U/A and Dr. Dao (2017)

[PeterNSteinmetz]

But putting aside lawyers and engineers, it's still possible to evaluate events like this based on common sense and simple human factors.

Well, based on such factors do you think UA did or did not admit that they should have expected physical force would be used to remove Dr. Dao, as was alleged in the Long vs. Chicago complaint? And what is your level of subjective certainty in that assessment?

That of course is independent of your own opinion of what might have been reasonable to expect. Though I would be interested to hear more specific reasoning about that as well.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I think I evaluate calling the police a bit differently based on both experience and what I have heard reported elsewhere. But I agree this is a pretty fine judgement call in this case and reasonable parties may disagree.

I would just urge people, including airline and airport employees, to recognize that the police will often use violence when it is not really required (as it is when defending against violence). There are tons of documented cases of them abusing people and even killing them when dealing with non-violent situations or based on erroneous information.

For example, in Maricopa county Arizona the county attorney has justified the use of SWAT team raids to serve warrants on non-violent offenders because the SWAT teams “need the practice”. The use of a SWAT team dramatically increases the odds of a bad or even lethal outcome in such cases.

Admittedly a more general observation, but which does apply to this airline case. As you noted, there were lots of other things UA could have done. Indeed, there is good evidence another party was willing to surrender their seat in order to get Dr. Dao to his appointment, but it was unclear that UA ever offered the seat then to Dr. Dao.

Would that have changed the outcome. I think not given Dao’s determination

Here I guess I have to disagree. But my analysis is predicated on the assumption that UA called airport security or law enforcement (and the prior posts in this thread provide no evidence that someone other than a UA or subcontractor employee called law enforcement. Please correct me with the appropriate citation if that is not the case). Even without the offer of the other seat, they could have adopted the position that they were not moving the plane until Dr. Dao left and that they would hold him responsible, as a breach of contract, for the cost of the delay of the plane and passenger time as incidental damages to that breach, then let him deal with that. They also could have brought up a different plane (admittedly expensive but one could try to hold Dr. Dao responsible as an attempt to mitigate damages) and moved the other passengers and let him sit there. Lots of other more peaceful alternatives than calling law enforcement.

IMO a terrible example of treatment of customers by UA in any case and the reason I avoid flying them. This despite the fact that they have changed their explicit policy. I think the fact this happened shows a bad attitude about customers in their culture.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

It is entirely unreasonable, as a legal and practical matter, to expect that United would have inconvenienced a plane-load of people or repositioned equipment (which might not even be possible), to account for this adult's temper tantrum.

Agreed Dr. Dao was essentially having a tantrum and creating huge problems and should have to pay for that.

Now you have Dao on a plane all by himself and you haven't actually solved anything. How long do you leave him on the plane and let him monopolize the plane, gate, and personnel before you call the police to drag his *** off the plane? I guess in that situation at least you solved the PR problem because there wouldn't be video.

True about the lack of video and the PR impact of it. It is also true that with Dao alone, or at least in an isolated section of the plane, you can more easily physically remove him if necessary without injuring either him or others. Probably not a good idea to try dragging Dr. Dao by the arm off the plane amidst a crowd of other innocent people.

Game theory suggests that if you're Dao, you'd stay on the plane under those circumstances until very shortly before the next plane to your destination, because that's the only leverage you have to possibly negotiation staying on the flight.

Speculation of course, but it is also possible that once Dr. Dao was told he would be paying the cost of all this and starting seeing the deboarding of everyone else, that he would have come to his senses - but maybe not.

The only "solution" to the "problem" of people like Dao is to eliminate involuntary denied boarding, which is what the airlines are attempting to do with increased incentives for voluntarily being bumped.

In the long run agreed. In this case, I think UA had better and more peaceful solutions at the time than calling law enforcement and would argue they should have tried them instead.

I think Munoz eventually agreed that they should not be calling the police onto a plane to forcibly eject passengers and they have now made policy changes to try and ensure that. So it seems like not even UA is attempting to say their actions were reasonable or appropriate, isn’t that true?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Given the power of Internet searches, it's easy to find anecdotal evidence of excessive force on the part of law enforcement officers, but I think it's the exception rather than the rule. I don't think UA (or rather the Republic Airlines employees who were acting on United's behalf) had any way of knowing that it would occur in this case.

