Here we are in the US with chip and signature, much less chip and biometrics. And not all all retailers have chip readers, including Costco, at least the one I shop at. My one man barber shop has a chip reader POS terminal. And what about using stolen cards with on line retailers before the owner knows about the theft? I'm not sure how the interface would work.
Blame your bank for the lack of PIN on your card. My debit card has chip + PIN here in the US. I have a bunch of credit card terminals on my desk and can do online PIN, offline PIN with CDA, offline PIN with SDA, and unencrypted offline PIN just fine with my card. There's no technical reason it can't be done here in the US. It is purely a business decision. All ATMs are supposed to be chip capable by about October 2017, so perhaps they'll start adding PINs then.
It's called "EMV" or "Chip+Pin".
There's also "paypass" and "paywave" - aka NFC.
I can't swipe my card in a local terminal even if I wanted to. There is data in the magstrip that says the terminal must use the chip if it can. There are no terminals that can't in NZ anymore.
The service code in the track 2 data indicates that the card is EMV capable. You could easily rewrite the service code but the issuing bank would see that if the transaction were to go online. Most transactions are online these days and online processing is technically a requirement in the US, though you can approve offline at your own risk. You can also do some attacks with the chip itself when they're used offline as well, but they're trickier. The Information Security Group of the University College of London have more information about the different types of offline attacks one can run.
More like news for people who aren't paying attention.
The administration is way behind on filling much more important positions than this. Last month suddenly reversed themselves on the US attorneys staying on until there are replacements... fine, but as of today there aren't any nominees for any of the 93 prosecutor positions, because they haven't filled the undersecretary level positions that do that. Justice is also missing a number of key appointees for national security positions.
There's the same story at state, where over half of the high level appointees have yet to be named, including officials to oversee the Middle East or nuclear anti-proliferation.
The confusing situation with the USS Vinson might well have something to do with the fact that a number of important second and third tier DoD positions haven't been filled, and the same at the Executive Office of the President. A lot of what those people a teir or two below the top do is make sure the right hand knows what the left is doing.
Cybersecurity is an important issue, but the administration doesn't have the people in place to set up and run such a team yet.
He could probably get appointments made if he actually took the job seriously. I'd liken his choices with the Pope saying to all of the cardinals that he'd like the freaking Anti-Christ to be the Papal Nuncio or something like that. All of his sensible appointments went through rather quickly. The rest have been delayed as long as humanly possible.
Pretty sure my parent company still outsources to all of them. I hate making large broad statements, but I've never yet met one I was impressed by. Seems to whole business model for outsourcing revolves around everything being so cheap you can rebuild it 5x and still come out ahead on direct project costs. As for impacting the business with garbage software, that doesn't cost anything, right?
I think when these companies initially court you, they typically have some very talented people help make the sell. These people can talk the talk and walk the walk. Once there is ink on paper, even before the signature dries, they're off to the next sale.
Good luck with this policy. At best a few sailors or marines will be busted each year for their stupidity, but the vast majority of incidents will never see any enforcement.
I've never been in the armed services but I was under the impression that one of the most important rules for those in authority was do not give orders that one knows will not be followed. Issuing orders that won't be followed helps destroy one's own authority.
I dated a Navy JAG for a bit and they actually love these kinds of orders from Sec Navy. Well, commanding officers do. It's a great way to get rid of someone you don't like because it's easy to selectively enforce the rule. Not only that, but when it comes time to prosecute, the JAGs often request a reduction in sentence or charges and the commanding officer for the unit in question is able to accept the reduction, or not, based on whether they want that person to be able to stay inside of the command. There are, of course, risks to the commanding officer if they choose to keep someone who later causes problems, but most of the time it's the officers or enlisted people that they want out of the Navy that have these charges brought against them to begin with.
Or just create a big hype and discontinue the thing when they will have sold 5000 boxes as they did with the NES Classic? Damn you Nintendo. I never buy anything else from you.
My inside sources suggest they'll make exactly 21 units - 1 will be a test unit. They'll hype it for a few months and then give everyone the middle finger and suggest they make a RetroPi instead.
