Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

I really wish that these people would describe their legal authority. If they were a lawyer, what they practice in, etc. etc. This man is a professor of law and associate dean... which means his opinion is pretty good but he's not necessarily a practicing lawyer.

With that said: by breaking the contract with Dr. Dao, it would seem that United is therefore required to pay up the cost of Dr. Dao's ticket.

It isn't too hard to come up with a situation where passengers are already boarded, but then are forced off the plane. (Ex: weather conditions change. Another airliner crashes in the runway, causing an unknown amount of delay, etc. etc.). Surely under such a situation, all the "already boarded" passengers will be forced off the plane, and probably refunded the full value of their ticket.

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But under no circumstances is there actually a requirement to fly every passenger. I'd expect that the absolute limit that can be forced onto United Airlines is the ~$1350 cash + Refunded Plane Ticket.

Well, aside from the broken nose and concussion. But that's the Chicago Police's problem, not United.

You're right, it isn't hard to think up situations where passengers would have to be deboarded such as weather change, another plane crashing into them etc as you noted. However all of those items you mentioned are noted in the United Contract of Carriage which mentions force majure including weather, and damage to the airplane, running out of fuel, strikes etc. However, none of those reasons applied to Dr. Dao, and his being boot from the plane which why he would have a very good chance of getting far more than a refund. You can also be sure, eventually United and other airlines will quietly update there contracts to allow them to legally boot a customer under any circumstances at their sole discretion.

https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag...

> 10.Passengers who are manacled or in the custody of law enforcement personnel;

As far as I can see, Dr. Dao is in the custody of Law Enforcement. Its pretty damn clear from the video that Law enforcement is removing Dr. Dao from the plane.

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Come on man, its trivial to come up with easy ways to meet a legal document. The document is written in all sorts of ways to remove passengers and keep United in the right.

That's referring to prisoner transport.

The definition of "Police Custody" is very specific. It is any situation where you are not free to leave. (I admit the details changes from state to state however).

IE: You are typically under (limited) Police Custody during a Breathalyzer test. Although the details of this custody vary from state to state, the fact of the matter is you are NOT free to leave and your rights are restricted.

In any case, Dr. Dao is obviously under Police Custody. Now the officer was probably wrong for putting the man under custody, but its clear that the Officer is dragging the man out of the Plane, and that Dr. Dao is not allowed to freely go about his business.

The Officer probably didn't follow his proper duties at 3:30am (and his suspension from the Police Force indicates that something wrong happened from a Police perspective). But regardless, Dr. Dao is CLEARLY under Police Custody at the time. At least, now that we know the man dragging Dr. Dao out of the plane was an officer.

Normally, you're supposed to show your badge and give Miranda Rights (proper procedures and everything). But needless to say, there were a lot of mistakes made at that time. IMO, most of them seem to be Police-level mistakes however and not necessarily United Airline's problem. (Despite what the court of Public Opinion believes...)

He wasn't in police custody when they first 'deboarded' him from the plane.

It seems like walmarts strategy to under secure its business and instead use local police is used by airlines too, to avoid cost and liability of hiring their own security at the expense of the public.

I dunno. I feel like the one thing that everyone agrees upon is that the use of force _should_ be monopolized to the Police.

IE: Its the TSA who checks your genitals when you go into the airport. Not the private airlines. And that's a good thing: because in theory we have the ability to control the TSA. At least, more so than we have the ability to control any particular airliner.

Yes, but --

The counter argument is that businesses should be expected to conduct their business such that they do not need to call on the police to use force. Especially if, by escalating to police, they are effectively avoiding the inherent costs of doing business.

In this case, they could have offered another $1,000 apiece to get those last two volunteers, but there's no need to do that when you can just call the cops to drag passengers off the plane at no cost.

Likewise, Wal-Mart has been widely criticized for not taking any steps to manage or problem-solve any issues in their stores, instead just relying on calls to police.

After offering $800 + refund of ticket... Zero passengers volunteered.

I have severe doubts that more money would solve the issue. The flight didn't cost more than $200 one way.

Calling the police worked for 3 of the four passengers. There was just one last guy who continued to refuse even after getting his nose busted.

$800 didn't work, but what about $2000? If that didn't work, what about $5000? At some point it gets pretty likely that someone will take up the offer.

Why should airlines arbitrarily increase costs?

Its as if you think you have an entitlement to fly or something. Aside from the costs you put up for your ticket (and a little bit more to pay for the hassle of getting off the plane), I think the 400% of ticket cost cap is very reasonable.

Why should the airline be able to determine how much your time is worth?

>its as if you think you have an entitlement to fly I think the 400% of ticket cost cap is very reasonable Isn't this what a ticket is? In any other business, once you buy something it's yours unless someone buys it from you.

> I think the 400% of ticket cost cap is very reasonable

If some one needs to conduct important business then making 600 extra dollars isn't enough to incentivize that person to give up their seat. Making it a percentage of the flight cost is arbitrary because it's not related to the amount of your time they are wasting or your opportunity cost of not taking that flight.

They should not arbitrarily increase costs. If they want to take the risk of over-selling their seats to make more money, then they should be willing to buy back the extra seat at open auction if too many people show up. That's perfectly reasonable. If you are offering the buy-out to a plane of 130 people, all it takes is one person saying yes to get you a seat. In this case, they needed four seats, so they'd have to go a little higher.

I also think you are greatly underestimating the power of the dollar. As others have said, a few hundred dollars more, and I feel confident that multiple volunteers would have come forward. Also, they might try offering actual cash instead of vouchers.

To be clear, the situation would also have been entirely different if they had dealt with it BEFORE they fully boarded the plane. It would have been much easier to find volunteers and deny boarding if needed when everyone was still in the terminal.

$800 is not cash, it's airline vouchers with a lot of limitations and an expiration date (1 year). More money would have solved the issue, people on that plane said there were people told the gate agent they would volunteer if the offer is $1600, but gate agent just laughed about it.

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