At United Airlines, Is Polite Disagreement Becoming Grounds For Removal From A Flight? - Forbes

The thousandfold small indignities of air travel continue to mount. And you wonder, how far can this go? Then you read something like a recent series of posts by the Atlantic’s James Fallows. Most of us just keep our heads down and try to slip through the system as unobtrusively as possible. But what if you complain, or inadvertently violate some rule you never heard of? Personnel at United are so on edge, or so intoxicated with arbitrary powers they now possess over passengers, that you run the risk of getting tossed off a flight like a suspected terrorist.

In one incident (scroll down to find it) a family traveling from Denver to Baltimore with two sons, aged 4 and 8, asked if a monitor showing “Alex Cross,” which features some violent scenes, could be turned off or retracted, and was told no. They asked if the captain might be consulted. To do that, they were told, they’d have to wait until the plane landed. Then:

Throughout these interactions the atmosphere was collegial, no voices were raised and no threats, implicit or explicit, of any kind were made. The flight continued without incident, while my wife and I engaged our children to divert their attention from the horrific scenes on the movie screens.  More than an hour later the captain, [name withheld for now], announced that due to “security concerns”, our flight was being diverted to Chicago‘s ORD. Although this sounded ominous, all passengers, us included, were calm. After landing a Chicago police officer boarded the plane and, to our disbelief, approached us and asked that we collect our belongings, and follow her to disembark. The captain, apparently, felt that our complaint constituted grave danger to the aircraft, crew and the other passengers, and that this danger justified inconveniencing his crew, a few of whom “timed out” during the diversion, and a full plane of your customers, causing dozens of them to miss their connections, wasting time, precious jet fuel, and adding to United’s carbon footprint. Not to mention unnecessarily involving several of Chicago’s finest, two Border Protection officers and several United and ORD managers, and an FBI agent, who all met us at the gate. After we were interviewed (for less than 5 minutes), our identities and backgrounds checked, we were booked on the next flight to BWI, and had to linger in the terminal for hours with our exhausted and terrified little boys.

Bonus corporate indignity: The response from United’s PR department.

In another incident, a travel blogger boarded a flight from Newark to Istanbul, then shot a photo of the media layout in his business class seat. A flight attendent told him that wasn’t allowed under United rules. He stopped and pocketed his phone.

Naturally, the FA’s warning bothered me and I felt the need to explain myself. I signaled for her to come back and asked her to hang my coat. I then said this verbatim: “I want you to understand why I was taking pictures. I hope you didn’t think I was a terrorist. Here is my business card [offering her one]. I write about United Airlines on an almost-daily basis and the folks at United in Chicago are even aware of my blog.” She took my jacket but refused to take my business card saying, “No, that’s okay,” then saying, “I did not know that” after I explained my reason for taking pictures. I again emphasize, I took no more pictures. A few minutes later a Global Services rep came onboard and asked to have a word with me, motioning for me to follow him. As I walked up front, I noticed the FA who had reprimanded me earlier ducked into the front galley and out of sight. He was direct—”The captain is not comfortable with you on this flight. You’ll need to gather your things and we’ll find another way to get you to Istanbul.” I was flabbergasted.

It goes downhill from there.

There are other anecdotes too, such as the passenger wearing dark shorts and a t-shirt who was told it was inappropriate and ordered (by the captain) to change. Of course, there are thousands of flights every day, and as Fallows points out, United pilots sometimes do wonderful things for passengers. But the bar for throwing people off flights seems to be creeping lower, to the point where all it takes is mild disagreement with a flight attendant. The trappings of security theater, like giving grandma an aggressive pat-down, are already absurd in their own right. Now they’re being used as a weapon against passengers who diverge even slightly from the meekness of the herd. There comes a point where rules cease to promote safety or efficiency and become ends in themselves. With air travel, we passed that point some time ago.

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