They're not a couple escaped helium ballons from for birthday trapped on your ceiling waiting to be grabbed, they're flying about faster than bullets in differing and often completely opposing orbits and there is no Neo from the Matrix around to wave his hand and make them all magically stop for you.
We've had our eye on you. We thought you might be the one, but we can see that you're not ready yet.
Yes, let us only do constructive things 24/7/365, not relax ever!
Perhaps our anonymous friend does not find TV to be very relaxing. I don't find it to be especially interesting, most of the time. Typically I watch TV when I am not feeling well enough to go do something more interesting. It's better than laying there and doing nothing, and if I fall asleep, I don't feel like I missed anything.
>"If a show is available on-demand, viewers won't be able to skip ads, even if they recorded the episode on DVR."
And this is why streaming usually fails, because it puts the user out of control. It doesn't matter the who or why- broadcasters, content providers, streaming service, if they are going to FORCE the customer to view ANYTHING- be it ads, previews, trailers, "infomercials", public service announcements, then we have moved backwards. Streaming gives them that power, and it is often irresistible- something they don't have over DVR's.
Technology has released me from being forced to watch commercials for 20 years and I am not about to start now (VCR then TiVo then added Netflix streaming). I am amazed that people will PAY for services that force them to watch what they don't want. Even if the content is "free", there is a large segment of the market who is like me, and if that contains forced anything, we reject it.
Forced ads are a dinosaur that needs to become and stay extinct.
This is why I will not watch a DVD, whether I rent it or buy it. I rip it and stream it to my device and, if necessary, delete it when I am done. When you pop the DVD/Blu-ray into the drive they try to force you to watch trailers and other adverts, FBI warnings, and other BS that I have no interest in being forced to see.
- The F-16 is designed for a human pilot. All the systems and design put around accommodating a human make the F-16 a damned expensive drone. It's also much bigger than it needs to be. Finally, the the airframe and general design stops at what a human can tolerate.
My understanding is that the F-16 is perfectly capable of exceeding a 9G turn, it is the pilots who are not capable. I could be wrong about this, but even if it cannot exceed a 9G turn, it can likely keep itself in that turn much longer than a human would be able to endure. So perhaps not a total waste, and certainly better than just scrapping them.
It is not and never has been and there is no reasonable prospect of it becoming one in the near future either.
That's not exactly true. Just look for pictures of NYC at the turn of the century and you can see neighborhoods with hundreds of power and telephone lines from competing companies going through neighborhoods. It's an eyesore and incredibly dangerous. This is why it will never be that way again and why there should be no corporate interests invested in owning utility lines.
Bullshit. It was not a lawful order. You do not have to follow an unlawful order.
Private property laws allow them to deny him access to private property at any time. Therefore it was a lawful order. Whether or not they could be sued for violating the Contract of Carriage laws is irrelevant as they have the right to ask him to deplane. He can sue if they did violate the Contract of Carriage laws, but he cannot refuse to leave private property.
I'm not sure about this. You seem to be suggesting that he should have yielded to authoritarianism without being able to state his case. I kinda get it -- he who runs away lives to fight another day. Maybe. Yield to the dictator du'jour. Acquiesce to those in charge simply because they are "in charge". The people have no power. I don't particularly like where this is heading.
I'm trying to imagine the response if it had been an elderly black woman or a man wearing a ghutrah.
There is a time and a place to fight everything. Once he was asked to get off of the plane, he was breaking the law. I, as an individual, do not believe that private property laws need protesting, even if this behavior by United was inappropriate. Protest at the gate. For one thing, he would have found that United would have made better accommodations than what they were offering people to accept as a volunteer. They would have booked him on another airline, if necessary.
The tl;dr of it all is that this situation should have never occurred; that's United's fault. Him getting dragged off the plane was his own fault once it escalated to that point.
A doctor going to perform surgery on a patient may have very good reasons for wanting to stay on the flight he's on. Protesting after leaving the plane means leaving the plane and being delayed.
