United Reveals 10 Policy Changes Following "Dragging" Incident

does all of this only apply to mainline UA or also to UX? Will UA provide all of this training and will all of these policies also apply to UX?

The question here is what exactly they mean by "safety and security." Would someone stealing my E+ seat and refusing to move back to E- constitute a breach of safety and security? I suppose they're technically committing theft, so even though it's non-violent that would be considered insecure?

The most important should be - Allowing the gate agents to increase the voluntary compensation without them having to go to supervisors and customer service.
If the agents had that power initially this may not have happened.
They still did not show it here

What does the last bullet about permanently lost luggage help in bumping situations? Am I missing something or is thing something just to improve the reimbursement process?

Bullet point 4: "...or ground transportations to get customers to their final destination."

Customers? Wish they'd done that with the crew that needed to get to Louisville from Chicago!

Ground transportation: drag customer off a plane? Sorry, couldn't help it.

I just hope that strong arming seated passengers is considered an assault against a passenger, rising to a felony. Otherwise, our War on Terror will have become our War Of Terror.

And if it's anything like our Decades-old War on Drugs, this will not end well for us.

Zymm, what about when the flight attendant kicks me out of my E+ seat because a wheelchair or unaccompanied child needs it? I paid for it but am not getting it. Is it also theft on the part of the company?

I'm also skeptical of the "safety and security" exceptions. By that basis, the captain/crew could still order any passenger removed for ANY reason because they're a "safety" or "security" risk... and we all know that means passengers can be deemed so without any verifiable justification because the pilot/crew "feels" unsafe or insecure. Like when a passenger won't obey stupid/unwarranted rules imposed at the whim of a FA/GA/pilot. Don't get me wrong -- if there are legitimate security/safety concerns I have no problem. But it's been established airline crews have abused that policy because of their ignorance and prejudice (kicking off muslims praying, pax reporting "suspicious" actions by "foreigners.," etc.) Unfortunately, no amount of employee training can instill common sense.

Just took a flight yesterday and the Captain and FAs announce they are there for passengers safety. That's where things have gone downhill. I see it as like a teacher should protect their students while they are in school. But their first and foremost responsibility is teaching. If an incident arises, then the priority shifts to safety. Foreign airlines understand that their first priority is to provide customer service. US based airline crews treat us like they are doing us a favor by "saving" us because their number one priority is safety. Until that entire culture changes, no policy change will make it better.

Almost all of these are lip-service bullshit. Anything that's not quantifiable is bogus and United should be held accountable to actually measure success. The only one on here that can be measured is the 60-minutes-or-greater rule for crews...and maybe the automated system for soliciting volunteers - and even that's bogus because simply creating the system is worthless unless it's utilized.

Otherwise everything else is ridiculously subjective and is still going to rely on surly FAs and ground staff to "use their best judgment" when deeming something a "safety or security risk". And let's be brutally honest: as hard working as a lot (or some of, depending on how you frame it) FAs and ground staff may be, they weren't hired for their problem-solving skills or higher reasoning abilities or enhanced levels of motivation and go-getterness. They will continue to be provide the minimum efforts required as outlined by UAs (new) policy changes and we are going to continue to see Dragging Incidents, Stroller Incidents (though that wasn't United, but I'm sure United is at batting practice right now), and other [insert terrible treatment] Incidents in the future.

Do NOT let up. Hold UA accountable. Hold other airlines accountable. Continue to video interactions with employees and share to social media. As consumers, we can't become complacent.

@Bitzer
That's a downgrade and there is set compensation in place (though you usually have to request it). That's provisioned for in the contract of carriage.

Additionally, I was speculating on one way these regulations might be interpreted. There are some significant gray areas here. If passengers do something that's a blatant violation of the contract of carriage, yet they do so in a calm and peaceful manner, at what point is that a matter of safety and security? If there is an unoccupied seat in first class, can I now go sit in it without fear of being removed, just as long as I race the other passengers and sit in it first?

And while UA continues to make these "promises", I am going to ask again: What about a replacement for SHARES? If UA wants to empower its employees, the employees need tools that can provide these so-called "promises" to customers. Let's face it: SHARES still sucks. Employees many times say "no" to a customer just because the employees cannot be bothered to fight SHARES to make SHARES do anything. So without a replacement for SHARES as being an item on UA's to-do list, then an acceptable level of customer service will never be given to customers.

They're missing one big thing: Focusing on the needs and desires of their customers and getting rid of pissy staff who could care less and have forgotten that customers are the ones funding their paychecks. "Empowering employees" can go very wrong if you have employees with the wrong mindset.

The only "improvements" I see out of this are increased VDB amounts and possibly the creation of an automated VDB system like Delta uses. In other news, United doesn't do this??!? It's 2017, computers aren't exactly a new thing nor is memory/storage an issue these days.

and of course...does this apply to mainline UA or also the regionals? If it doesn't include the latter, than all of this is a waste of time since many flights people take will touch a regional at some point.

Ha, ha, ha! I cannot wait for the whining the first time a UA flight is cancelled because a last minute deadhead crew is not there because of the 60 minute rule. Yeah, make sure you hold United accountable here.

@willy if the people at united cant figure out the logistics of where they need crew until less than 60 minutes before a flight then people need to be fired for incompetence.

@bill you clearly have no idea about the minute to minute changes that occur while running an airline operation. There isn't enough space here to catalog the instances of last minute crew and aircraft reassignments, especially so during irrops.

I'm no apologist for the airline industry, but for the numbers of people and cargo they move everyday it's pretty amazing.

Has anybody here actually read the report and the details behind the policy changes and training implementations they plan on having? Or are we just reading the copied press release and bringing out the pitchforks again based on that?

A policy every airline has had sine time began failed. It just happened to United this time. If you don't think every airline (Delta beat them to the punch) is already looking at making these revisions - silently - as to not draw attention to the fact it could have happened to them; there's a bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale.

@ Potreroflyr - You mean like how they removed that Italian professor from an AA flight for writing math equations because a passenger "knew" he was an Arab writing in terrorist plots in Arabic? Yep, only in America could this happen lol.