U/A and Dr. Dao (2017)

Lindberg said:
I'm sorry if gave you the impression I was interested in restarting this
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Yes, your comments and continued comments certainly did leave that impression.

However, United will still call law enforcement to remove anyone who is ordered off a plane and refuses to go. I am certain of that.
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Seems contrary to the statements made by Munoz. However, if they have not learned not to do that, that may be a good reason to continue to avoid them as other carriers have stated they will not be doing that.

But you don't acknowledge that if excessive violence was the predictable result of law enforcement's participation, Dao as well should have predicted it and gotten his ass off the plane while the getting was good.
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I have not mentioned Dao’s majority contribution to causing this problem in the first place, because I thought that was obvious. Yes, he bears primary responsibility. He did not initiate the use of physical violence against anyone however. This also does not imply that UA, as the professionals dealing with this situation, should not have acted more responsibly to avoid physical injury, particularly when another passenger offered to give up their seat to resolve the situation more peacefully.
 
Larry in TN said:
No Captain is going to close the door and depart with a passenger on board who is defiantly refusing to follow agent, crewmember, and officer instructions. Such a passenger isn't going to fly until he's had time to cool down and a supervisor and the Captain are convinced that he will not create a disruption in-flight.
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My strong suspicion is that Dao would have been compliant if simply allowed to continue of the flight which he felt he had paid for and had a contractual right to.

They have, both before and after the Dao incident.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=southwest+passenger+police
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Very interesting, thanks. I guess it used to be a more general phenomenon. Of course, that sort of argues that UA should have anticipated something like this could happen. I hope they have all changed their policies, both on paper and in fact.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I’m of the opinion that calling law enforcement on someone means you expect whatever level of force they use... I mean. Seriously you are calling someone to the scene that can arrest and use lethal force. If you don’t want someone to be arrested or shot then why call the police ?
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I want the police to use the minimum amount of force necessary to get the job done. The vast majority of the time, that expectation is met, IMO. If I'm the victim of a crime, why should the small probability of an unusually bad outcome cause me to refrain from calling the police?
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
The book “Rise of the Warrior Cop” makes the case that such behavior is increasing in frequency. I suspect that the majority of the public is not aware of either this trend or the frequency with which excessive force is used.
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"Rising" does not equal "common." Do you know what the frequency of excessive force is? Without actual data, we're just speculating.
 
Palmpilot said:
I want the police to use the minimum amount of force necessary to get the job done. The vast majority of the time, that expectation is met, IMO. If I'm the victim of a crime, why should the small probability of an unusually bad outcome cause me to refrain from calling the police?
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I’m not saying it should. I’m saying it’s unreasonable to have expectations as to what the lowest level of force will actually be once you are no longer involved in the decision.

In regards to the drunk doctor do you think they used excessive force? If so how should he have been removed?
 
Palmpilot said:
"Rising" does not equal "common." Do you know what the frequency of excessive force is? Without actual data, we're just speculating.
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I don't know that it is "common" but have not looked at this research in detail. If you wish to do so, here is a recent article which contains pointers to a number of reviews https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5813980/ .

The one number which comes right out of table 2 in that article (divide by US population) is about 1 per 1000 person-years for use of physical force. So this is in the sort of in between range of frequency. Not 5% but not 1 per 100,000 either. This does not identify what fraction of those would be classified as "excessive", though the excessive cases are presumably a subset of that 1 per 1000.
 
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Tarheelpilot said:
I’m saying it’s unreasonable to have expectations as to what the lowest level of force will actually be once you are no longer involved in the decision.
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If so how should he have been removed?
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I think it is reasonable for citizens to expect that the police will use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve a problem. LEOs should not be permitted to just have a free-for-all once someone violates a law. And I believe that is reflected in both law and their training. Indeed, in this case, one of the allegations of Long in his lawsuit was that he had not received the proper 'use of force continuum' training.

As a practical matter I sort of agree with you -- I assume LEOs may use excessive violence and it is best to avoid any sort of physical confrontation with them. Indeed, best to avoid calling them unless necessary because the likelihood of violence goes up significantly when they arrive. And yes, sometimes that is necessary.