Is this some life saving surgery? Doubtful! No one would be flying in for that. They'd have someone on hand. And as I've said, they have on-call physicians that handle such a situation. Do you think he'd be the first doctor ever to miss a surgery because of travel problems, illness, or a myriad of other reasons?
Keep in mind, you are supposed to get your social security and medicare payments back when you are retired.
Since they keep pushing back the social security age, I will be approximately 92 years old before I could possibly get out what myself and my employer will be required to contribute if the 1) don't increase the tax rate 2) don't decrease the benefits 3) don't delay my social security age 4) don't increase the salary cap on social security. If I had that money in my own pocket, I could at least try and and do something usual with it.
Yes and it seems many others here are blindly commenting and don't understand what actually happened. This wasn't an overbooking scenario. This was a scenario where passengers had been cleared, boarded and seated. Then another flight crew needed to board to make a flight for the next day. No one volunteered, so they played Hunger Games with the passengers.
It's still an overbooked scenario whether the passengers were paying or not. Though I do think they should have handled this scenario differently, such as providing ground transportation for their own employees, there were still too few seats for the number of passengers.
One of the ones selected was a Dr that had patients to see in the morning and thus his refusal.
Absolutely irrelevant. As we all know, Delta canceled thousands of flights between Wednesday and Sunday. Had he flown Delta, he probably would not have had a plane to get onto at all. And the fact that he is allegedly a doctor with patients? So what. They have on-call doctors to handle this situation. He is no more important than an elementary school kid who has class the next day.
United Airlines then turned in to President Snow and had a 69 year old man beaten and drug, yes, drug, (not carried as some outfits want to say), off the plane over it.
Once he was asked to deplane, he was guilty of criminal trespass. Even if he IS a doctor, if he were at a hospital and the hospital said "Hey get out of our facility" he would be required to leave. The police could still come in there and drag him out if they need to. The man broke the law at this point and I have zero sympathy for him being removed by force. He is lucky he did not spend his Monday morning waiting for the county judge instead of seeing his alleged patients.
United could have easily booked this crew later or sent them by other means.
I agree with you completely. Though this man could have also made the 4 hour drive to Louisville if he really felt that the need was that urgent. Instead he played the "I'm more important than every other passenger on this plane" card and wanted them to make someone else deplane. He's a douche and United did not display proper customer service.
They chose to violently remove a 69 year old man like he was brandishing a weapon or threatening people.
As I've stated before, you'll get violently removed from a hospital or any other location if you're trespassing and do not comply with police instructions.
So, people carrying on about overbooking can get bent as that's not what happened. This wasn't denial of boarding.
You are incorrect. There is a legal definition for denial of boarding and this case falls under that legal definition.
It was violent eviction.
It was the police enforcing criminal trespass laws.
United is going to end up paying for this event, one way or another.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Now it's on to see how UA is going to handle this mess.
The local law enforcement do say that the officer did not follow proper procedure and did suspend him, yes.
And yet they don't refund the tickets for the people who don't show up. What other industry is allowed to sell commodities twice? Usually that is considered fraud....
Typically, if you show up to the airport within two hours of the flight departure time they will rebook you on another flight for free. If you do not show up at the airport at all, and your ticket was non-refundable, you're screwed.
You do realize that there is not Constitutional right to operating a business. Business is regulated and often requires a license, which can be revoked just as easily as permission to be on private property. If a business doesn't serve the interests of the community it should not operate. Period
Like I said, had he complied with the law (and left the premises when requested) the airline WOULD have accommodated and compensated him. They're required to by law. I'm not saying that the airline handled this in the most appropriate way, but the guy broke the law. Everyone is giving United a bad time while neglecting the personal responsibility that this passenger had to obey the law himself. I have a problem with that. Both parties behaved inappropriately but ultimately it was the passenger who broke the law, not the airline.
The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
Um, I think he assumed he was as important as every other passenger, not more important.
The job market for Russian trolls must have slumped after the election, nice to see you're working again.