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.

For example, most people in Maricopa county whom I discuss this with are both unaware that SWAT teams are used to serve warrants on allegations of non-violent crimes, "for practice", and express outrage about this policy. Limited and selected sample of course.

So I agree most employees who may have been involved in making the decision to call law enforcement likely hadn’t considered this. I agree with @Tarheelpilot that they probably should have. And I am glad UA has now set that in place as policy.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

And if someone else was willing to give up her seat, the time to do that would have been when the agents asked for volunteers. Any suggestion that there could have been an outcome where Dao stayed on the flight will only result in flawed reasoning.

I broke this out because I think it is very important in this context.

There is good evidence that someone else was willing to give up their seat for the compensation in order to bring the situation to a more rapid and peaceful closure. The only question was whether UA then took them up on that. If UA failed to do so, that was arguably a regulatory violation. There was evidently conflicting information on whether UA did that.

This suggests that UA/Republic had a readily available much more peaceful alternative. They just did not avail themselves of it. The evidence was unclear so they were not actually accused of a regulatory violation, and that is why I qualify this statement with "suggests".

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Not to wade into this all again... but yet, here I am.

The important thing is that UA learned from their mistakes. They were presented with a situation like they had encounter before (removing a belligerent passenger) that didn't go the way it had always gone in the past. The rules needed changing, and they changed it.

Although it is a much larger scale with much larger consequences, this is very much like what happened after the 9/11 attacks. The airlines had faced hijackings before in the past and developed a strategy. After 9/11 they realized their strategy needed to be adapted because what had always worked in the past no longer worked. Learning from your mistakes is key to improving the process.

Agreed on most of this and it is good that they learned. I hope another takeaway for people is that there is a greater chance of violence being used when you call the police than most probably realize. That chance is likely increasing in the present day, though still is small and not even close to a majority of the time in this type of circumstance.

I suppose one could recast the question of the "reasonableness" of UA/Republic employee actions as what chance is it reasonable to take of causing serious injury to someone like Dr. Dao to resolve a contract dispute. 20%, 10%, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01% ?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

But not wrong enough that people don’t still fly that budget airline if their ticket come in one dollar less than the others lol

A consequence of an oligopolistic highly regulated market? Or just human short-sightedness?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Both.

Also just humans being humans, I mean did one person step in to defend the doc during the assault? Nope, but they filmed it.

IMHO this type of thing is going to occur more with the combo of government schools (or “public” school) combined with more kids being raised without fathers in their lives. I mean if that was the 1950s I bet it might have turned out differently

There is evidence that at least one person, when they understood what was happening volunteered to get off the plane so Dr. Dao could get to his destination. Unclear if UA/Republic then offered that to Dr. Dao. But I agree such public spiritedness is sadly rare on today’s airline travel.

The 50s and 60s were a different time for airline travel for sure. Probably a more homogeneous and better off economically group of passengers.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Exactly. Although I'd like to point out that learning occurred at every airline over this issue. This situation just happened to occur to Republic/United, but easily could have happened to anyone.

Interesting question. Do you think Southwest would have acted this way? I suspect not and do think corporate culture played a role - but I also imagine others here have a lot more experience than I do bearing on that question.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I'm sorry if gave you the impression I was interested in restarting this

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.

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 *** off the plane while the getting was good.

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.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

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.

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

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.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

"Rising" does not equal "common." Do you know what the frequency of excessive force is? Without actual data, we're just speculating.

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.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

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.
...
If so how should he have been removed?

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]

How do you define "significantly" in that statement?

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]

It's meaningless to talk about a "substantial fraction" without giving even an approximate number defining what you consider "substantial" to mean.

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?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

So how is any of this United fault. Did the “police” work for United?

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.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

calling the cops is my last resort. It’s a significant force escalation in my opinion.

Hear hear. That is I think what I started with in this thread.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

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]

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.

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.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

It seems contradictory to characterize a violation of federal law as "a contract dispute."

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.