Is there any evidence that Dr. Dao was drunk? This article claims that was not the case. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...ssengers-have-done-more-than-stand/100415478/

In terms of resolving the situation with Dr. Dao, as I posted above, I think there were many less violent ways to resolve the situation.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
...Indeed, best to avoid calling them unless necessary because the likelihood of violence goes up significantly when they arrive....
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How do you define "significantly" in that statement?
 
Palmpilot said:
How do you define "significantly" in that statement?
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I don’t have exact numbers on that so could not show a test. What I mean is by an substantial fraction of what the risk is prior to them being called.

In the Dao case, for example, Dr. Dao was peaceful and showed no signs of using violence against anyone (though was having a contract dispute over use of property). Police were called and now a poorly trained person comes and uses violence against him. Without them being called I suppose there might have been some risk of a non-LEO using violence, but it did not seem to be developing that way, so I assume the risk of violence without the police being called was quite low.

If you have the numbers to show there is no substantial increase, please cite.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I think it is reasonable for citizens to expect that the police will use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve a problem. LEOs should not be permitted to just have a free-for-all once someone violates a law. And I believe that is reflected in both law and their training. Indeed, in this case, one of the allegations of Long in his lawsuit was that he had not received the proper 'use of force continuum' training.

As a practical matter I sort of agree with you -- I assume LEOs may use excessive violence and it is best to avoid any sort of physical confrontation with them. Indeed, best to avoid calling them unless necessary because the likelihood of violence goes up significantly when they arrive. And yes, sometimes that is necessary.

Is there any evidence that Dr. Dao was drunk? This article claims that was not the case. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...ssengers-have-done-more-than-stand/100415478/

In terms of resolving the situation with Dr. Dao, as I posted above, I think there were many less violent ways to resolve the situation.
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You are entitled to your opinion. I wasn’t there so I don’t have one other than the officer used the level of force they felt necessary. It may have been excessive based on what I heard.
I’m just saying as a caller of the police ... nothing should surprise you. You can think whatever you want about reasonable expectations of minimum force being used but at the end of the day you get an human being that is armed, has arrest authority and immunity in a lot of cases. That person is fallible, sometimes poorly trained and often never held responsible for their actions.

calling the cops is my last resort. It’s a significant force escalation in my opinion.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I don’t have exact numbers on that so could not show a test. What I mean is by an substantial fraction of what the risk is prior to them being called
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It's meaningless to talk about a "substantial fraction" without giving even an approximate number defining what you consider "substantial" to mean.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
calling the cops is my last resort. It’s a significant force escalation in my opinion.
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Airline personal called the police. The officers who responded had "Police" clearly written on their uniform. Yet they were not police officers. Two of the three officers were fired, a third was suspended and resigned.

When you call the police you expect fully-qualified and trained police officers to respond who will defuse a situation. You do not expect them to escalate it. You expect the authority of the police officers to be used in a non-violent manner to move the situation to a resolution. In the vast majority of such cases, that is exactly what happens.

If actual police officers had responded to the call, the outcome would likely have been very different.
 
Larry in TN said:
Airline personal called the police. The officers who responded had "Police" clearly written on their uniform. Yet they were not police officers. Two of the three officers were fired, a third was suspended and resigned.

When you call the police you expect fully-qualified and trained police officers to respond who will defuse a situation. You do not expect them to escalate it. You expect the authority of the police officers to be used in a non-violent manner to move the situation to a resolution. In the vast majority of such cases, that is exactly what happens.

If actual police officers had responded to the call, the outcome would likely have been very different.
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So how is any of this United fault. Did the “police” work for United?
 
Palmpilot said:
It's meaningless to talk about a "substantial fraction" without giving even an approximate number defining what you consider "substantial" to mean.
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In a case like this where we are discussing a not common event whose risk is not measured with great precision I would consider that an increase of more than ~25% of the risk would be be significant or a substantial fraction.

Do you have some numbers about these risks to share?

Since the risks of increased violence likely depend strongly on the situation being addressed, how much more likely do you think it was that violence would occur when the police were called over a seating dispute compared to if they had not been and United/Republic had just decided to let their employees miss the flight?
 
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Tarheelpilot said:
So how is any of this United fault. Did the “police” work for United?
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They worked for the aviation authority of the City of Chicago (the Long complaint lays this and his training out in some detail).

I believe it was United and their subcontractors partial (but not primary) fault for not pursuing more peaceful solutions.