And yet he was the only one of the four people who were involuntarily asked to deplane that refused to do so. So clearly he felt more entitled than the other three. And like I've said countless times he was breaking the law by trespassing. It could quite literally happen in any setting, including a hospital. If you're asked to leave, you need to leave. If you feel like you're being asked to leave unfairly then you need to protest that AFTER you leave because the law clearly is not in your favor once you refuse to comply.
I say bravo to this brave guy for bringing to people's attention this completely OUTRAGES Federal law that forces Police officers to treat Airline customers like criminals at the Airlines whim. Everyone should contact their representatives to remind them that they still represent us (in theory at least)
You realize that this can literally happen anywhere, right? Including a hospital? You have no legal right to be on private property after being asked to leave. Period.
It does not matter that he paid for a seat.The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
You should go and read this again. A medical doctor, flying to a patient for surgery, with a paid ticket, an assigned seat, sitting in that assigned seat after boarding that aircraft, is not entitled to fly?
Congratulations, you just made my top 10 of/. dumbest posters.
Why don't you try reading the federal laws regarding air transportation? And why don't you read property laws? The airline is allowed to ask him to disembark from a plane for any reason at any time it is safe for him to deplane. He was asked to deplane. He refused and was therefore trespassing. Had he been flying Delta that exact same weekend there is a high probability he would not have been able to fly either. So what would his patient(s) have done? If you have a problem with the booking practices of airlines then you need to complain to your federal representatives.
Since the passenger was trespassing at an airport (he was told to deplane), I don't believe the passenger has any grounds to sue. The airline will likely compensate him anyway, but he should have gone to jail.
"Pretty safe", yes, but you've never been completely safe. That said, the FAA has some well-defined requirements about how they have to treat people who've been involuntarily bumped, which includes a hefty cash payment (equal, I believe, to the full round-trip fare) plus a seat on the next available flight (on any airline, in any class at or above the class you paid for).
How the heck is it even possible to get involuntarily bumped? Either you have a boarding pass with a seat assignment or you don't. Once you do, you have a seat. So this means they had to have taken someone who didn't have a seat and given that person a seat while forcing somebody else who already had a seat to give up that seat. That's completely idiotic. Just reassign the person who didn't have a seat before. They didn't check in early enough to get a seat, which was their decision. Why should people who spent the extra effort to check in and get their seat assignment have to suffer so that people who couldn't be bothered can take their seats?
The only even semi-plausible situation that could explain this would be if the equipment changed to a smaller plane, but even then, they should have known about the reduction in seats prior to boarding.
Because of several reasons. First of all, federal law allows the airline to overbook. Secondly, the plane is property of the airline. Third, the airplane itself is on property that is typically covered by federal law. You're also incorrectly assuming that United assigns seats based upon check-in. You pick your seat assignment when you book the ticket, or the airline picks one for you. They followed Federal law. The passenger was told that he needed to deplane. He refused. Once he did that, he was in violation of local and federal laws (federal because it was at an airport). He's lucky that he was not thrown in jail for trespass. It does not matter that he paid for a seat. Once his permission to be aboard the flight was revoked, he was required by law to deplane. The law also requires the airline to compensate him. They would have cut him a check and, as the GP says, probably booked him on a competing airline for free and given him a mileage credit. I've flown hundreds of thousands of miles and have never seen someone act this way, or seen someone be involuntarily bumped. I have had a schedule change screw me over in a similar way as this particular passenger. In that case, I was not given cash, but I did receive a new flight on a different airline and mileage credit for a flight that I would not have normally received miles for (it was an award flight that I had purchased with miles). The airlines will take care of you, they're required to. And even if there were no other flights that day, the passenger could have driven to Louisville the same day if he absolutely required it. People have been making a big deal about him being a doctor and his patients needing him. Well, what if he didn't show up for work because of a weather delay? There is no difference. His patients would have had to see an on-call doctor either way. The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
one solution is to use blackbird to turn off all telemetry and uninstall builtin spy/adware. be warned, though, i had some basic things break (like start menu search) after running it.
I don't see any info on who actually writes or maintains this blackbird software. They say they're a Non-Profit Org but which? And under whose control? And is there any source code to see what this software does?
