United quickly, quietly settles with bash vic
Journal Sentinel he had to urinate as the plane sat on the tarmac waiting to take off. He went back to the bathroom, where a flight attendant told him the plane would lose its takeoff spot if he relieved himself.
“The pilot came on and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry for the inconvenience but we have to return to the gate and remove a passenger,’ ” Hamilton said.
“It escalated to that point that fast,” he added.
The airline said in a statement that crew members’ instructions have to be taken seriously. UNITED AIRLINES reached a settlement Thursday with the Kentucky doctor who was dragged from a flight after refusing to give up his seat — avoiding a long legal battle while also announcing sweeping procedural changes after the violent episode went viral.
The settlement with David Dao, 69 — the terms of which were not publicly disclosed — follows an overall “system failure,” said United CEO Oscar Munoz.
“We breached public trust — and it’s a serious breach,” Munoz told NBC News. “It was a system failure across the board.”
Before the settlement was announced, the airline said it made 10 “substantial changes” meant to avoid situations such as the April 9 incident at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, including increasing incentives — up to $10,000 — for passengers who voluntarily get off of overbooked planes.
Other measures include limiting the use of law enforcement to safety and security issues only, ensuring that crews are booked on a flight at least 60 minutes prior to departure, and not requiring customers seated on the plane to give up their seat involuntarily unless safety or security is at risk.
Four security officers with Chicago’s Department of Aviation have been suspended for the April 9 incident, which left the Vietnamese-American doctor hospitalized with a concussion and broken nose, along with two missing teeth, his attorneys said.
“Dr. Dao has become the unintended champion for the adoption of changes which will certainly help improve the lives of literally millions of travelers,” the doctor’s attorney said in a statement Thursday.
United, in its own statement, called the settlement “an amicable resolution of the unfortunate incident that occurred aboard Flight 3411.”
“We look forward to implementing the improvements we have announced, which will put our customers at the center everything we do,” the airline added.
As part of the settlement, Republic Airways — United’s regional partner which operated the flight Dao had been on — has also been released from responsibility.
If the new policies had been in place, Munoz said, authorities would not have had to be brought in.
“Do I believe what the law enforcement folks did was wrong? Yeah,” he said. “But, again, it was I and we that put them in that situation.”
At the same time, O’Hare Airport security boss Jeffrey Redding was fired Thursday for failing to fully disclose the sexual harassment allegations that prompted the Illinois Tollway to get rid of him. The agency said Redding’s firing had nothing to do with the Dao incident.