You have to think of this logically. You will have SO MUCH more room to drag the kicking and screaming customer away if you do it at the gate.

Arizona (of all places) has an independent redistricting committee made up of 2 Dems, 2 GOP, and chaired by an independent who is agreed upon by the other members. It is surprisingly effective and the reason we have 3 highly competitive congressional districts.  

the real reason why Democrats keep on losing Gubernatorial, State Assembly, and Senatorial elections is because they never turn out in off years. Never, ever, ever, ever. It’s why 2010 was as consequential an election year as 2008 and why we stopped having good things. It’s to the point I’ve seen a couple articles…

A few thoughts here:

Did you watch the video? The last men leaving have POLICE on their backs.

I’m sure the cost of a limo would be exponentially lower than the lawsuit they’re about to pay for.

That would have been too close to an acceptable idea. United would rather have a PR nightmare on their hands.

Right? Also, if the airline needs to fly its employees places then maybe, IDK, book them a fucking seat? How are you going to kick paying passengers off a flight to fly your own damn people around? Does no one at United work in logistics?

I read that since flight crews have to get so much sleep before each trip that driving wouldn’t have been an option (since car sleep doesn’t count? I dunno...). Still, it’s hard to imagine a world where ‘United Cancels Flight’ is a worse headline than ‘United Bloodies Paying Passenger While Forcibly Abducting Him…

As a lawyer, I say yes they did.

Why didn’t United just rent a car for the 4 employees? It’s a 4.5 hour drive and I guarantee a much cheaper option than offering thousands in hotel rooms or the inevitable payday for the poor passenger.

I’ve seen them require/ask for volunteers to deboard for an incentive after boarding many times. Never seen them beat the shit out of someone who didn’t want to do it though, at least not in my experience

That poor man’s civil rights were violated! He was treated like a piece of garbage! We need to bring in the civil rights leaders of our time to address how people are treated on planes!

What’s funny is that United could have had a car drive them to St. Louis from Chicago in not that much more time than it probably took to screw this up.

United’s response to this has just been awful. Amazing that they’re still just sending the “please contact law enforcement” bullshit deflection response to requests for comment. They are currently being crucified in the court of public opinion across the internet. Reddit’s ready to burn their corporate headquarters…

I assume everyone who was defending United so vigorously during leggingsgate because “THOSE ARE THE RULES” will also have no problem with this? Rules are rules, people, no matter how ridiculous, right?

I look forward to all the commenters who will show up and say this is standard practice and that if the man didn’t want to be beaten and forcibly removed from the plane, he shouldn’t have boarded it.

If only there were some way to keep airlines from selling more seats than are physically available in a plane.

So from what I understand, they needed to get those employees to St Louis in order to get them to crew a flight the next day, which they would have had to delay or maybe cancel if they didn’t get there in time. Faced with that, they decided on this course of action.

Take your star and go