Slashdot Mirror
Here we are in the US with chip and signature, much less chip and biometrics. And not all all retailers have chip readers, including Costco, at least the one I shop at. My one man barber shop has a chip reader POS terminal. And what about using stolen cards with on line retailers before the owner knows about the theft? I'm not sure how the interface would work.
Blame your bank for the lack of PIN on your card. My debit card has chip + PIN here in the US. I have a bunch of credit card terminals on my desk and can do online PIN, offline PIN with CDA, offline PIN with SDA, and unencrypted offline PIN just fine with my card. There's no technical reason it can't be done here in the US. It is purely a business decision. All ATMs are supposed to be chip capable by about October 2017, so perhaps they'll start adding PINs then.
They do in countries with modern payment systems.
It's called "EMV" or "Chip+Pin". There's also "paypass" and "paywave" - aka NFC.
I can't swipe my card in a local terminal even if I wanted to. There is data in the magstrip that says the terminal must use the chip if it can. There are no terminals that can't in NZ anymore.
The service code in the track 2 data indicates that the card is EMV capable. You could easily rewrite the service code but the issuing bank would see that if the transaction were to go online. Most transactions are online these days and online processing is technically a requirement in the US, though you can approve offline at your own risk. You can also do some attacks with the chip itself when they're used offline as well, but they're trickier. The Information Security Group of the University College of London have more information about the different types of offline attacks one can run.
More like news for people who aren't paying attention.
The administration is way behind on filling much more important positions than this. Last month suddenly reversed themselves on the US attorneys staying on until there are replacements... fine, but as of today there aren't any nominees for any of the 93 prosecutor positions, because they haven't filled the undersecretary level positions that do that. Justice is also missing a number of key appointees for national security positions.
There's the same story at state, where over half of the high level appointees have yet to be named, including officials to oversee the Middle East or nuclear anti-proliferation.
The confusing situation with the USS Vinson might well have something to do with the fact that a number of important second and third tier DoD positions haven't been filled, and the same at the Executive Office of the President. A lot of what those people a teir or two below the top do is make sure the right hand knows what the left is doing.
Cybersecurity is an important issue, but the administration doesn't have the people in place to set up and run such a team yet.
He could probably get appointments made if he actually took the job seriously. I'd liken his choices with the Pope saying to all of the cardinals that he'd like the freaking Anti-Christ to be the Papal Nuncio or something like that. All of his sensible appointments went through rather quickly. The rest have been delayed as long as humanly possible.
Pretty sure my parent company still outsources to all of them. I hate making large broad statements, but I've never yet met one I was impressed by. Seems to whole business model for outsourcing revolves around everything being so cheap you can rebuild it 5x and still come out ahead on direct project costs. As for impacting the business with garbage software, that doesn't cost anything, right?
I think when these companies initially court you, they typically have some very talented people help make the sell. These people can talk the talk and walk the walk. Once there is ink on paper, even before the signature dries, they're off to the next sale.
Good luck with this policy. At best a few sailors or marines will be busted each year for their stupidity, but the vast majority of incidents will never see any enforcement.
I've never been in the armed services but I was under the impression that one of the most important rules for those in authority was do not give orders that one knows will not be followed. Issuing orders that won't be followed helps destroy one's own authority.
I dated a Navy JAG for a bit and they actually love these kinds of orders from Sec Navy. Well, commanding officers do. It's a great way to get rid of someone you don't like because it's easy to selectively enforce the rule. Not only that, but when it comes time to prosecute, the JAGs often request a reduction in sentence or charges and the commanding officer for the unit in question is able to accept the reduction, or not, based on whether they want that person to be able to stay inside of the command. There are, of course, risks to the commanding officer if they choose to keep someone who later causes problems, but most of the time it's the officers or enlisted people that they want out of the Navy that have these charges brought against them to begin with.
Or just create a big hype and discontinue the thing when they will have sold 5000 boxes as they did with the NES Classic? Damn you Nintendo. I never buy anything else from you.
My inside sources suggest they'll make exactly 21 units - 1 will be a test unit. They'll hype it for a few months and then give everyone the middle finger and suggest they make a RetroPi instead.