The situation is likely best regarded as having multiple causative factors. Amongst them would be:

United’s decision to place crew members on a flight which was already full.

Dr. Dao’s failure to follow crew instructions as required by Federal law.

A poor customer service attitude at United resulting in law enforcement being called to resolve a contract dispute.

An ambiguous legal regulatory environment which does not clearly spell out the proper enforcement of such a contract dispute.

Chicago’s employment of poorly trained individuals in a pseudo law enforcement role.

I think reasonable people might disagree on the relative amount of fault to assign to each.
 
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The decision to place crew members on the already full flight was Republic Airlines', not United. They were a Republic crew of four. Republic operates flights for United as United Express. The airplane that Dao was on was also a Republic airplane. The airport agents were United employees.

The Republic crew was scheduled to deadhead to IIU on an earlier ORD-IIU flight. (Deadhead is when crewmembers are scheduled to ride as a passenger on a flight as part of their trip) Their original flight was experiencing rolling delays due to a maintenance problem with the airplane. The crew was scheduled for a short layover in IIU before operating a flight the next morning. As the delay of their original flight kept sliding, Republic Crew Scheduling noticed that they were in danger of arriving too late to be legal to operate their flight the next morning. To avoid a cancellation or delay of the next morning's flight, Republic Crew Scheduling changed the crew's deadhead to Dao's flight which was running on-time. This occurred after boarding had already started on Dao's flight.

Normally, when a flight is overbooked, the gate agent is aware of the overbooking well in advance of boarding. This gives them time to solicit volunteers and, if not enough are received, prevent the person(s) who are to be involuntarily denied boarding from boarding. In this case, the flight was already boarding when the agent found out about the four crew members which made her job of finding volunteers more difficult as she had fewer passengers still in the boarding area to volunteer and, not getting enough volunteers, had to also go onboard the aircraft to try to get volunteers from those who had already boarded. Still not receiving enough volunteers, she found that the passengers who were first to be involuntarily denied boarding had already boarded and one, Dao, refused to deplane. Typically, flights on an E-175 will begin boarding 35 minutes prior to scheduled departure with the goal of completing boarding by 10 minutes prior to departure. That didn't leave much time for the agent to process what was by then an oversale.

One of the changes UAL made shortly after the incident is that now they will not add deadheading crews to a flight within 60 minutes of departure unless the flight has seats available for them. They will also continue to increase the compensation offered to those who voluntarily give up their seat to limits far higher than what was used at the time. The limit was raised to nearly $10,000 per passenger. At that time, however, agents were not authorized to go to more than a few hundred dollars.
 
One of the other questions about the details here that I don't recall seeing is who actually made the decision to call the police to have Dr. Dao removed? And have they ever explained what alternatives they had considered and rejected and why?
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
In a case like this where we are discussing a not common event whose risk is not measured with great precision I would consider that an increase of more than ~25% of the risk would be be significant or a substantial fraction.

Do you have some numbers about these risks to share?

Since the risks of increased violence likely depend strongly on the situation being addressed, how much more likely do you think it was that violence would occur when the police were called over a seating dispute compared to if they had not been and United/Republic had just decided to let their employees miss the flight?
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I don't have numbers any more than you do, but now that I have a rough idea of what you mean by "significantly," I can say that I seriously doubt that the incidence of violence when LEOs are called is anywhere near that high. In the aviation context, if violence were resulting in anything approaching 25% of the cases when police are called in by the airlines, it seems implausible that Dr. Dao's case would be the first time we were hearing about it.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Dr. Dao’s failure to follow crew instructions as required by Federal law.

A poor customer service attitude at United resulting in law enforcement being called to resolve a contract dispute.
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It seems contradictory to characterize a violation of federal law as "a contract dispute."
 
Palmpilot said:
I don't have numbers any more than you do, but now that I have a rough idea of what you mean by "significantly," I can say that I seriously doubt that the incidence of violence when LEOs are called is anywhere near that high. In the aviation context, if violence were resulting in anything approaching 25% of the cases when police are called in by the airlines, it seems implausible that Dr. Dao's case would be the first time we were hearing about it.
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I did not say the incidence. I said the increase in likelihood. If you want to discuss further, please read the example I provided as it is likely easiest to discuss in that context.
 
