ticket? This does not absolve United at all, but at least gives some potential sanity to their choice of a purchased seat over a gate upgrade.

The timeline is mentioned in the article, in the second paragraph: "He had to fly to Hawaii last week for a business conference."

Your point #2 and #3 are valid.

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