They're not a couple escaped helium ballons from for birthday trapped on your ceiling waiting to be grabbed, they're flying about faster than bullets in differing and often completely opposing orbits and there is no Neo from the Matrix around to wave his hand and make them all magically stop for you.
We've had our eye on you. We thought you might be the one, but we can see that you're not ready yet.
Perhaps I should write an article about how I installed Linux on a PC and use it to browse the internet and work on spreadsheets.
It's been a while since I've read that this is the year of the linux desktop.
Yes, let us only do constructive things 24/7/365, not relax ever!
Perhaps our anonymous friend does not find TV to be very relaxing. I don't find it to be especially interesting, most of the time. Typically I watch TV when I am not feeling well enough to go do something more interesting. It's better than laying there and doing nothing, and if I fall asleep, I don't feel like I missed anything.
>"If a show is available on-demand, viewers won't be able to skip ads, even if they recorded the episode on DVR."
And this is why streaming usually fails, because it puts the user out of control. It doesn't matter the who or why- broadcasters, content providers, streaming service, if they are going to FORCE the customer to view ANYTHING- be it ads, previews, trailers, "infomercials", public service announcements, then we have moved backwards. Streaming gives them that power, and it is often irresistible- something they don't have over DVR's.
Technology has released me from being forced to watch commercials for 20 years and I am not about to start now (VCR then TiVo then added Netflix streaming). I am amazed that people will PAY for services that force them to watch what they don't want. Even if the content is "free", there is a large segment of the market who is like me, and if that contains forced anything, we reject it.
Forced ads are a dinosaur that needs to become and stay extinct.
This is why I will not watch a DVD, whether I rent it or buy it. I rip it and stream it to my device and, if necessary, delete it when I am done. When you pop the DVD/Blu-ray into the drive they try to force you to watch trailers and other adverts, FBI warnings, and other BS that I have no interest in being forced to see.
- The F-16 is designed for a human pilot. All the systems and design put around accommodating a human make the F-16 a damned expensive drone. It's also much bigger than it needs to be. Finally, the the airframe and general design stops at what a human can tolerate.
My understanding is that the F-16 is perfectly capable of exceeding a 9G turn, it is the pilots who are not capable. I could be wrong about this, but even if it cannot exceed a 9G turn, it can likely keep itself in that turn much longer than a human would be able to endure. So perhaps not a total waste, and certainly better than just scrapping them.
It is not and never has been and there is no reasonable prospect of it becoming one in the near future either.
That's not exactly true. Just look for pictures of NYC at the turn of the century and you can see neighborhoods with hundreds of power and telephone lines from competing companies going through neighborhoods. It's an eyesore and incredibly dangerous. This is why it will never be that way again and why there should be no corporate interests invested in owning utility lines.
Bullshit. It was not a lawful order. You do not have to follow an unlawful order.
Private property laws allow them to deny him access to private property at any time. Therefore it was a lawful order. Whether or not they could be sued for violating the Contract of Carriage laws is irrelevant as they have the right to ask him to deplane. He can sue if they did violate the Contract of Carriage laws, but he cannot refuse to leave private property.
I'm not sure about this. You seem to be suggesting that he should have yielded to authoritarianism without being able to state his case. I kinda get it -- he who runs away lives to fight another day. Maybe. Yield to the dictator du'jour. Acquiesce to those in charge simply because they are "in charge". The people have no power. I don't particularly like where this is heading.
I'm trying to imagine the response if it had been an elderly black woman or a man wearing a ghutrah.
There is a time and a place to fight everything. Once he was asked to get off of the plane, he was breaking the law. I, as an individual, do not believe that private property laws need protesting, even if this behavior by United was inappropriate. Protest at the gate. For one thing, he would have found that United would have made better accommodations than what they were offering people to accept as a volunteer. They would have booked him on another airline, if necessary.
The tl;dr of it all is that this situation should have never occurred; that's United's fault. Him getting dragged off the plane was his own fault once it escalated to that point.
