You may recall in early April when United Airlines needed to move five employees from Chicago O'Hare to Louisville, Kentucky, so it decided to bump paying passengers from the flight to free seats for the employees.
One of the passengers, a 69-year old doctor named David Dao, refused to give up his seat and was dragged off the plane by security officers, who broke his nose, knocked out two teeth and gave him a concussion.
Dr. Dao sued the airline, and United settled quickly for an undisclosed sum.
The flushing of the story down the memory hole seemed to have been largely successful when not a single question was raised about Dr. Dao or any possible changes in policy resulting from the incident at United's next shareholder meeting in May.
United apparently suffered no loss of business from the incident either.
According to the Chicago Tribune: "[United CEO Oscar] Munoz said the incident hasn't affected bookings. United boarded 7.6 percent more passengers in April than the same month last year, a significantly larger increase than those reported by competitors American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which were up 0.8 percent and 1 percent, respectively."
The data indicates that the airline may have actually benefited from the increased number of brand impressions generated by the coverage of the incident-the ultimate confirmation the press agent maxim: "There is no such thing as bad press."
[CALLOUT]
Now United may well experience another spike in bookings as the manhandling of Dr. Dao has resurfaced in the media because of a letter from the Department of Transportation made public last week by Flyers Rights, a consumer advocate group.
According to the letter from the DOT, the department concluded its investigation and … nothing. The department found no reason to take any action.
The letter goes into a series of booking technicalities the department looked into, such as how United solicited volunteers and whether the bumped passengers were provided written notice of their rights. It listed a number of documents it reviewed, including United's boarding priority rules for involuntary denied boardings.
"Based on the information we gathered during our investigation, we find that that United complied with some, but not all, of the requirements of the Department's oversales rule."
There is no mention of concussion, broken nose or lost teeth, or the fact that Dr. Dao was physically beaten up by the airline for refusing to give up the seat he purchased.
No mention of whether United is obligated to give its customers what they pay for.
The letter focuses only on the rules regarding overbooking of flights, admitting that some were broken, but concludes that there were no violations of anyone's civil rights.
"With regard to whether United violated the civil rights laws that we enforce," the letter said, "we find that United did not subject any of the passengers on United Express Flight 3411 to unlawful discrimination. There was no evidence that United discriminated against any of the passengers who were involuntarily denied boarding on Flight 3411 based on their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or ancestry."
Apparently, Dr. Dao's beating had nothing to do with his ethnicity. (The airline is an equal opportunity abuser?)
The letter also says that "The written statements from different individuals who are material to our investigation are in substantial conflict and in our view the conflict is unresolvable."
It seems no attempt was made to resolve the different claims by looking at the videos of the incident that went viral. No consideration is given to the fact that Dr. Dao was beaten up and his teeth knocked out. Apparently, this does not fall under DOT's purview.
As airline customers, what are we to conclude from this?
[READMORE]READ MORE: United Avoids Punishment in Dragging Incident[/READMORE]
Apparently, keeping the seat you paid for, or keeping your teeth, do not fall under the category of "civil rights." If the airline tells you to get off the plane, you'd better do it if you know what's good for you.
I can say for sure that if the airline tells me to go, I will go. I won't challenge their authority. Whether they are right or wrong, they clearly have superior force and the government will stand behind them even if they beat you.
It doesn't say so much for the safety of airlines, and I'm not talking about crashes.
If I were Oscar Munoz, I would rather pay a fine-which would amount to a small slap on the wrist-show some public contrition, admit an error and try to isolate it, putting it in the past. The DOT-meek in the face of the airline giants-seems to have confirmed that this incident was just business as usual.
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