Re: Pax forcibly removed from United overbooked flight
Well, the "Communicator of the Year" award winner finally remembered or learned the first rule of what to do when the corporate s**t hits the fan.
What's that? Be contrite? One might argue that he's not right now, you know, crocodile tears and snake oil...
In Japan, one might be expected to resign and/or commit suicide, since one's honour is now lost.
I bet that 'police' person dragging the man off the plane is pleased to be on leave and unreachable.
Well, unless there's a bunch of people out to kill him... though I can imagine a trip to the grocery store might be a bit awkward or difficult...
However - you are both wrong and miss the point.
Spicer's competence is irrelevant to the fact that the raising of this issue raises its prominence
Can we separate both of these things (i.e. the competence of Spicer quoting Hitler or being an effective communicator, versus the side effect of his mentioning the issue)? In fact, the linked article doesn't show (and yes I'm a bit lazy here), but were those two issues - Hitler and how UA handled this - raised within the same speech for the same incident?
, and increases pressure on the DOT and Congress to "appear to do something". Gov. Christie has now explicitly called for overbooking to be no longer permissible.
One might argue that Christie has requested many things which were controversial before, and he is of suspicious character. However, to go by your previous train of thought, the fact he raised it means something.
Also it is quite easy for DOT and Congress to "appear to do something". Our government is also quite good at that. We all know that that is a far cry from actually doing something.
This is a significant development and will increase pressure on UA and AA/DL to pre-empt the politicians by revamping their bumping rules.
When you say "bumping rules", do you mean along the lines of assuming that overbooking will be banned?
I'd like to see how overbooking would be banned, viz. its definition, its enforcement and how it will encourage airlines not to break those rules.
What is amazing is that how did an incident like this spark some sort of reaction like this? Did it take someone to be physically hurt? If this man was not physically hurt at all in the process, this incident would hardly be on the news. In fact, if he was simply marched off and he shouted his head off, the reaction might have been more of, "get the **** off the plane and let us fly," rather than four UA crew getting death stares and one CEO getting death threats (hypothetically and figuratively speaking).
People and the media have been talking about TSA agents "assaulting" passengers - some incidents are verified and some agents are fired. We see baggage handlers convicted of theft. None of these, nor the sum collection of such incidents, have attracted any sort of groundswell of political action compared to this single incident (assuming we are to believe that something tangible will result from it).