Palmpilot said:
It seems contradictory to characterize a violation of federal law as "a contract dispute."
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Two things going on there in a sequence, so not a contradiction.

First the contract dispute with the airline, which was the precipitating factor.

Subsequently a violation of a federal regulation or law by Dr. Dao (not sure that if it was criminal).

Two or more factors can be present and occurring at different times without being a logical contradiction. If I had asserted only one or the other factor was responsible, I would agree that could be contradictory. But I did not and in fact said multiple factors were likely responsible. Plenty of blame to go around in this incident.
 
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PeterNSteinmetz said:
Two things going on there in a sequence, so not a contradiction.

First the contract dispute with the airline, which was the precipitating factor.

Subsequently a violation of a federal regulation or law by Dr. Dao (not sure that if it was criminal).

Two or more factors can be present and occurring at different times without being a logical contradiction. If I had asserted only one or the other factor was responsible, I would agree that could be contradictory. But I did not and in fact said multiple factors were likely responsible. Plenty of blame to go around in this incident.
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"A poor customer service attitude at United resulting in law enforcement being called to resolve a contract dispute" seemed to downplay the direct connection between his refusal to obey crewmember instructions and the calling of law enforcement. There were legal ways for Dr. Dao to pursue a contract dispute. Refusing to get off the airplane when instructed was not one of them.
 
Palmpilot said:
"A poor customer service attitude at United resulting in law enforcement being called to resolve a contract dispute" seemed to downplay the direct connection between his refusal to obey crewmember instructions and the calling of law enforcement.
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Please see my post #176 above. I believe I made it clear I did not wish to ascribe any particular levels of importance to one or another factor in that post. I also did not there ascribe causal connections between them.

If one wants to discuss the relative contributions of these factors and their potential causal connections, I would suggest first reading the Wikipedia overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Express_Flight_3411_incident . This contains an overview and links to interviews with other passengers on the plane (one can track down the original sources from there if one wishes not to trust Wikipedia on this.)

Those quotes overwhelmingly assign primary blame for this escalation in violence on the UA supervisor Danielle Hill, whose apparent power struggle over this issue escalated the level of confrontation significantly. She evidently made a snap judgement to call law enforcement rather than considering alternatives or some other way of diplomatically resolving the situation.

That set of facts argues, I think strongly, that the poor customer service attitude of UA, manifested by employing a supervisor such as Ms. Hill, was a primary contributing factor.

At that point Dr. Dao could be regarded as in a civil negotiation to resolve what he, with some reasonable cause, believed was a valid contract dispute. Subsequently, in the presence of a hostile and inflexible attitude by Ms. Hill and with the police, he likely violated a Federal regulation or law.

It is multi-causal, since if Ms. Hill had been better at dealing with this, or Dr. Dao had realized it was then time to just give it up and find another way home, the violence would not have occurred.

Since Ms. Hill was supposedly the professional in dealing with these situations (which Dr. Dao was not) and since her bad actions preceded those of Dr. Dao, I am inclined to assign greater fault to her. The counter-argument if trying to finely parse blame would be that it is worse to break a Federal regulation or law than it is to simply be a supervisor with a terrible attitude.

My point when entering this thread, however, was somewhat different. Namely that it was a bad idea to escalate the situation by calling the police when other likely less violent alternatives were available. It appears Ms. Hill did not give much serious thought to that and was encouraged in her attitude by UA. It appears her attitude was one of being annoyed by the last minute request to put these 4 employees on the plane, that she took it out on the passengers, and then adopted a "I'll show you whose boss" attitude with Dr. Dao.
 
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I've gotta ask Peter - why are you still beating this drum? It sure sounds to me like you have some axe to grind with United.
 
kayoh190 said:
I've gotta ask Peter - why are you still beating this drum? It sure sounds to me like you have some axe to grind with United.
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Thanks for asking but no I don't have any axe to grind with United. What I was concerned about when I originally entered this thread was the attitude expressed by some posters that people deserve to have the police use violence against them because they are peacefully refusing to cooperate with a law and that companies like UA should be calling the police rather than trying to peacefully resolve contract disputes. I do care about those issues.

I only recently brought up this necro thread (post #134) in order to report on my research which failed to obtain the exhibits in Long's complaint. I thought that was curious.