A doctor going to perform surgery on a patient may have very good reasons for wanting to stay on the flight he's on. Protesting after leaving the plane means leaving the plane and being delayed.
Is this some life saving surgery? Doubtful! No one would be flying in for that. They'd have someone on hand. And as I've said, they have on-call physicians that handle such a situation. Do you think he'd be the first doctor ever to miss a surgery because of travel problems, illness, or a myriad of other reasons?
Keep in mind, you are supposed to get your social security and medicare payments back when you are retired.
Since they keep pushing back the social security age, I will be approximately 92 years old before I could possibly get out what myself and my employer will be required to contribute if the 1) don't increase the tax rate 2) don't decrease the benefits 3) don't delay my social security age 4) don't increase the salary cap on social security. If I had that money in my own pocket, I could at least try and and do something usual with it.
Yes and it seems many others here are blindly commenting and don't understand what actually happened. This wasn't an overbooking scenario. This was a scenario where passengers had been cleared, boarded and seated. Then another flight crew needed to board to make a flight for the next day. No one volunteered, so they played Hunger Games with the passengers.
It's still an overbooked scenario whether the passengers were paying or not. Though I do think they should have handled this scenario differently, such as providing ground transportation for their own employees, there were still too few seats for the number of passengers.
One of the ones selected was a Dr that had patients to see in the morning and thus his refusal.
Absolutely irrelevant. As we all know, Delta canceled thousands of flights between Wednesday and Sunday. Had he flown Delta, he probably would not have had a plane to get onto at all. And the fact that he is allegedly a doctor with patients? So what. They have on-call doctors to handle this situation. He is no more important than an elementary school kid who has class the next day.
United Airlines then turned in to President Snow and had a 69 year old man beaten and drug, yes, drug, (not carried as some outfits want to say), off the plane over it.
Once he was asked to deplane, he was guilty of criminal trespass. Even if he IS a doctor, if he were at a hospital and the hospital said "Hey get out of our facility" he would be required to leave. The police could still come in there and drag him out if they need to. The man broke the law at this point and I have zero sympathy for him being removed by force. He is lucky he did not spend his Monday morning waiting for the county judge instead of seeing his alleged patients.
United could have easily booked this crew later or sent them by other means.
I agree with you completely. Though this man could have also made the 4 hour drive to Louisville if he really felt that the need was that urgent. Instead he played the "I'm more important than every other passenger on this plane" card and wanted them to make someone else deplane. He's a douche and United did not display proper customer service.
They chose to violently remove a 69 year old man like he was brandishing a weapon or threatening people.
As I've stated before, you'll get violently removed from a hospital or any other location if you're trespassing and do not comply with police instructions.
So, people carrying on about overbooking can get bent as that's not what happened. This wasn't denial of boarding.
You are incorrect. There is a legal definition for denial of boarding and this case falls under that legal definition.
It was violent eviction.
It was the police enforcing criminal trespass laws.
United is going to end up paying for this event, one way or another.
The Aviation Security officer has already been placed on leave and his outfit as publicly stated his actions were not in line with their policy (re: he's f*cked).
Now it's on to see how UA is going to handle this mess.
The local law enforcement do say that the officer did not follow proper procedure and did suspend him, yes.
And yet they don't refund the tickets for the people who don't show up. What other industry is allowed to sell commodities twice? Usually that is considered fraud....
Typically, if you show up to the airport within two hours of the flight departure time they will rebook you on another flight for free. If you do not show up at the airport at all, and your ticket was non-refundable, you're screwed.
You do realize that there is not Constitutional right to operating a business. Business is regulated and often requires a license, which can be revoked just as easily as permission to be on private property. If a business doesn't serve the interests of the community it should not operate. Period
Like I said, had he complied with the law (and left the premises when requested) the airline WOULD have accommodated and compensated him. They're required to by law. I'm not saying that the airline handled this in the most appropriate way, but the guy broke the law. Everyone is giving United a bad time while neglecting the personal responsibility that this passenger had to obey the law himself. I have a problem with that. Both parties behaved inappropriately but ultimately it was the passenger who broke the law, not the airline.
