{"id":62730,"date":"2017-04-12T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62730"},"modified":"2017-04-11T22:14:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T03:14:53","slug":"public-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62730","title":{"rendered":"Public Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n

The guy dragged off the United Airlines flight now claims he was selected because of his race<\/a>, which is discrimination.\u00a0 Is that why he was having hysterics on the plane?<\/p>\n

The guy\u2019s response seemed disproportional.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to be the guy forced off the plane, I get that.\u00a0 But seriously, what\u2019s the downside?\u00a0 You call your work and tell them the story.\u00a0 Are they really going to fire you over it?\u00a0 \u00a0If it\u2019s that big of a deal that you be there to perform the brain surgery, see if they can\u2019t get you another flight instead of a hotel room or rent a car and drive. \u00a0Don\u2019t act like a special snowflake, that\u2019s for college kids.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, let\u2019s not lose sight of the fact that the airline kicked paying passengers off the flight so they could transport a flight crew who needed to be at the destination location to fly a later flight.\u00a0 This was not a disruptive passenger, it was not even an overbooking situation, the passengers were booted off the plane entirely for the airline\u2019s convenience. \u00a0The airline could have canceled that later flight for lack of a flight crew but it would have cost a boatload of money.\u00a0 More than $800?\u00a0 So offer more money.\u00a0 If they got up to a grand or two, somebody would have taken the bait.\u00a0 And if not, for that kind of money, they could have hired a private charter to haul the flight crew.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Chicago to Louisville, for crying out loud.\u00a0 It\u2019s a one-hour flight or a 5 hour drive. For the amount of bad publicity the airline is getting, they could have hired a limo to drive the crew.<\/p>\n

And for the CEO to go public claiming the passenger was removed because he was disruptive<\/a> is pure bull.\u00a0 He was removed because the airline was too cheap to transport its own flight crew at market prices, i.e., what the paying passengers would accept to give up their seats.<\/p>\n

The airline acted brutally and stupidly.\u00a0 It deserves all the bad publicity it can get.\u00a0 I\u2019d start with Congress considering legislation that paying passengers cannot be bumped by non-paying passengers (flight crew, family, airline mile redeemers, etc).\u00a0 Nobody else gets this kind of preferential business model. \u00a0Why should airlines?<\/p>\n

Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Post-script – or, actually, two post-scripts.<\/p>\n

First – whenever the “Free market” does somethingi stupid, or especially something brutal, always look to see if government is the real reason. \u00a0The answer, almost invariably, is “yes”.<\/p>\n

Government regulations\u00a0forbid\u00a0<\/em>paying premiums of greater than four times the original ticket price –\u00a0to a maximum of $1350<\/em>, to passengers who get bumped.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

And the post-9\/11 environment of security theater means that episodes that used to be simple customer service disagreements and even misunderstandings are now law enforcement episodes, and even federal crimes. \u00a0Thus, the Chicago Airport Police were involved with what should have been a negotiation between passengers and a gate agent –\u00a0before boarding<\/em>. \u00a0 Of course, being Chicago cops, someone just\u00a0had\u00a0<\/em>to “fall”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The guy dragged off the United Airlines flight now claims he was selected because of his race, which is discrimination.\u00a0 Is that why he was having hysterics on the plane? The guy\u2019s response seemed disproportional.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to be the guy forced off the plane, I get that.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62731,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62730\/revisions\/62731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}