Count the cash, drag a person off plane
On the surface the outrage over United Airlines forcibly removing a man from a US flight after he refused to “voluntarily” give up his seat for a United employee looks like just another case of airline overbooking gone awry.
According to witnesses and videos of the incident, he was pulled screaming from his seat by security, knocked against an arm rest and dragged down the aisle and back to the terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The incident horrified other passengers on the Louisville-bound flight.
Overbooking is necessary, the story goes, because sometimes passengers don’t show up for their flights. The practice allows airlines to recoup their lost revenue while keeping flights affordable for everyone. Yes, some people will inevitably need to be bumped involuntarily, but profits are thin, we’re told, and so this practice is necessary.
“The nice way to look at all this is, the more effectively airlines can fill their seats and generate revenue with the seats they have, the better it is for all of us,” aviation consultant Samuel Engel told Marketplace in 2015. Southwest puts an even sunnier gloss on the practice, saying it “creates booking opportunities for customers who really want or need to be on a flight that is showing full but likely to depart with available seats”. As it turns out, however, America’s commercial airlines are enjoying nearrecord profits, according to the International Air Transit Association, an airline trade group.
North American airlines have raked in over US$20 billion in profits for each of the past two years. They expect that number to dip, slightly, to around US$19.5 billion next year. The US$20.3 billion in profits American carriers earned last year is greater than the sum total of profits generated by airlines in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa combined. The profit margin in North America is around 8.5 per cent, or about US$19.85 per passenger.
One big driver of the profit boom is the airline industry’s decade-long consolidation binge — what were once 10 airline companies in 2000 had shrunk down to four carriers by 2010. The relative lack of competition has lead to near-monopoly conditions at some airports and given the remaining airlines little incentive to cut prices or provide more amenities. Indeed, the trend continues in the opposite direction: smaller seats, greater fees, charges for blankets, even fees to use the bathroom.
In the past, airlines were able to credibly deflect charges of poor customer service with appeals to profitability concerns and thin profit margins. But United made US$2.3 billion in profit last year.
United refused to answer questions about the removal incident. An airline spokesman only apologised for the overbooked flight, and said police were called after a passenger “refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily”.
What followed was captured on cellphone video by at least two passengers.
Tyler Bridges recalled trouble starting almost as soon as he and his wife boarded.
An airline supervisor walked onto the plane and brusquely announced: “We have United employees that need to fly to Louisville tonight. ... This flight’s not leaving until four people get off”.
Bridges said: “That rubbed some people the wrong way”.
Passengers were offered vouchers to rebook, he said, but no one volunteered. So the airline chose for them.
A young couple was told to leave first, Bridges recalled. “They begrudgingly got up and left.” Then an older man, who refused. “He says, ‘Nope. I’m not getting off the flight. I’m a doctor and have to see patients tomorrow morning’,” Bridges said.
The man became angry as the manager persisted, Bridges said. “He said, more or less, ‘I’m being selected because I’m Chinese’.” A police officer boarded. Then a second and a third. Bridges then began recording, as did another passenger — as the officers leaned over the man, a lone holdout in his window seat.
“Can’t they rent a car for the pilots?” another passenger asks in the videos. Then the man, out of frame, screams. One of the officers quickly reaches across two empty seats, snatches the man and pulls him into the aisle.
He goes limp after hitting the floor. “It looked like it knocked him out,” Bridges said. “His nose was bloody.”
His glasses nearly knocked off his face, the man clutches his cellphone as one of the officers pulls him by both arms down the aisle and off the plane.
Four United employees boarded and took the empty seats. They were not popular among the passengers, Bridges recalled. “People were saying you should be ashamed to work for this company.”