The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
Um, I think he assumed he was as important as every other passenger, not more important. The job market for Russian trolls must have slumped after the election, nice to see you're working again.
And yet he was the only one of the four people who were involuntarily asked to deplane that refused to do so. So clearly he felt more entitled than the other three. And like I've said countless times he was breaking the law by trespassing. It could quite literally happen in any setting, including a hospital. If you're asked to leave, you need to leave. If you feel like you're being asked to leave unfairly then you need to protest that AFTER you leave because the law clearly is not in your favor once you refuse to comply.
I say bravo to this brave guy for bringing to people's attention this completely OUTRAGES Federal law that forces Police officers to treat Airline customers like criminals at the Airlines whim. Everyone should contact their representatives to remind them that they still represent us (in theory at least)
You realize that this can literally happen anywhere, right? Including a hospital? You have no legal right to be on private property after being asked to leave. Period.
It does not matter that he paid for a seat.The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
You should go and read this again. A medical doctor, flying to a patient for surgery, with a paid ticket, an assigned seat, sitting in that assigned seat after boarding that aircraft, is not entitled to fly? Congratulations, you just made my top 10 of /. dumbest posters.
Why don't you try reading the federal laws regarding air transportation? And why don't you read property laws? The airline is allowed to ask him to disembark from a plane for any reason at any time it is safe for him to deplane. He was asked to deplane. He refused and was therefore trespassing. Had he been flying Delta that exact same weekend there is a high probability he would not have been able to fly either. So what would his patient(s) have done? If you have a problem with the booking practices of airlines then you need to complain to your federal representatives.
I just read that in the news. I see lawsuits. :)
Since the passenger was trespassing at an airport (he was told to deplane), I don't believe the passenger has any grounds to sue. The airline will likely compensate him anyway, but he should have gone to jail.
How the heck is it even possible to get involuntarily bumped? Either you have a boarding pass with a seat assignment or you don't. Once you do, you have a seat. So this means they had to have taken someone who didn't have a seat and given that person a seat while forcing somebody else who already had a seat to give up that seat. That's completely idiotic. Just reassign the person who didn't have a seat before. They didn't check in early enough to get a seat, which was their decision. Why should people who spent the extra effort to check in and get their seat assignment have to suffer so that people who couldn't be bothered can take their seats?
The only even semi-plausible situation that could explain this would be if the equipment changed to a smaller plane, but even then, they should have known about the reduction in seats prior to boarding.
Because of several reasons. First of all, federal law allows the airline to overbook. Secondly, the plane is property of the airline. Third, the airplane itself is on property that is typically covered by federal law. You're also incorrectly assuming that United assigns seats based upon check-in. You pick your seat assignment when you book the ticket, or the airline picks one for you. They followed Federal law. The passenger was told that he needed to deplane. He refused. Once he did that, he was in violation of local and federal laws (federal because it was at an airport). He's lucky that he was not thrown in jail for trespass. It does not matter that he paid for a seat. Once his permission to be aboard the flight was revoked, he was required by law to deplane. The law also requires the airline to compensate him. They would have cut him a check and, as the GP says, probably booked him on a competing airline for free and given him a mileage credit. I've flown hundreds of thousands of miles and have never seen someone act this way, or seen someone be involuntarily bumped. I have had a schedule change screw me over in a similar way as this particular passenger. In that case, I was not given cash, but I did receive a new flight on a different airline and mileage credit for a flight that I would not have normally received miles for (it was an award flight that I had purchased with miles). The airlines will take care of you, they're required to. And even if there were no other flights that day, the passenger could have driven to Louisville the same day if he absolutely required it. People have been making a big deal about him being a doctor and his patients needing him. Well, what if he didn't show up for work because of a weather delay? There is no difference. His patients would have had to see an on-call doctor either way. The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
one solution is to use blackbird to turn off all telemetry and uninstall builtin spy/adware. be warned, though, i had some basic things break (like start menu search) after running it.
I don't see any info on who actually writes or maintains this blackbird software. They say they're a Non-Profit Org but which? And under whose control? And is there any source code to see what this software does?