Of course, per usual PoA ways, this then starting wandering over all these old issues. I do think my post #187 was the first post in this thread to discuss Ms. Hill's involvement in that is new. I do also think that bears heavily upon the question of fault here. I'm sorry no one, including myself, had looked into this earlier.

But if you are asking as a moderator and feel I have violated a PoA rule, please advise, and I will conform.
 
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After reading the Wikipedia description of the incident that you linked, my take is that the lion's share of the blame goes to inadequate training of the officers who responded. Below that, I would list Dr. Dao's exaggerated idea of his own importance, his misunderstanding of the terms of the contract, and his ignorance of crewmember authority. Ms. Hill's handling of the situation may have played a role, and maybe changing that could have led to a different outcome, but it's hard to tell from second and third hand accounts.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
But if you are asking as a moderator and feel I have violated a PoA rule, please advise, and I will conform.
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Oh geez no, not at all! :) As an airline pilot that has had to call 'security' out to the airplane many times over the course of my career, the thread is interesting as certainly nobody wants to see this kind of outcome. The Dr. Dao situation has placed (industry-wide) a bigger emphasis on deescalation, which is a good thing. But when the FAs, customer service managers, and whomever else do their best to deescalate to no avail, there should also be an expectation that security/police can be called out to the aircraft without worry of undue violence. There's a lot of blame to go around here - I don't think anyone disagrees with you there - it's just that everyone in the industry took a good look in the mirror after this one, not just United.
 
If subway franchise #714 in Topeka refuses to honor my 12-stamped sub club card and deliver me the contractually-promised free sandwich, I absolutely have a right to protest and feel cheated. Sitting in the lunch meat, refusing to budge, and holding up the order line, however, seems like the wrong place to do so. I would expect the police to be called, and myself removed from the deli case, with force if necessary.

Like Dao, I would expect a private settlement for an undisclosed sum large enough to make me forget the original sandwich injustice. But this is because optics trump correctness these days, not because of the injustice of Subway Sandwiches the business, nor their presumed expectation of force when they called the fuzz on me. They just wanted my ass out of the cold cut combos so they could get on with serving their customers.
 
I think most reasonable people would get up and do what they are told when the police are called. I don’t think anyone expected them to drag his limp body off the plane. In my few interactions, once a CRO (Delta red coat. I’m sure United has their own version) is called, that pretty much ends the situation.
 
schmookeeg said:
If subway franchise #714 in Topeka refuses to honor my 12-stamped sub club card and deliver me the contractually-promised free sandwich, I absolutely have a right to protest and feel cheated.
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You could probably even walk around with a big truthful negative sign on the public sidewalk or street in front of their place of business if you wanted -- because that is not a trespass on private property. (IANAL so consult before trying that in your locality).
 
I wonder if the Captain ever came back to speak with Dr. Dao? I did not see that mentioned in the history on Wikipedia. Sometimes people with some familiarity with aviation recognize the authority of the PIC, even if they are failing to follow the regulations regarding following crew member instructions.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I wonder if the Captain ever came back to speak with Dr. Dao? I did not see that mentioned in the history on Wikipedia. Sometimes people with some familiarity with aviation recognize the authority of the PIC, even if they are failing to follow the regulations regarding following crew member instructions.
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It wasn't mentioned because it didn't happen. Nor should it. The airline employs people to deal with that, and that is not the Captain. I don't think any Captain out there is going to leave the cockpit and involve themselves in a dispute with a passenger. Nothing good would come from that. And if I was an FO I would vehemently try to dissuade my Captain from doing that if he or she was even thinking about it.

When stuff like this happens are the times that I feel extremely happy that there's nothing but boxes behind me.
 
Sluggo63 said:
I don't think any Captain out there is going to leave the cockpit and involve themselves in a dispute with a passenger. Nothing good would come from that.
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When stuff like this happens are the times that I feel extremely happy that there's nothing but boxes behind me.
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I have seen it happen and is why I brought it up. As noted by @Tarheelpilot and @Larry in TN the Captain is PIC and has ultimate authority and it is up to him/her. Sometimes that can be used help more peacefully resolve a problem than calling LEOs. And yes, hauling human beings is a different set of responsibilities than hauling inanimate objects.
 
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